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Screen printing is a wonderfully simple process. In essence, it involves using a stencil to push ink onto a surface.
Below are the core screen printing steps broken down to show how your designs are realised.
Screen printing gets its name from its main component, the screen, an aluminium frame with an ultra-fine mesh (the yellow part) stretched over it.
A screen has two sides: the side where you put the ink and the side facing whatever you are printing.
First, we must clean and degrease the screen in our washout room, this removes foreign objects like fluff and dried inks.
Once we have clean surfaces on both sides of our screen, we’ll place the screen in a drying cabinet ready for the next part of the process.
coating
We now have to turn the screen into a usable stencil. We do this by coating the mesh in a light-sensitive emulsion.
The emulsion is a very thick liquid smoothly applied to the screen using a coating trough.
As the emulsion reacts to UV light, it is then placed in a light-tight heated cabinet to dry the emulsion.
Once dry, it is time to transfer your design onto the screen.
We achieve this using a powerful UV light source and a silhouette version of your design.
POSITIVE
The blackened version of your design is printed digitally onto a transparent plastic sheet called an acetate.
This positive image on acetate will act as a barrier between the UV light source and the light-sensitive emulsion we have coated the screen with.
The targets above and below the B are Registration Marks. They show us the centre line of the design and will help when lining up the screen on the press.
EXPOSE
Now, the screen and positive will be exposed to UV light.
The emulsion that has been touched by the UV light reacts and turns solid. However, the emulsion that has been blocked from the light by the positive, won’t have reacted and remains soft.
Once the screen and design have been exposed under the UV light, we use a pressure washer to wash out the soft, unreacted emulsion.
his leaves a perfect rendering of your design on the screen where the mesh is clear and open—in other words, a stencil.
The screen goes back into the dryer again for the last time.
Now that we have a usable screen (or stencil), it’s time to start printing.
The screen is now lined up using the registration marks and locked in place on the printing press.
As the registration marks aren’t part of the design, we’ll put tape over them to act as a barrier.
Ink is applied to the inside of the screen. We’ll use a green ink for this print.
The green ink is pulled across the screen Using a rubber squeegee. It can only pass through the areas of open mesh (the yellow bits) onto the garment below.
We’ve got our design nicely onto the tee
Now that the design is on the garment, it’s time to ensure that it stays there!
The final part of the process is to pass the garment through a long tunnel dryer on a conveyor belt to cure or fix the ink.
If your design has more than one colour, separate screens must be made for each colour.
This example is in 3 colours: white, grey, and black.
Each printing screen must then be accurately aligned to each other. Each colour in your design is printed individually on a screen to build up your complete design, layer by layer.
© BROADSIDE SCREEN PRINTING 2024
