I'll play as well. Have been using photoshop since before I can remember and "seps" came naturally for the most part, though I still think I suck at the simproc type stuff.
First setup (apartment bedroom and bathroom)
-Free one color blue magnet press (I think these were originally from Ryonet, though I got mine from a buddy)
-Wood frames with who knows what mesh
-speedball emulsion and inks
-Work light attached above the toilet in my bathroom
-piece of glass from a poster frame to hold my kinkos copier films down
-cured with a hair dryer and hand iron
-washout in the shower
Second Setup (moved in with 2 friends and got a 4 bedroom house so the master bed and bath could be dedicated to screen printing and used as an office)
-DIY 4 color one station press made with hinge clamps, industrial lazy susan, and wood. Worked pretty well actually.
-heat gun to flash dry
-cured on an old 9x12 geoknight hobbiest heat press i got at a garage sale for $5
-DIY 12 bulb exposure unit with unfiltered black light bulbs
-foam compression lid with weights as hold down
-washout in the shower, but added a hose attachment to the shower nozzle
-picked up some HP printer off craigslist free section for films, which sucked but was usable
Third Setup (finally moved to a place with a 2 car garage and fleshed out the setup)
-bought a 6 color 2 station silver press with micros
-picked up a pair of coil flash dryers on craigslist for $50 bucks each, dedicated one to flashing on press and one as a curing station with a little rotating table thing
-built a washout sink out of a shower stall that was on clearance (still use it today as my "dirty" sink)
-started using a pressure washer for exposure and reclaim (AMAZING!)
-finally got a gram scale and started trying to mix colors and do some discharge and waterbased printing as well
-still using flo tube expo, but made it larger so I could do up to 25x36 screens
-bought an epson 1400 for films
-DIY Vacuum platen for poster and transfer printing
-got about 2/3s of the way toward building my own conveyor dryer on the cheap before scrapping the idea due to safety concerns
Fourth setup (moved into an industrial space) - I'll kind of go chronologically here as changes have happened more frequently and I have upgraded and expanded a lot
-same equipment as setup 3 at the beginning, only moved from 400 sqft to about 560 sqft
-added a diy screen rack
-built a huge humidity controlled drying cabinet for screens that also acted as coating station and misc surface area
-got a smoking deal on a 10" x 36" National conveyor dryer
-got another smoking deal on a 16x20 geo knight heat press
-built my own 18x24 infrared flash dryer using a custom built intek panel, sold the coil dryers
-bought a dip tank (AMAZING!)
-Built a much larger vacuum table for doing larger posters and transfer sheets out of an old drafting table
-picked up an ancient Cameo 24 flatstock press for $100 bucks which never really worked right for transfer printing and had wonky print dimensions (sold it about 3 months later for a huge profit to a letterpress guy that is still using it for one color white prints on invitations and the like)
-EXPANSION! tore down a wall and expanded from 560 sqft to 900 sqft or so. (This is also where I went from fulltime job with printing on the side to full time printing)
-bought an old Nation hat press and Geoknight label press
-built a post exposure dunk tank out of shower liner boards and treated plywood.
-built my first true exposure unit with a 1k MH from Homer (Thanks again!) and a a smoking deal on a Gast air pump from craigslist for the vacuum lid ($400 bucks all in after testing out a few different blanket materials)
-Bought my Kruzer and sold the silver press
-EXPANSION#2 tore down another wall, then rebuilt it with a door where I wanted, then built a screen room within that new room, went from 900ish sqft to 1250ish sqft
-built 2 more screen racks
-built my screen drying rack based on something I saw here
-built a much larger washout sink out of a free fiberglass tub and shower liner, now my "clean" sink and big enough for printing flags
-picked up an enormous vacuum frame from a sign company for $200 bucks so I can properly expose the flag frames
-picked up a DIY triloc style platen from Alan
-built my own FPU to match
-Added some slat wall to show off designs and make the space a little more customer friendly in the front
-bought a WF1100 for inkjet transfers
-bought a vinyl cutter for cut vinyl etc
-sold the National Hat press and picked up an old Geoknight instead (so much better)
COMING SOON:
-about to get a 6k exposure light
-about to upgrade to a much larger vinyl cutter (everyone said I would want bigger and better right away and they were right! I spent basically nothing on the first one though just to test the waters)
-looking into a few other things like a printer capable of at least 17" wide, hopefully even wider
EDIT:
All of this has happened over about 8 or so years, maybe longer now, but between setup 2 and 3 there was about a 4 year time where I was rarely printing and the setup just kind of sat idle in whatever place I was living. All of the 3rd and 4th setup has been in the last 3 years or so. The first expansion where I also quit my job to try this out full time was about a year and a half ago. I really wish sometimes that I had kept working a little longer to save up more for an auto, but I was seriously burning out on how much printing I was doing and having the full time job which included lots of travel. Also was about to have my first kid and needed to gain a lot of freedom of schedule. It has worked out for the most part, though far from ideal in many ways (who knew how expensive kids were, right?
). I think having an auto would solve lots of issues, but it just isn't in the cards any time soon. I'm starting to outsource more stuff and focus on smaller jobs in house in an effort to free up time to expand client base etc. We'll see how it goes!
