Adventures in Screenprinting Episode 1 : My Vacuum Table Sucks

What is a vacuum table?, you may ask - it's a table with a shop vac attached to create a light suction to hold a piece of paper secure so it's easier to screen print. That's right - I am one step closer to screen printing my own posters!

I am so excited! It's been a long held dream of mine to produce and print my own posters. However, that dream has been put on the back burner as of late (the last couple of years actually) while I have been building my design business. One of my goals for this year was to actually get started gathering supplies I needed, giving myself the education I needed and build a proper place to print. So, I spent the majority of a rainy Saturday gluing and screwing together pieces of plywood to create a wonderful vacuum table. A quick credit - the table plans are from Andy Mac a printing guru over at Gigposters.com - you have to be a premium member to access his plans, so, i'm not going to give away his secrets here - just show my progress in photos.



All my materials...ready to go. It took me a while to get to this stage. my biggest hang-up was getting all the wood cut since I don't have a table saw. Special thanks to my Step-brother Tyson for giving me a hand with that.



wow! drilling all those holes! that was the most tedious part...I thought my arm would fall off. By the way, for those of you who have these plans. I didn't laminate the Formica onto the plywood, I actually cut up an old countertop that was in my garage.



The underbelly



The hingeclamp base


i had no idea what a blind mounting screw was before this.



Boring the holes for the carriage bolts was a pain. literally - I had to boar a 1 5/8" hole though a counter top and a piece of plywood. My drill hated me so much that it spun the wood around and smacked it into my shin. ouch.





I wanted to show how the hinge clamp asssembly fit together - it actually floats so you can move it back and forth when you are registering the screen. I didn't get that from the directions.


The finished table complete with the little shop vac I bought to go with it. ($23 at walmart)The copper pipe arching over the top will be a counterbalance for the screen (so the screen doesn't smack down on your print when you lift it up - or more to the point, so you don't have to prop it up with you head)

All in - creating the table cost me aprox $79 - it would have been more except my folks covered the cost of the plywood ($30) and I was able to cut up an old countertop saving me the cost of the Formica - (could be as much as $50 for a sheet)

Next entry - ordering supplies.
Since this is the first time I will be printing my own posters with a semi-pro screen printing press, I would love it if you followed along. I hope to post my enter process from building the table to pulling the first print.

Let me know you're here by posting a comment. talk soon!