Continuing to test the capabilities of the
Yudu screen printing system, already figured out that the art to be reproduced needs to be quite opaque and bold to reproduce well. Thus used a Sharpie pen to darken the outlines on the transparencies shown above.
Attaching emulsion screen to damp mesh screen.
The unit's drying rack features two slots, so 2 mesh screens can be dried simultaneously. It usually takes a couple of drying cycles for the emulsion to dry in the humid Florida weather. Once the emulsion dries, the clear protective film peels off without much effort.
After 8 minutes of exposure to bright light, the unexposed emulsion can be rinsed off easily enough from the printing screen in a shower equipped with a hand held sprayer.
Printing screen right after rinsing off unexposed emulsion.
Notice how the exposed emulsion has turned blue compared the original green emulsion.
The
Yudu inks are available in small bottles that feature thin nozzles with a twist cap that dispense the right amount of ink on the screen in a controlled manner.
Flooding the screen with black ink. Please note that you would want to use both hands to evenly spread the ink on the mesh screen. I just took my right hand off the squeegee for a moment just to operate my digital camera and take this shot.
Mesh screen ready for printing.
View of the ink-loaded printing screen from below.
Ta-da! adult size t-shirt with my stylized dragon kanji.
One thing: you might want to pay extra attention when securing your transparency with the printing design on the light table. Somehow I taped this dragon transparency backwards, so the text and Chinese character came out in their mirror image.
Just noticed it after printing this t-shirt and watercolor paper print. At least the darkening with the Sharpie marker worked, and all the details came through satisfactorily in that regard.
Even managed to print a T4 size shirt for my nephew.
Pros: Machine and emulsion sheets were quite easy to use as intended. Printing several shirts one after another with the same design was possible with a single ink color. The water soluble ink readily washed off printing screen.
Cons: The machine itself takes up a lot of room. Size of the print is limited by the size of the emulsion sheets available which are smaller than the mesh screens. Rather high cost of the supplies needed. For tips on how to save money using the
Yudu system, you might want to read this
article.
Burned the dragon transparency in the proper orientation, 
and printed a few dragon t-shirts with a custom mixture of Yudu Gunmetal Bronze and Argent Silver water-soluble screen printing inks. When diluting inks, add water gradually to avoid making them flow too quickly. For more efficient screen-printing, a consistency of a gel or toothpaste works better than fluid inks.
Decided to print my stylized Dragon Kanji on the back of the shirts.
Tried orange ink on olive t-shirt, and olive ink on an orange t-shirt when printing a single color.
The 2-color print done in two successive stages after the first print was dry to the touch.
Printed the dragon design on the front of the t-shirts.
The printer transparencies are 8.5" x 11", and they are about the maximum screen printing size limit for the Yudu machine to handle. Designs of this size might work well for decorating kid's size garments up to adult Medium t-shirts, but they come across a tad too small on large and x-large sized shirts.
Most of the t-shirts ended up with a pretty good contrast between the custom metal ink mix and the t-shirt flat color. This green t-shirt was the least successful of the bunch with the design getting pretty lost against the background color.
Last print of this batch of t-shirts.
By the end of the run the text on the screen got pretty saturated with dry ink and did not reproduce as clearly.
Once I got into the groove, managed to print 14 t-shirts and 2 paper prints with the single dragon screen and a one 3 oz. bottle of Yudu screen printing ink without having to clean and re-tape the printing screen. Note: allow for some experimentation period and slight learning curve to get the system to work as described in the manual and instructional CD. Some tinkering and tweaking might be required for flawless prints (I took me a few days myself). Do not be discouraged if the first few attempts result in poor reproduction or smudges because the ink behaved too much like a liquid after diluting it with too much water. You could try leaving the bottle uncapped to allow excess water to evaporate, or do a bit of ink mixing with fresh ink to thicken a batch of printing ink. Part of the trick is to achieve the right consistency of ink plus carefully following the instruction about flooding the printing screen right away between prints. Final step to fix the images to the shirts: ironed them on high for 5 minutes each.
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