What is Screen Printing?
In the simplest terms, screen printing is a form of stencil making. We squeegee a pigmented ink through the stencil (called a silkscreen) to produce an image on fabric. We can combine several of these silk screens to produce multicolored images. The best screen prints come from high contrast artwork with solid colors and clearly defined borders. Low contrast images with soft undefined edges, blurring and blended colors do not print well
Artwork & Shirt Design
The first step in the screen printing process is the artwork. If you already have artwork that’s great! If you don’t have any artwork, we have a graphic designer that can help you make your vision into a reality. In both of these cases customers may have to pay an art fee which varies based on your artwork needs.
If you will be supplying your own artwork we require files in vector ai, eps or pdf. No embedded jpegs, images, or screenshots. Vectors only. Use spot colors if possible. If your artwork does not match this criteria, there will be an art fee applied to your order as our graphic designer will need to ensure your design is compatible.
The other important factor when in the artwork stage is how many colors your artwork is. The more different colors your artwork is the higher the cost will be per shirt in your order and the higher the artwork fee could be.
Film Creation
The next step in the process is to turn your artwork into films. The films are part of how we turn the artwork into screens. We print the artwork out onto a transparent film paper (see example below) and use this to burn the artwork onto the screen.
Screen Burning
After the films are created, each film then becomes a screen! This involves burning each image into a screen. Like films, only one screen can be created per color in your design. There is a $25 fee associated with burning screens. This is a one time cost and if you want shirts printed with the same artwork in the future you will not have to pay it again. For example, if you have a two color shirt, two films will be printed, and two screens burned. A total screen fee of $50 will be added to your order. If you decide to re-order the same design at a later date, there will be no screen fee applied to your order since you already paid for the screens during your first order.
Once the image from the film is burned into the screen, and the screens are cured, they are ready to be set up and for your shirts to be printed!
Machine Set-Up
Once each of your screens have cured, they are ready to be set up on the machine. This involves lining up every color of your design in the right location so that the artwork prints correctly onto the shirt. Once the screens are lined up we’ll add ink and paddles to the machine. The paddles drag the ink across the screen transferring each color onto the shirt, one at a time. When all of this is finished, we run a test shirt (FREE of charge) through each of the screens to ensure your design prints correctly.
Printing & Drying
Once all of these steps have been completed, your shirts are ready to be printed. Each shirt is printed and then sent through a dryer to dry and cure the ink. When they reach the end of the dryer the final quality control check is completed. Once all shirts have passed their quality control check, they are boxed up and ready to be delivered to you.