I got this idea from a post I read sometime in the past, a gal used corrugated plastic signboard for her platens. Sometimes when you have more ideas than money, as we often do around here, you use what you have. I had a few pieces of heavy cardboard that I use as backing on my easel when airbrushing, it’s the same double ply cardboard that our YUDUs came packed in. I needed several platens for an upcoming project and I been house bound for the last 10 days with the swine flu, so I decided to use the cardboard. We used it to print on some cardstock and it worked nicely. I don’t expect these to last forever but they work in a pinch.
As you can see in the 1st pic below I traced an outline of the YUDU platen, but so far I have only cut it to length. I cut the holes a bit smaller and pushed them down the platen pegs so as to make tight fit. Also you need to notch the top where the screen holder/frame hinges are.

The 2nd pic shows how we printed card stock. Rather than use adhesive on cardboard (my guess is that some of the cardboard would come up with the card stock or some of the cardstock would stay stuck to the cardboard), I used blue painters tape to line up the stock where it needed to be and taped the corners down.

The 3rd pic shows a piece of light weight duck that I will be printing on soonish.

Cya, Al

When changing either tees, cards and paper my biggest fear was the squeegee sliding off the screen when lifting the screen frame. I found that placing the squeegee off to the side on an old plate was a waste of movement and ink. So I thought the pros have a squeegee rest right on their machine, why can’t we have the same thing.
I found a piece of 1” X 1” aluminum angle and taped it to the back as you can see in the pics below. I could have used 2 sided tape but I felt that masking tape would add friction and help hold the squeegee in place.
The last pic shows that you can open the screen frame almost all the way and the squeegee stays put.

Cya, Al