Screen printing is the process of transferring colors onto a material. The ink is pushed through a mesh or through a stencil to print a design on a material desired, done by cut-outs or impermeable material. The liquid colors transfer to the desired areas of the material. The screen printing technique uses one color at a time, and each color has its separate screens.

The screen printing has evolved over a long time of history, but the techniques of screen printing remained the same. Screen printing is not only used for printing clothes, today you can print large posters and other forms of artworks using screen printing. The evolution is on, and the screen printing advancement is felt in the industry day in and day out.

Improved graphics and materials

First, you need to create artwork, since screen printing requires that we place colors on a layer after another, designers need to work with programs that allow them to separate vector graphics like Corel Draw, illustrator and sometimes Photoshop. We should save our artwork in vector graphics instead of pixels. Vectors are easy to manipulate without downsizing the quality of graphics. They are mathematical calculations that create lines and figures on the monitors. You can minimize or maximize the image without losing its quality, unlike in pixelated graphics where quality is compromised when the graphics are enlarged. The final formats compatible with screen printing techniques are JPEG, PSD, TIFF, PNG, and BMP. The quality of files should be 300 dpi for guaranteed quality.

Automatic screen printing

The automatic screen printing is almost similar to the manual screen printing, but the only difference is the human factor in the manual. As for the manual screen printing, the process is performed by one or two people, one holding the screen printing frame in place while the other one uses a squeegee to push the ink through the cut-out parts or the impermeable material. The advantages of manual screen printing over the automatic screen printing are the fact that the quality of garments is not affected. In as much as many are fans of automatic screen printing, some lots prefer manual presses. The benefits of automatic screen printing, though they are loud enough and improve the economies of scale in production. The fact that automatic screen printing significantly cuts down the cost of production time still enjoys the following;

–          Larger screens hence more design space

–          They have drying systems

–          Rotary screens for large scale production.

Print supplies

This depends much on the method employed in screen printing. The most common suppliers needed across include;

–          Screens and frames

–          Photo emulsion and sensitizers

–          A pitch-black room

–          Garments to print on

–          Squeegee

–          Silkscreen fabric ink

–          Small piece of cardboard to fit into the garment