An Introduction into Screen Printing

1. Introduction: Hey, is Chessie from Squeegee & Ink. And in this mini-course, which is an introduction into screen printing, we're going to cover the following subjects. The first one is going to be about preparation. Then we're going to talk about coating your screen and the exposure. Then we're going to look at screen printing technique. And finally, I'm going to run you through clean up and reclamation of your screens. So we get asked a lot about what screen printing is and it might be more useful to understand what it is used for. So most commonly, we use it to print T-Shirts, but it's also really common to use it for printing posters, limited edition artworks, all the way through to signage and printing, onto metals and plastics. It's essentially a stencil technique, whether it's open mesh. Next, the closed mesh, I'm going to show you how to make your screens. 2. Artwork Preparation: So before you start printing and breaking down our artwork, we need to make sure that your design is screen principle. So on the computer, I'm going to show you five common artwork types and how I'd approach them and break those down. We've created this template for you guys so you can distinguish the different artwork types and maybe understand how we'd print those different artworks. So let me go on to the most simple one, which is this single color image example. So I'll just zoom in here. So for a single color print, you actually only need one screen. And the open areas of mesh are going to be this black area. And it's the most simple way of printing because he didn't have all that kind of registering and lining up all the different colors on top of each other perfectly to build up that image. And for simple design like this. So I'm saying not crazy fine detail. You probably just use a screen with a faulty 3D mesh, which is a 110 in the US. And then if you're printing on paper, you'd want to bump that up to a 90 t mesh screen because that will deposit a thinner layer of ink on that paper. So in the US and 1918 mesh is 230. The difficulty level is definitely low on this one. You can really just smashed loads out and get print extra away. You don't need any particular heavy duty equipment or kit. And this is the entry and because it's the lowest cost to get started. Let's move on to this single color halftone, this one here. So for photographic images, we tend to use a technique called half toning. So halftone is where you expose lots of tiny dots and the concentration of those tiny dots makes the image appear darker. And then when they're more dispersed, you can get those lighter tones. For example, in this image, it would be the central lines. They would have a spouse concentration of dots. And then you'll get darker and darker as they get closer together to give you these black areas. Again, you can just do this kind of black and white image with one screen, but you'd have to bump up the mesh count slightly to be able to take those really small dots. And that would be counted as fine detail screen printing. So if it was onto fabric, you'd go to a 60 mesh. And if it was onto paper, you could stick around 1980 again. And it was that kind of mesh will be able to hold those fine details. I also have a download for determining how fine your halftone should be according to the mesh type that you're printing with. Again, the difficulty level is actually quite low. It's still single color screen printing. You just have to maybe concentrated over more on your angles when you're printing to deposit a thinner layer of ink. You don't need any more heavy duty kit, same with a single color printing. And he's still go low cost entry in there. Because again, it's, it might be hinge clamps if your screen printing with onto paper and things. Let's go on to this next one. So this is an incredibly common type of artwork that we might be able to get in screen printing. And it's using spot colors. So this one is a vector image and it's got maybe four or five, maybe even six different spot colors in there. And we might even get from a customer that the Pantone reference for each of those colors to mix up. But again, they're just printing next to each other the spot colors to build up the artwork. The amount of screens needed for that is determined by how many colors are in the image. Because with print the red and then yellow, and then we'll finish it off with the black probably for this type of design. The mesh count for T-Shirt Printing, for this kind of artwork is very likely to be 43 T again, unless you're doing some areas of fine detail where you might want to bump that up and the difficulty level which would increase. So it would be probably into the medium difficulty level just to take count for lining up those layers and getting them spot on when you're registering. Heavy GTK is optional because it will definitely make your life easier. If you had something to hold those screens in place as you're printing and building up the artwork. For T-Shirt Printing, that would mean that you'd need a carousel because you have delay. You have to hold this shutdown as you're building up the whole design. And you need the screens held in place for every color that you're laying down? Again, the screen quantity is reliant on how complex the artwork, Yes. The next image is something like a photo-realistic image on a white background. So if I bring this IRA, when we're trying to recreate something like this, we would use the CMYK method. So that's essentially breaking the image down into four colors that interact with each other to build up the whole image. So we would print cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. And black is represented by this k in printing. So we'd actually doing any pool screens to be able to recreate very detailed and colorful outward like that one. The mesh count is going to be higher because there's fine detailed adults that are going to sit next to each other and build up that artwork. The difficulty level was probably a medium because