To help you understand the time and care we put into every print run we thought it would be helpful to give a basic overview of what happens every time we print an order. This will help you understand some of the terminology we use in the screen printing industry and help you understand some of the possibilities and limitations of the process. It will also give you a better understanding of the reason that the price per item is lower when you order higher quantities.

This is a description of the garment screen printing process. The process for printing paper flatstock is identical up until the actual press setup and printing.

Pre-press

Everything that happens after you give your approval on the artwork and before we can print a shirt is called “pre-press.”

The first pre-press step is to get your art files ready for color-separation and film output. Each color in your design is printed out on a clear film positive in solid black. One piece of film is needed for every color in the design. These film positives all have registration marks on them that line up with one another to assist in lining the finished screens up on the printing press.

film output

Once the films are output we check them on our light table to double check details and make sure they all line up correctly.

Screen printing is essentially a stencil printing method. The stencil is a photosensitive emulsion that is coated over a monofilament polyester fabric that is called "mesh" in the screen printing industry. This mesh is stretched extremely tight onto a metal frame. This combination of mesh and frame is what is called a "screen."

After outputting each color in the design onto separate films we coat the screens with a photosensitive liquid emulsion.

Once this emulsion has thoroughly dried in our darkroom the film positives are taped onto the screens in the same location on each screen. The screen is then laid onto a compression top light exposure unit. The compression lid presses a piece of foam down into the screen to make solid contact between the glass, film positive, and emulsion coated screen. The UV LED exposure light is then turned on for a set amount of time to expose the light sensitive emulsion. Every color in the design is put onto a separate screen in this way.

The screen is then set in our drying box to dry fully and the process is repeated for every color in your design. Once the screens are dry they are double checked on the light table to make sure all details have transferred fully. Any imperfections are touched up.

Now we are finally ready to setup the screens on the printing press. Each color in your design has it's own screen that must be taped up, setup on press, and registered to the other colors. Garments are counted in, ink colors are custom mixed, and appropriate squeegees are selected. 

As you can see there is a lot of work that goes into the process before an item is even printed. This explains why the price is less per item for larger quantities. The time it takes to make screens and setup the press to print ten items is the same amount of time to make screens and setup the press to print 100 items. If you divide that time by ten it will be more per item than dividing that same time by 100.

Each color in the design is then printed onto the garment with a polyurethane squeegee in a predetermined order that lines up to create the finished image. The garment is then removed from the printing press and placed on a conveyor that takes the garment through a heat chamber with forced air that evaporates the water from the ink and heats the ink up to the proper temperature to "cure" the ink thoroughly. The heat causes a reaction in the ink that fuses it with the fabric and makes it washfast.

The screens are then scraped of all the ink, which is returned to it's containers in the case of high solids acrylic inks, or placed in a container for proper bulk waste disposal in the case of discharge ink (we take great care to mix only the amount of discharge ink needed for the current job, but there is always a certain amount leftover that must be disposed of).

The screens and squeegees are removed from the printing press and the screen is then "reclaimed" in our washout booth. Reclaiming is the term we use for removing all the tape, cleaning out the remaining ink residue, and removing the emulsion to bring the screen back to it's original condition. The screen is then degreased to remove any oils that would interfere with the next coating of emulsion and is set in our drying box to dry completely.

Once it is fully dry it is ready to be coated with emulsion once again and used for the next print job. Exposed screens are not saved, but the film positives are filed away to be used again in the event of reorders.

Your garments are then stacked in groups of a dozen and by size and packaged for pickup, delivery, or shipment.