Screen Printing

Screen printing is less expensive than embroidery and more effective for heavier branding. It is ideally suited for covering a large area on a garment and creating a striking image or logo. Upto 4 colours (more colours are available, please contact us for details) can be incorporated into a print design although, for the cheapest and easiest result, a one colour print is preferable. A dark colour onto a pale fabric will always produce the best result. A white print onto a dark fabric will always produce the least stable result, with a higher chance of the print washing off over time.

The latest ink technology is used in all of our screen printing, and whilst a print is theoretically permanent, in reality, it will slowly fade with each wash. Screen printing should not be confused with heat transfer printing, which does not look as good as screen printed garment, nor does it last so well. Many t-shirt printing shops use this cheaper method rather than screen printing. Never iron over a screen print, always iron on reverse of garment. Duo Creations Ltd cannot be held responsible for a screen print fading over time.

The Process - Screens are made by putting a chemical emulsion on a mesh surface. Vector artwork is taken from Adobe Illustrator or Freehand and printed onto a film type paper or vellum. The screen is then exposed on a light-table with the artwork under it. The light solidifies the chemicals around the design, and where the light failed to pass through, the chemical breaks down. The screen is then rinsed out and what is left is the area where the light hit.

The shirt is placed on a platen and each screen swings around over the top of the shirt. The screen is then brought down and placed on top of the shirt. A squeegee is then pulled over that screen’s ink colour, which pushes the ink onto the shirt fabric. That screen is then lifted, carefully off of the shirt (if the shirt moves or is stretched, the next colour will be out of registration). The platen with the shirt on is moved under a flash unit, where it dries. Upon curing, the shirt platen is brought back and the next colour screen is swung over the top of it.

When screen printing, one colour at a time is applied and therefore the cost will increase with each additional colour applied. Likewise, a separate screen is required for each colour, and hence, screen charges may be uneconomical if only a small quantity of clothing is required.

PROS – affordable, great for large designs

CONS – not economical for small orders requiring more than one colour design.

Pricing - When you place an order for screen printed clothing, there are two charges:

Set-Up - The first is a set-up charge which covers the cost of having the design made into a screen. This charge is a ‘one off’ cost, as the screen is stored for future use. Therefore, if you wanted to place another order in the future with the same design, there would be no set-up charge.

Screen print set-up is charged at £15.00 per screen (ex VAT). One screen is required for each different design and different screens are required for each colour printed, and each different location of printing. For example, a one colour front and back print requires two screens if the design or size on the front is different to the design on the back.

Per Screen/Per Colour - The second charge is a ‘per screen’ charge which applies to each item that is customised. This charge basically covers the cost of labour, materials and our other manufacturing overheads. The per screen charge is directly based on the number of items to be printed with the same design and applies to each screen.

Design Guidelines - Art design for screen printing is very difficult from any other type of design. This is due in large part to the inherent limitations of the screen printing process. In addition, the size of the designs necessitates the use of vector art as opposed to pixel based art. Blowing up art to fit on the full back of a t-shirt, or similar garment (13.5” x 18”) requires crisp and exact lines.

General Rules for Submission – The general rules for submitting artwork are as follows:

File Programs and Format - Designs for clothing require the vector art format due to the necessity to blow up and resize artwork. Since there are a variety of vector art programs, we have chosen the industry standard; Adobe illustrator. If we had to get every vector are program and convert different versions of each file sent, we would have more trouble opening files than we do already. We prefer the files to be sent in .eps format (.pdf is also okay).

Recommended No Greater Than 4 Colours - It is important to understand the actual process of screen printing to understand why multiple colours’ cause problems. Each colour requires a separate screen to be created that corresponds to that colour. Then each screen must be perfectly registered over the other so that no overprinting of colours occurs. The more colours you print, the more likely you are to have a registration problem. If the colours overprint, or the fabric moves or stretches, the shirt is then unsuitable for sale.

The thinnest lines cannot be less than 0.25 point – Screens are made by putting a chemical emulsion on a mesh surface. Since the screen mesh is of a certain finite size, only lines over a certain line size can actually hold the emulsion. So you are limited to about a 0.25 point line for screen printing.

Gradients – It is extremely difficult to accurately produce gradients when screen printing. This is because of the way they are produced. If you want to have the background of your design to go from navy blue to aqua blue by gradient, the only way to print it would be to use half tones. What this means is that the screen would be outputted from the computer with dots, which would increase in size as you went from one colour to the other. The navy blue would fade when printed because the dots would get bigger thus printing less of that colour. Then the Aqua screen would be just the reverse. Gradients are difficult to print. The printer can spend days with the artwork, testing garments and inks before producing a good product.

Text Converted To Outlines – Because there are thousands of fonts, and we could not have all of them installed onto our computer, it is necessary for all text to be converted to outlines. This will allow us to view your files as they were designed, instead of having our program convert your font to one that is installed. If you don’t know how to convert text to outlines, please make sure that you e-mail a copy of the font you have used. In Windows, you can ‘copy and paste’ the font you used from the ‘fonts’ folder found in the control panel.