How to Burn your Image to a Screen for Printing

'Burning' your image to a screen is a pretty simple and a fairly quick process. 

First off you will need your freshly coated screen (dried of coarse), your stencils, a piece of glass and some lights (unless you have access to an exposure unit). Place your stencils on the side of the screen with the stencil, so the side you don't put the ink onto, and make sure you put your stencils on the screen the way you want them to print. 

If you are putting text onto a screen make sure you place it on the screen backwards, that way when you turn the screen over to print it will read the right way.

Once you have placed the stencils on the screen make sure to place the glass on top of your stencils and your ready to go. If you are using an exposure unit then the order is reversed a bit, you would put the stencils onto the glass bed and then place your screen (flat side down) on top of the stencils (if you are using an exposure unit and you have text you can put it on the glass the right way round)

I expose my screens using two halogen lights and I normally set the exposure time to about 4 minutes. The exposure time will depend on the wattage of your lights so you may need to experiment a bit to find the right exposure time for you.

Sometimes you will be able to see your image after the exposure is over (picture below) but it may not always be visible.

After you have exposed the screen you then need to wash the unexposed stencil off. You need to wash both sides and using your hand (or a sponge if you don't want to get your hand dirty) rub the stencil away. You will know of the stencil is coming away as your hand/sponge will turn green/yellow.

Keep washing until the stencil has been removed (hold it up to the light and if you can see through the image then its clean or keep washing until the screen stops feeling slimy). Once it's all gone you just need to leave your screen to dry and then your are ready to start printing.