essentially you and you need to know how to register your prints nicely and just follow on from the basic print methods from before. Heavy duty kit. So if you're printing an image like this onto paper, you could fundamentally dealt with hinge bumps, which wouldn't actually involves a huge cost. However, if you're going onto T-Shirt Printing, You need to constrain your screens on a carousel. So you need to have them held in place on the carousel as you build up those in those artworks and complexity of that designed. So you guys have really magical process and it's really incredibly fun today. The next design that we're looking at is simulated process. So this is most commonly used in the t-shirt industry and is definitely on the highest level of difficulty, mainly due to breaking down that image into the layers requirements. With simulated process, the mesh count is definitely going to be higher because you're dealing with lots of fine details and dots merging together to build up that artwork. And you will need some heavy duty kit, especially if you're printing t-shirts, because you'll need a carousel that can help lots of screens in and build up that artwork through printing all these different blends and colors and halftones on top of each other. So now we've understood the different types of artwork that you might be using. Now we can discuss the quality of the images and I want to tell you about the difference between vector and raster artwork. At the bottom of the cheat sheet with giving you two examples of artwork that we actually printed ourselves, bras to version, and there's a vector version. So I just want to zoom in and show you the difference between them. Because at this kind of scale, you think they might be very similar to print with default zoom right in. You can see that the artwork is made up of these little squares. So everybody can determine that they are pixels. And it's those, the concentration of pixels and the darkness of those pixels which build up the artwork. However, if you were to look at a vector version, so this is an effective version of the same kind of all. Let me zoom right in. There aren't any pixels to be found and it lines a super sharp that actually does translate when you start screen printing. And the sharp players can be transferred onto your, onto your t-shirts or your paper. And they can just come up that much crisper and then much easier to work for them in terms of changing the color of these designs. So if I can show you side-by-side, it's very apparent that the roster image, which needs some work on it, and the vector images pretty much ready to go to print with to get these nice sharp areas. And it's even an obit roughened up with these contours on the lines so it doesn't look too sterile and clean. So we often actually vectorized the roster images to make them into these nice clean examples for when we stop printing. One use for roster images might be CMYK printing, where you do actually need to break that design up into the four layers to build up again in terms of pixels and dots next to each other. However, I'm always going to choose the vector of age for printing designs and artwork like this. In order to expose her screens who can donate your artwork printed onto a transparent film just like this. So physical important stuff is really an awesome pure black. And I'm going to show you how to achieve that on the computer. Have a look at my one. So this is the artworks I'm going to choose to print it today. So I'm just going to quickly show you how I prepare that for printing the film was tips. So again, to take it out onto its own artboard. So I'm going to copy it and click on its own unique outboard by pasting it in there. And there's a couple of things that I wanted to check. So I want to print it at 22 centimeters wide. At the moment, it's 19, 3 up here. So I'm going to say to 200 millimeters, which is 22 centimeters. Just to scale it, just to make sure that so perfect. And then I want to check that the black in here is pure. If it, if the RIP software that I'm using notices any grays is going to want to have turn up for me. So to go around that I can select an area of black. And then I can just, maybe I'll select same fill color and stroke just to select as much of that design as possible. And then I'm going to double-check it by clicking this fill and making sure that all these arrows and not like out here in the grace where we would have time to all the way down into a Foner. Instead it reads all the zeros and I press Okay. And now the RIP software is just going to print out as pure of luck. I also wanted just to try a little left chest version of my design. So I'm going to copy it over and make ten centimeter version as well, which I think would be quite cute. Just going to make sure the outboard use the right size and I get a sprint. And that's going to rip, rip the image with accurate. So let me show you how accurate. This is the RIP software and that was the design just going through the breadth. And that's going to send it straight to print. And we can check out what that light now. We now going to show you how to code and expose those screenings. 