DIY Archives - McLogan | Quality Screen Printing + Silk Screen Supplies since 1922

McLogan Screen Printing Starter Kits

January 20, 2016 by Mclogan Supply Leave a Comment

The McLogan Screen Printing Starter Kit is finally here! We’ve been working hard the past few months on getting these amazing kits ready and we can’t wait to share them with you. Whether you are wanting to start your own screen printing business, or looking to print a few shirts as a hobby; this is the best universal kit for everyone. McLogan has hand picked all of our top selling, reliable, eco-friendly products and equipment and placed them into one kit. We’ve designed the perfect start up shop from a one color professional screen printing press, mesh wood screen, all the chemicals needed, tools, bulbs, instructional manual, and a DVD.

What’s Inside The McLogan Screen Printing Starter Kit Box:

1-One Color Professional Screen Printing Press
1-19×22 160 Mesh Wood Screen – A larger screen than seen in other kits, so you can screen print larger images
1-Tekamar TBHV Pallet Adhesive With Applicator
10-Mclogan Waterproof Film 8.5×11 – To print on your ink jet printer for your film positive
1-14″ Emusion Scoop Coater – To evenly apply a perfect coat of emulsion
1-8oz Chromatech WR Emulsion
1-13″ Squeegee
1-8oz Franmar Degeaser – For cleaning screens
1-8oz Franmar Emulsion Remover
2-Scrub Pads
1-8oz Matsui Black Ink – Top brand ink to ensure that you get the best print possible
10-Ultimate Clean Up Cards – Disposable cards for scraping and scooping, making your job so much easier
1-Darkroom Light Safe Bulb
1-Screen Exposure Bulb
1-Instruction Manual – Step-by-step manual that explains how to set up, create, expose and print your first shirt
1-Instructional DVD

We look forward to introducing screen printing to you! The McLogan Screen Printing Starter Kit will make all the steps along the way so easy. Create your own brand, have some fun and start making money through screen printing.

How to Heat Press Bags

March 2, 2015 by Mclogan Supply Leave a Comment

The Machine:

The MAXX Heat Press is offered in 3 different sizes with a digital time and temperature display and would be a great press for vinyl bags and all other heat press requirements. This model is Stahls most affordable press; made in the USA. You have the option of buying smaller platens, so that your bag can fit securely and snug, but it isn’t required. The MAXX has a wide opening for easy layout/alignment, making it that much easier to use.

The Design:

There are stock designs that you can purchase from Stahls or Horizon Products. Horizon Products will specialize in more of your custom design needs. If you plan on creating your own designs there are plenty of creative supplies to choose from: rhinestones, heat transfer vinyl, flock transfers, and screen printed transfers.

CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator are the two most popular design softwares. Once you learn how to use the software your designs can be used with vinyl cutters, printer cutters and you’ll have images that are 100% original.

The Bag:

Choose the type of bag that will best suit your clients. Totes, grocery/shopping, sport/gym bags and backpacks are the more popular choices. Make sure that you check the materials of your bags since they range from cotton, linen, polyester, nylon, polypropylene, and recycled. You want your design to be compatible with your bag shape and fabric. Keep in mind that recycled bags have a low melting point, so be sure to keep the heat under 300 degrees Fahrenheit and for only a few seconds…your materials will have to fit within those specifications as well. Thermoflex Xtra seems to be the best vinyl for recycled heat press bags.

Mission Imprintables offers a wide variety of wholesale bags to make purchasing easier and more affordable.

All About the Accessories:

Teflon cover sheets that are 5ml thick. Mclogan’s makes it a priority to get Teflon sheets that are made in the USA and thicker than the average 3ml sheets. The 3ml sheets go bad after a few presses. The 5ml sheets disperse heat evenly, are long lasting and ensure that your materials don’t get stuck to your platen.

Heat transfer pillows made with 5ml Teflon to help absorb seams, zippers, collars or buttons. These pillows help to raise the fabric, so the heat will go evenly where needed.

Quick slip top platen covers these covers make it so much easier to clean your platens, disperse the heat evenly, and further protect your press. Heat presses have two platens, a top platen and a bottom platen. The top platen will administer the heat, while the bottom platen will hold your garment.

SGIA Golden Image Award

January 26, 2015 by Mclogan Supply Leave a Comment

Congratulations to Kieth Stevens on winning SGIA’s prestigious Golden Image Award for his “Peace” fine arts print! Mclogan supplied almost all of the materials shown below to help Kieth with his amazing design!

Below are some pictures of the design process as well as materials used.

Lithco Registration Tabs helped to register all the different colors used. There were 16 Permaprint colors used.

Each color separation was hand-painted using brush and a glitter/clear acrylic medium (Permaprint Clear) onto a clear Mylar film. 30% 0.008 Glitter to base ratio was used.

For each color used Kieth had to create a screen. In this pic you can see he chose to do a pink screen, then an orange, blue, green and yellow.

Three screens of varying exposure strengths were created from each of the five hand-painted positives, 15 color screens plus one for the black background were made.

Each of the three screens per color were printed exactly on top of each other with varying color strengths (20%, 60%, and 100%) to give depth and complexity to each color. No micro registration system was used.

The amount of time, and creativity that went into this design is completely inspiring and deserving of an award. Congrats to Kieth Stevens, who is the Western regional sales manager for International Coatings!

ISS Long Beach 2015 Show Coming in January!!!

January 8, 2015 by Mclogan Supply Leave a Comment

Meet the Mclogans’ team at the ISS Long Beach 2015 Show from January 16-18th.

