Screen printing
is a recreational craft for many.
Screen printing on a major commercial scale employs special equipment and precision tools. On the other end of the spectrum, it has its share of practitioners engaged in the craft as a hobby or a home-based small business. The technology in its simple version is widely used to print t-shirts, posters and novelty items. Anybody can start with the basic tools and a modest investment.
Simple Definition
The basic process of screen printing involves transferring a design, image or artwork to a screen using a stencil, a squeegee and paint or ink.
Basic Materials
Screen art is the artwork that is set up for a particular project.
Mesh is the fine fabric -- natural or synthetic fiber like silk, nylon, polyester -- through which the ink passes. The mesh is stretched over the frame, the wood or metal -- usually aluminum -- structure that holds the stretched mesh in a fixed position. The screen consists of the frame and the mesh material stretched tightly over it. The squeegee is the tool with a flat rubber blade that forces an even application of ink across the screen. The stencil is the cutout on top of the screen that allows the ink to pass through in the right places to imprint the design.
Plastisol ink is a type of ink popularly used for printing graphics on garments. Its opaque property retains the vivid color of the image for a long time. Emulsion is a liquid chemical that is sensitive to light. It is applied to the screen and dried in a dark room to block the mesh and prevent the ink from seeping through. This guarantees that only the image itself is transferred to the final print.
Printing Process
Spot color is using one color that is printed using a single run, while four-color process is the technique of overlapping the colors to print full-color images. The four colors used are cyan, magenta, yellow and black, abbreviated as CMYK.
Color separation involves printing each color on clear film. Each separation is used to transfer the image for each color to the screen.
Registration is the proper alignment of the different colors of the artwork so that the image is reproduced correctly.
On-contact printing or zero-snap-off means that the top surface of the board is perfectly aligned with the bottom surface of the stencil or screen.
Flood and stroke refers to the process of spreading ink over the screen, then forcing it through.
Burning the screen makes use of a halogen light or high-watt bulb to imprint the image to the screen.
Tags: artwork that, each color, Screen printing
