You’ll need to print out the image that will go on shirt onto transparency paper using black ink. Depending on your printer, you may need either laser or inkjet transparencies.

A Heat and Temperature Gun

For the textile paint to fully dry and stay on your shirt without washing off, you’ll need to cure it. Because a flash unit, conveyor dryer, or heat press cost a lot of money, the next best thing is to use a heat gun (available at a local hardware store for about $20) to cure a t-shirt because it can reach high temperatures.

The temperature gun is optional really, but useful because you’ll use it monitor the heat, making sure the temperature reaches at least 320 degrees Fahrenheit—that’s the temperature you’ll need to reach in order for the paint to fully adhere to the fabric. Any temperature lower than 320 will only cause the ink to come off in the wash and a temperature higher than that will mess up the ink and ruin the shirt.

If you really want to be cheap when it comes to screen printing, I suppose you could stick your freshly printed shirt in your kitchen oven and cure it that way…but that may be a bad idea for the following reasons:

1. The textile paint may release toxic fumes, rendering your oven unusable for food making.

(hmm…toxic flavored cookies…)

2. There's a possibility you might set your home on fire.

(that’s never good)

And finally,

3. Too much heat will burn and ruin the very same shirt you worked so hard to print.

A Coating Trough and Some Photo Emulsion

The nice thing about screen printing is that there are many ways to do it. Taping a stencil to your screen and passing a squeegee over it is one way. But, while stenciling is good for simple designs, it becomes time consuming and tedious when doing designs that have a lot of detail, so the next best thing to use is photo emulsion.

Photo emulsion is a photosensitive liquid substance that you apply to the screen using a coating trough (a squeegee will work just as well). When exposed to UV light, it hardens. There are different types of emulsion out there and are usually available at art supply stores or online, the price varies.

An Exposure Lamp/Unit

In order to print an image onto a shirt, you need to expose a screen that has been layered with photo emulsion and exposed to UV light. The sun is a perfect source, but it’s not constant. You don’t want to over expose your screen because it will damage it, but you don’t want to under expose it either because all of the emulsion will wash out.

Though you could run out and buy the latest in exposure unit technology, it is pretty pricey and since we’re just starting out, it may not be a good idea to invest such a large amount of money yet. So, a regular 500 watt halogen lamp will do (Like the one in the picture). You can get these at your local Lowes or Home Depot for around ten to fifteen dollars.

If you don’t mind waiting 30 to 60 minutes to expose your screen, you can use a regular light bulb as well.

...

Other supplies will probably be added to the list in the future, but for now these should be enough.