Screen Printing...What the heck is it?

Screen Printing...What the heck is it?

Screen Printing, also known as silkscreen printing or seriography, is a centuries old art form in which ink is forced through the tiny gaps of a woven mesh. It's an economical way to mass produce a design and is considered one of the most versatile printing methods. It’s used to print everything from the humble t-shirt to the complicated circuit boards in your computer.

In this lesson, we'll take a quick look at the basic steps in the modern screen printing process.

First, artwork is created on the computer.

After the art is created, it is “separated” into the various colors needed to reproduce it with ink.

There are 3 main forms of Color Separation

• 1. Spot Colors
  • These are solid colors like the black and yellow in the smiley.
• 2. Process Color (aka CMYK and 4-Color Process)
  • Tiny dots of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black blend to create the illusion of more colors. Look closely at magazines and comics for examples of CMYK.
  • Process can reproduce full color photos with only 4 colors, but it only works well when printed on white materials.
• 3. Simulated Process Color
  • Sim-Process is like traditional Process, but it isn’t limited to CMYK. It uses whatever colors are necessary to create the image.
  • It works on dark colored materials with the help of an Underbase.

An Underbase is a layer of white ink that goes down first to help prevent the material color from showing through the other ink. They’re often needed when printing dark shirts and count as an extra design color.

Once the artwork is separated, each color is printed in black on a film called a “positive”.

Positives are kind of like negatives in photography, except they’re positive...

Each positive is then attached to a specially coated mesh screen, and the pair are exposed to a strong UV light for several minutes.

The light hardens the screen’s UV-reactive coating.

The dark areas of the positive block the light and prevent those parts of the coating from hardening.

This process is commonly referred to as "burning the screen".

The exposed screens are blasted with water, which washes out the areas blocked by the positive.

The final result is a stencil that lets ink pass through the design areas and blocks ink everywhere else.

Screens are mounted & carefully aligned on a special printing press

Ink is forced through the screen with a squeegee

The inks used vary depending on the job.

T-shirts and other textiles usually get a rubbery, heat-set ink called plastisol.

Everything else usually gets water-based or solvent-based inks that are essentially high quality versions of common paints such as acryllic, enamel, etc.

Printed shirts are heated to 320degrees F to cure the ink.

Posters and similar items are hung up to air dry.

And then you have a finished shirt!

Presentation by Crazed Lemming Productions ( CrazedLemming.com )

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