As I mentioned in my last post, I am currently interning with a local screen printer in the Charlotte area called Pandemic Printing.  From time to time the owner will say, “why don’t you create a design that you can practice screen printing with?” I’m thinking, “yesssssss” So I created this shirt. Why a Big Robot shirt? The true question is: Why not? I’ve documented an almost beginning to end process with the creation of the shirt.

First, I create the design on the computer. View it in the digital process here or here

Now to the rest of the process

Next, is the screen creation

Being that the shirt is 2 colors (Red & White), a screen needs to be created for each color. Ink is added to each screen.

The shirt is placed on the platen by my model Steve, the owner of Pandemic Printworks.

Next you apply a squeegee to the screen and push the ink through the screen to adhere to the shirt

Then onto the red

And Viola!

But that’s not all, being that this method is plasti-charged, the process is finalized by hitting the heat. Plasti-charged is hybrid between plasticol and discharged printing methods. This is an example of pre-heated shirt. Notice the color.

Just like all t-shirt printing, heat is needed to cure the ink so that it does not wash off once worn.

Notice the color after heat has been applied. What happened is the discharge part in the ink remove pigments from the dye of the shirt and replaced with the plasticol part of the ink. So the colors are vibrant, but retain a soft feel once washed.