Art of Screen Printing

Screen printing on shirts has been one of the best advertisement that you can do, specially for your consumers that really like to show off that fact that they are associated with you in some way or form. There are many ways to decorate a garment; embroidery (stitching), Airbrushing (hand painted), embellishments "(beads/applique) but the most popular and less expensive is screen printing.

What is screen printing? A planographic process in which the design is transferred onto a screen of fine mesh fabric with materials that can either resist or absorb ink. Garment is placed under the prepared screen, to which inks are applied. Using a flexible blade or squeegee, the printer pushes the ink through onto the garment.

But how is it done?
1. It all starts with the designer; he/she create the logo or design to be used on the shirt on the computer using the industry standard for graphics program (adobe Illustrator) and preparing the artwork in a vector format environment for spot print or bitmap for process print.

2. Once the design is complete and approved individual clear plastic films are printed in black ink. 1 film per each color of the design. for example, if your design is GD in red and Solutions in white you will have 2 films. One will contain the letters GD the other will contain the words Solutions in the locations where once put together will create the illusion that they are next to each other GD Solutions. The films are printing with black in only.

3. Using frames that have a screen stretched on like, similar to your screen door in your house but mutch finer gets a coat of a liquid mask substance that once dry will act a mask for the design. the Film created in stage 2 is then placed backwards on the screen then placed in a vacuum glass table to hold it in place. Special lights are then shined only the screen and film, within in minutes parts of the mask solution that is not oven by the film (design in black) are burned (cooked and made solid and strong) and parts that are behind the design from the film stay fresh and soft. The screen is then taken to washing unit where the soft un-coked design on the screen gets washed away leaving being an open field with in the mask in the shape of your design. That whole is where the ink will be pressed through.

4. The screens with the burned design get placed on a rotating machine (manual or automatic). A test paper is placed on a fixed base (where the shirt get's put on) and the screens are aligned to each other according to the design to assure correct alignment and location. After all is set, the shirts are slipped on one at a time over the fixed base, the screened are lowered one at a time, the ink is pressed through using a queegee type tool, the screen is lifted and the ink stays on the shirts in the shape of your screened mask. the process is repeated for the next color until the design is completed. The shirts are then dried using a special like oven.

The proceed gets repeated if you have different locations on the shirt (Front, back, side, sleeve and so on) the but once set up you can print hundreds of shirts with precision fast.

If you need printing services please contact us at ernie@graphicdesign-s.com and don't forget to visit our website still in development.