Ever wondered how T-shirt screen printing was done? Screen printing is a fascinating process that involves a lot more work. Screen shirt printing is a process that involves a lot of creativity, accuracy and proper screen printing techniques. Let's go over the process to see exactly how it is done.
Before anything else, design comes to mind first. Your t-shirt design can be anything. It can be a simple text, a full colored graphic, or combination of both. Screen printing can process any design you can think of; your imagination is your only limitation.
Once your image have been created, next we make the screens. The screens are prepared along with the image; they are to be placed on a screen printing machine. On this part an expert's help would be essential as it needs to be done correctly in order to have the design come out correctly.
After the screens are made and ready to use for printing, the screen printing machine must be set up. The machines are set up by inserting the proper color into the press heads. When setting up the colors, the lighter colors are done first, then the darkest colors. White would always be the first, with black always being the last color.
Screen Printing: The Process
Different screen printing presses have different printing capabilities. A four head press is a machine that can print four colors at once. Each individual head can carry a different color. If you have 8 colors in your design you would need to use a machine that have 8 heads or more.
The actual printing is the easiest part of the process since the machine does all of the work. The printing though is not made to be done by a single person. It is best to at least have a company to insert the t-shirts onto the machine to be printed, and another one to pull them off. This way the t-shirts can be inspected and checked for errors or printing problems.
The last part of the process to insert the screen printer shirts into a dryer. These dryers can get over two times hotter than an oven. This is necessary to quickly heat the shirt and dry the ink into the fabric.
Screen printing t-shirt is in high demand nowadays. Businesses use custom printed t-shirts for marketing purposes. Schools, sports teams, they all use screen printed uniforms.
Now that we know how screen printing works, here's an idea how we pay for our screen printed shirts. Screen printers charge per screen. This is because setting up a screen is a tedious job it requires accuracy to ensure the image comes out as desired. This is why screen printing companies require minimum order. Screen printing does not become economically viable until you produce around 20 shirts or more. In a nutshell, more screens make the cost go up, and more t-shirts bring the average cost down.
