When you’re just starting to screen print, one of the trickiest things to master is surprisingly not the actual printing itself. The question on every beginning screen printer’s mind is: how to get the shirt straight on the pallet.
The painful truth is, it just takes practice. You’ll be better at loading shirts after 10 shirts. After 100. After 10,000. Some say it even takes that long to really master it, but we think that’s a little extreme. There’s a method to the madness that is shirt-loading, and with some simple tips you can master the art of loading a shirt on the pallet straight and quickly. Every time.
Check out these tips from Ryonet so you can load a shirt like a pro:
Choose Up or Down
First things first, you have to grab the shirt right. Some screen printers like to grab the t-shirts face up (tag up) and some like to grab them face down (tag down). This is entirely preference, but you have to know which one you like best. So, try both, pick one and practice.
Don’t Trust the Center Crease
Some shirts come from the manufacturer with a crease or line down the center of the garment, which may lead you to believe that this line some kind of benevolent tool left there to guide you into perfect shirt loading. Wrong. While this line does run down the center of the garment, it’s actually a result of the process used to make the t-shirt and not a true center. Rule of thumb: use it to guide you, but do not trust it blindly.
Master the Rocking Motion
There may be lots of ways to grab the shirt, but there’s really only one surefire fast way to load it on the platen: the rocking motion. To do this, you pick up the shirt from the bottom, making the fabric tight between your hands. Then you rock the shirt forward onto the platen and drop it with the collar snugly up against the top of the platen. As you rock your body back, let your hands slide back with you and grab the shoulder seams to pull back and center your shirt. Using the shoulder seams is the only way to tell a true center. You want the space between the shoulder seams on both sides to be equal. If it’s not, then it’s not centered. Master this and you’ll be rocking shirts on and off effortlessly with perfect alignment in no time.
Be Careful with the Adhesive
Adding adhesive to the platen is crucial for keeping garments from slipping around when you are screen printing. However, there’s a distinction between too much and not enough pallet adhesive. If you’re spraying new adhesive every single time you reload a shirt, that’s too much and you’re going to have an incredibly difficult time loading and adjusting your shirts properly. We suggest ditching the spray adhesives and going with a water based pallet adhesive, like Green Galaxy™ Water Based Adhesive. These kinds of adhesive allow you to apply it once at the beginning of your print run and get just the right amount of adhesive, lasting long past just one run of shirts. Enough adhesive will prevent the shirts from moving when you smooth them down with your hands after alignment. Too much adhesive will stick your shirt down without pressure and make it unmovable for the rocking adjustment.
Screen printers who have loaded their 10,000+ shirts will tell you it’s easy, but anyone who remembers standing in front of a press for the first time trying to get the shirt to lay flat and centered on the platen knows that this is hard. Luckily, it just takes practice. Try these tips and next time you’ll be on your way to loading a shirt like a pro.
If you liked this article by Ryonet, check out their full blog of screen printing tips, how-tos, and advice from the experts at www.ryonetblog.com.
