Build your homemade exposure unit for less than 50 Euros

Post by Ronny Garcia

Oct 18 2021

Today I'm going to tell you how to build your own homemade exposure unit for less than 50€. And when I say homemade, I don't mean cheap; with this exposure unit, you can do very precise work. In the workshop, we've even made photographs to print with one-color ink on white t-shirts.

In our online store we have a professional LED light screen printing exposure unit if you want to see it.

We will only need 3 things. Yes, 3 things. And none of those 3 things are nails or hammers, you don't need to be MacGyver to assemble this exposure unit, really. We are going to keep things simple but well done, you can do it in your room without complications.

1- We will need a 0.4 cm thick glass and the size you prefer. I recommend it to be slightly larger than the size of screen printing screens you usually use. If you usually use 40x50 screens then I recommend using a 50x60cm glass. The glass will serve as a base where we will place the screen. You can buy it in specialized glass shops, where they make windows.
Average price: €20-30

2- Two wooden trestles. Average price: €4 each at Leroy Merlin.

3- 500 watt halogen light bulb, it can also be a 400w one. You can find some in hardware stores for less than €15, if you prefer you can click on the following Amazon product to see more details:

And that's it, nothing else is needed. With these materials you can assemble your homemade exposure unit.

The trestles serve to hold the glass, like a table. On the floor we place the halogen lamp, there will be approximately 50cm between the light source and the glass.

Voila! You have your exposure unit assembled, no boxes or weird experiments.
With this system you can expose your emulsified screens with Aquasol Murakami Emulsion in 8 minutes.

To create the vacuum that professional exposure units make, we will use some weight, a book or heavy wood, which will press on the screen, this will make the photolith between the glass and the screen printing screen stick more to the glass and not cause shadows.

In the following photo you can see point by point. The horizontal white line represents the photolith. The screen goes on top of the photolith, with the inner part facing up and the front part in contact with the photolith and the glass.