Hey guys it's Matt with Mikey Designs and I'm coming to you today with a
little bit of a video log just to kind of show you what the shop looks like now
with everything all set up in place I know there's some screen printers out
there they were interested in seeing how my home business is set up and possibly
some new clients out there might want to check out my Cole little shop I got
going on so let's let's go around and I'll show you show you what I got and
I'm all set up here we are at Mission Control this is where I do all my
artwork at and I'm a Mac based person I've tried using pcs before but it's
just not as user friendly to me as an artist so on a Mac guys my little iMac
that I've got here and cool drawing I did while I was back in college and my
degree I got from the Art Institute which is where I went to learn all my
graphic design skills and here's my Epson 1430 which is how I output my film
and here's my film down here in some ink cartridges that way I can make sure I'm
nice and stocked up so that's about it for my little office I like to use Adobe
products I've got a W little straighter and Photoshop go in there and then just
some miscellaneous programs that for music or you know rip software and
whatnot so you insist office okay welcome to Mikey designs and silk
screens this is the ran our elite press that I happen to
shop it's a ran our elite 6600 and it's about
12 years old I bought it used off of Craigslist and this is one of the
reasons I kind of got into ran our equipment so I found this little gym on
the old interwebs and it has served me quite well to grow my business and I've
had to grow everything else around it and this is kind of remained the same
and I will probably always keep this press and never get rid of it because
it's just a great press it's reliable it's built like a tank and you know that
the next step up from this is an automatic and that's something I plan to
do in the future but not just yet but getting there so this thing's got it's
all steel construction steel tubing and gotten cast aluminum heads with the XY
micro registration and I've got some pallets for it to do infant sleeves legs
koozies and hats and also I'm able to do totes and all kinds of things on this
and it's been a really great pressing you can't say enough great things about
it and moving on this is where I keep my samples which are starting overflowing
I've run out of room and I guess the next thing is maybe I could start
hanging 70 samples on the wall but I'm kind of undecided about that at the
moment because I'm not sure how long I'm gonna be working here in the garage
hopefully next year I'll get them to shop but we shall see how that goes
here's all my screens and I've got a stockpile of plenty of screens there's
some more over here that needs some cleaning and probably most of those need
some cleaning but I've got plenty of screens to take care of any job that
comes along and this is my R & R XP Oh 23:31 exposure unit it's a new addition
to the shop and it allows me to expose
automatic sized screens 23 by 31 screens and I mainly do 20 by 24 because just
manual printing that's all you really need but this thing is a really great
unit like I said it's a new addition and
it allows me to get some really great detail and expose my screens pretty
quickly and so that's it for the exposure unit this is where I keep all
my inks I've got me a five gallon bucket always keep open there because I'm
always printing wide and there's some of my colors and my emulsion and I keep all
my inks and everything over here on this side of the shop and there's some
squeegee you said some of the colors they're pretty common that I use and I
can just grab a squeegee and go every now that all I'll give them a good
cleaning and so that's where I keep all my ink supplies and and do my ink mixing
and loading up on the screens over here come from here right over here to the
press and run things up here some more screens again sitting out next to the
the washout booth and those just need some cleaning and the next thing we have
here is my our washout booth with excuse me what
it's got the backlight and my backlight is yellow it's that way I can use it to
illuminate the the shop and this is a great little washout boot allows me to
do automatic size screens one at a time and you know what can you really say
about a washout boot that you clean your screens in there and it gets pretty
messy it's actually not too bad right now because I just cleaned it up a
little bit mmm there's some my spatulas and my chemicals that I used to clean
everything out with here's some of the scrub brushes and whatnot chemicals that
I use these biodegrade it's environment-friendly chemicals and I'm
not any brand specific but it's like the stuff tips easy on me as well as the
environment this is the little Rio beam power washer like God this is my second
power washer in the past couple years and the cheapy electric units do just
swell because you don't need too much pressure to pressure wash screens and I
really like this little unit compared to the one I had before and yes it served
me well it's my little trashcan for throwing away just whatnot whatever I
need to throw away and because this is my my home I didn't have my toolbox and
a couple other things over here home-related and then this is my
stacking station over here or where I keep all my clean materials my garbage
bags and my spray tac I like to keep my
Cinderella cup handy just in case I get a little thirsty and got my screen tapes
over here some business cards I like to use what's called the green sheet here
in Houston I like to use that to drive my screens
with and you can see I've got some t-shirts down here waiting on a job
something I'll be working on today and excuse me this is where also got the
little radio sign with some tunes and my spot cleaning gun just in case there's
some pin holes in the screen that it didn't happen to see I easily removed
those and the next thing I'm gonna take you to is we're gonna come back to the
dryer but this is another new addition here which is my 18 by 20 exposure unit
and excuse me not exposure to unit but a flash security unit
it's my 18 by 20 ran our flash here and it's got the well heat control right
here on the back and I really enjoyed this new unit is I had a 16 by 16 and I
was having some trouble getting the edges of a 12 by 12 image to flash here
now I can go about as large as I really want with my 16 by 18 pallets and this
thing requires 120 volts and I've had an electrician wire me up with a outlet
that's 120 and so I've got a few outlet dedicated outlet
and I'll get back around to that but there's the /q unit pretty awesome
little unit here's my table where I keep some of my spray adhesives and tapes and
my ruler so I when I'm setting everything up I like to keep things near
buying some towels so I invite my hands and wipe off what I need to the wipe and
I set my click my t-shirts that need to be printed right here which obviously
are clean shirts so they go on from there to my pallet and then once they're
printed they go on to this awesome turbo jet star which I recently purchased and
I'm very happy with it it allows me to do water base and discharge inks as well
as plastics all mainly duplexes all printing but every now and then whenever
a client requests for a water base or discharge I now have the capability to
do that this thing has a 24 inch wide belt and about 200 plus t-shirts an hour
and you can see here it's got the controls for the jet air she even got an
exhaust which I'll eventually route up and out the house but that's us things
that will come in the future and it's got belt control heat control
and I'd like to keep this thing set about a thousand and just adjust my belt
speed here that the jet air kickin in
so we'll exhaust
so it's a pretty awesome conveyor dryer it's eight foot long as thing requires
220 volts worth the power and I had my electrician come in here and fix me up
with the the the wiring all that and that's also running on its own dedicated
output 220 volts and so here see the exit in which sometimes I might have a
little help if not I've got this catch bin down here to catch the shirts and
then I stack them once this gets full while they're hot so they don't get all
wrinkled and show you another cool feature about this turbojet star aside
from my machine gun I better watch out I got a machine gun here and pictures of
the family they come around to the other side and you can see that this thing has
some cranks to lowered the heating element up and down and this is a really
cool unit and I've got a fan right there they can blowing myself because it gets
pretty hot out here and Sugarland which is just outside of Houston Texas and if
anybody knows that lives in Houston it gets pretty hot and humid and so the
only other thing to really show you is you know how this thing kind of looks
with all my yellow safe lights essentially I close the garage door and
I turn on my lights and it lights the place up really good I'm not gonna
closely the garage door but that's how I get my shop ray to cope screens and
everything and well I think that's about it I hope you enjoy taking a look around
my shop and feel free to contact me if anybody out there needs screen printing
I'll be happy to help out and if anybody has the question out there that it's a
screen printer I'd be more than happy to the answer any of you have questions
when I get a little bit of time but anyways well that's my shop thanks for
checking it out and we'll see you next time