Screen Printing

Screen printing, also known as silk-screening, is commonly used to print designs on T-shirts and anywhere else where big, bold images are needed. Screen printing is a technique that utilizes a fine mesh screen that has been pulled tightly around a frame. The screen is placed over the surface to be printed, and the areas that aren't to be printed are blocked out. This way, when the ink is poured onto the screen, it only affects the appropriate areas. A squeegee is then used to push the ink through onto the printing surface, and then the image is put through a machine to dry. If the image requires multiple colors, the process is repeated for each different color used. Each time, a new section of the mesh frame is blocked off, so the colors don't run into each other. Once all of the colors have been applied and the ink has fully dried, the image is complete.One of the most important steps in screen printing is preparing the areas to be blocked out on the screen. If this is not done properly, the image won't print correctly. There are a few different ways to do this. First, a stencil of the image can be draw and placed over the screen, with the areas to be printed left open. Another way to do this is to paint a negative image directly onto the screen with a filler material that becomes impermeable once dry. Screen printing has been around for many years, and the screen printer is believed to have been invented by the Japanese. Modern-day screen printing began in the early 1900s and become popular during World War I, when it was used to manufacture flags and banners. Since then, screen printing has been widely used to create prints of artwork, and more commonly, as a way to produce images on fabrics.