Where: Long Beach Convention Center

When: January 16-18th

What: “ISS trade shows bring together buyers, suppliers and manufacturers in screen printing, embroidery and graphic design. The shows are filled with exhibitors ranging from apparel screen printing equipment, multi-head embroidery machines, direct-to-garment printing options, heat-applied rhinestone designs, neon inks, performance stretch inks, sublimation equipment and much more.”

Why: Come visit us for our “Show Sale Prices” and for free giveaways. Mclogans will be in booths 556 and 557.

Our digital booth will be in 556 where we will be showing off Graphtec Vinyl Cutters, Roland Vinyl Print/Cut, Stahls Heat Presses and Thermotron Heat Presses.

Booth 557 will be our screen printing booth. We will have Hopkins BWM Screen Printing Presses, Permaset Waterbased Inks, International Coatings Inks, and Triangle Plastisol Inks.

We hope to see you there!

We look forward to seeing you!

How To Clean Your Emulsion Off Your Screen Printing Screen

March 19, 2014 by Mclogan Supply Leave a Comment

Properly cleaning your screen is essential not only for your screen printing jobs, but also for the life of your screen.

Here’s quick step by step instructions on how to properly clean emulsion off your screen.

Remove the excess ink off of your screen. Feel free to use whatever you have handy for this process…sponge, piece of cardboard, etc.
Use a red Mclogan Scrub Pad, spray your Mclogan Emulsion Remover Concentrate onto the front and back of the screen. Scrub both sides.
Rinse with water. A high pressure washer is recommended.

*If you have any stubborn ink stains or traces of emulsion, after relcaiming your screen printing screen use a liquid haze remover. Spray this haze remover onto your screen, let it sit for a few minutes and then take a clean red Mclogan Scrub Pad and scrub until your screen is clean. Pressure washer reccommended

Now your screen is ready for your next job.

We look forward to hearing from you with any questions.

Roland GX-24 Desktop Vinyl Cutter

November 8, 2013 by Mclogan Supply Leave a Comment

Roland cutters to get the job done. In addition to legendary reliability, the CAMM-1 Servo GX-24 desktop vinyl cutter combines precision cutting with ease of use. Powered by a digital servomotor, it achieves cutting speeds up to 20 inches per second with maximum accuracy. Vehicle graphics, signs, decals, labels, stencils, pin-striping and heat transfers come out looking crisp and clean. Whether you are small business owner, a mom looking to do party decor/DIY projects or a screen printing shop wanting to do athletic jerseys this is your machine!

This machine is one of our top selling products because it is highly reliable and easy to use. The Roland GX-24 Desktop Vinyl Cutter has a LCD panel on the front for easy viewing and navigation. There is also a blade groove on its apron for easy manual cutting. A sheet roller base is included with each GX-24 Cutter to help keep media feeding straight through. Roland Stands are also available from McLogan.

From 2 to 27.5 inches wide, the CAMM-1 Servo GX-24 accepts a wide range of materials. It cuts sign vinyl, paint mask, reflective/clothing vinyls, twill, heat transfer, and sandblast material.
The CAMM-1 Servo GX-24 includes an optical registration system that automatically recognizes desktop printer crop marks and aligns media to create a powerful and cost-effective print and cut solution.
The speed and precision with a CAMM-1 Servo GX-24 is to be expected with a Roland plotter. The Roland GX-24 uses a digital servomotor to achieve maximum accuracy and cutting speeds up to 20 inches per second. The desktop cutter also features a curve-smoothing function that allows precise cutting even at high speeds. The result is faster production and more professional looking graphics.

McLogan has 2 Roland technical support guys that are ready to help you to purchase a plotter or if you have questions. Contact Jett at our Chatsworth location 818-718-0888, or Danny at our Anaheim location 714-999-1194.

Wall Art Using Oracal Vinyl Decals

October 11, 2013 by Mclogan Supply Leave a Comment

Vinyl wall decals/stickers can be seen at all home good stores, found on Etsy, and are becoming a regular interior designing tool. They are easy to apply and come in matte finishes so they look like they are hand painted. They’re easy to switch out and not to mention super cute. Some vinyl decals are sold as one big vinyl sticker, while some companies sell lots of smaller stickers that can be applied in lots of different ways.

Here’s some of the decals that we have been loving lately:

We decided to add vinyl decals to our son’s nursery. We used the Oracal 631 matte series vinyl. The Oracal 631 series is a 3-year film; it removes cleanly and easily for up to 2 years after application. It’s an ideal choice for short-to medium-term indoor graphics; great for tradeshows, wall graphics, museum displays, and exhibitions. The matte surface suppresses unwanted reflections and is available in 64 colors.

We designed our son’s decals in Adobe Illustrator with eight different sized rectangles. We put the rectangles in no particular pattern, so it didn’t look too uniformed. We used 24″ material and made the design 22 1/2 inches wide, so we could cut it on the Graphtec ce-6000 24″ vinyl cutter. After we cut the vinyl we weeded the unwanted vinyl and applied R-tapes 4050rla Medium Tack application tape.

With the Oracal 631 series a medium tack application tape will make your life a little easier even though you can get away with the high tack application tape if thats what you had. Next we placed the graphic on the wall, and taped the middle of the graphic so we could pull the backing off the vinyl and place it on the wall. After you get the top half of the graphic on the wall, remove the tape in the middle and slowly lay the bottom half of the graphic on the wall. Once you squeegee the graphic with a vinyl applicator start peeling off the application tape slowly making sure the graphic is releasing form the application tape and onto the wall. We repeated this process until the accent wall was fully covered.

If you have questions about this project, products used or the technique give one of our 4 McLogan locations a call. We would be happy to help with your next project!!!