3. Coating and Screen Exposure: This part of the video is about screen catering and exposure. But I'm outside at the moment because I wanted to show you a really important step before you kill your screens, which is decreasing them. And that basically means getting any dust, lint or grease off your mesh so that your motion will coat really, really nicely. So I'm just going to show you how I do that. So it's decrease that screen. I'm going to use the screen decrease or by froma. I'm going to wet the mesh, give it a couple of sprays and scrub it with the designated soft brush. Like this. I'm going to get it ready for me and I'm going to rinse both sides and Albia. These are really old. So now my screen is completely dry. After decreasing it, I'm ready to start coding. So I might dark room, and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's in pitch black. It just means that my boat has a UV blocker on it so that it's not emitting lights, blocking out light, UV light, which would expose our screens prematurely. I've also got my silicone spatula, which I use for everything, which is perfect for this. And I've got the PR angle, emulsion cater, which already has its ends like stuck in place. And it's the perfect size for these screens that I'm about to show you. I have my screen propped up against the wall. And we're going to be doing this flat side first. So that's the side that's facing me. So I'm already to go. Oh, you might want rack or some blue roved handy just in case you have a little spill that you want to quickly clean up. I just wanted to mention something else about our setup. So we've got this cool table that we made and we put a wrapper on the top so it doesn't slip when we put our screen that. And we've also screwed in some little batons of different angles. When I put my screen now, I can push it up against the wall and code that other people also put the buttons against the wall, which is perfectly fine. Again, to use the ossicles that one joke your motion for this video. However, we often suggest the screen. So key TM ocean, which is really great general-purpose emotion. And it's slightly cheaper. In order to create that screen with emulsion nice and evenly, we're going to use this scoop coater. This is the polar angle and it's great. It's ends or the kind of attached. And it's got a sharp edge. And the more curved edge per laying down we're motion. We're going to use this straight edge and we're going to fill it up just over halfway. As I'm going to coat the flat side of the screen fast facing towards me and I've got it fairly up against the wall. I've also got my scoop coater ready to go. So I'm going to pull my motion now. I've waited for the emotion to level out in the cota. So it's nice and even I'm going to hold it up against the mesh and I'm going to tip it quite a lot until that tide line of emotion hits the mash all the way across. And then with fun and pressure, I'm going to pull all the way up. And then at the top I'm going to stop and that the emotion fall back in the trailer bit, push in and then lift straight back. The great thing about this character is it, if there were any beading along the edges, it would skip out for us. So that's nice and shiny and it's ready to do the other side. And again, I can put my screen up, which my emotion to be leveled in that trough. And then this time I'm going to push it in quite quickly and then wait for that tied to hit the mesh all the way across. And then just let their emotion fall back, push straight back, Anish, be a really nice coat. While we're still in the talk kimono, get that motion back in the post quick as possible using my silicon spatula. So I can just pull and scrape out as much as possible. I'm going to clean that off straight away with some water and dysfunction. To dry the screen, we put them in Iraq and we lay them flat side down. So the emulsion poles to that side of the screen is important that this room is quite cleans. There isn't a dust flicking up into the emulsion. So I can just stay there until it's touched dry. Once our screen is completely dry and we're ready to welcome to the mesh. We're using a metal halide exposure unit, which we have in our studio. This is quite an extreme version of exposure units that you can get much smaller ones on the market. The most important thing to think about is we're exposing the mesh and the emulsion to rich UV light source to harden it. I've got my film positive reading from Elliot, and I think I'm going to print this in a central location on my T-Shirt. So if I pop that unlike loss is a positive so I don't need to flip it or anything like that. I can lay my screen on top where I think it's going to print nicely. And then I'll go back you blanket. So this is little y that helps the back came suck out the air so that there's really close contact between my film, my gauze, and then there's no undercutting of that light. So my exposure in excess can be really crisp. So I'm gonna pull this down, put the vacuum on, and then I'm ready to exercise. I didn't tell you our exposure times on paths because you're also going to be different. The way you are going to work is you could use it exposure calculator. And they'll help you figure out how long to spatial screen for. And it's going to be variable on the emotion, distance and lots of different things to really quick, easy things to look out for. If you're watching your screen now and it's quite slimy, or the motion just falls off. You haven't let UV hard and the emotion long enough so you need to up your exposure time. On the other hand, if, if you can't wash out your emotion, it might be that you've exposed your screen for too long or the light has gone through your film positives and it's exposed the emulsion too quickly. So in that case, you would reduce your exposure time. To start washing out my screen. I'm going to lightly wash it on either side. And I've let that screen soak for about 30 seconds. I'm going to wash it out more thoroughly. Now. I'm going to do on the flat side of the screen where it's strongest. So that stencil can really take this pressure coming rinsing out. It should just fall out quite easily without too much stress. I can tell that it was a good exposure because the emotion isn't slimy and it rinsed out really nicely without too much forced having to be applied to that. So just these to dry and then we're ready to print. 4. Screen Printing Technique: In this part of the video, we're actually going to start screen printing. I'm going to show you all about print technique. Squeegee is how to set up your area, also a DCFs and really importantly how to cure their shirts. Let's start with our printing press options. So y mean by that is how we're going to hold the screen in place so that it hits the print area in the same place every single time. So at the most basic ways to do this, and this is especially popular with paper printing. And flat stock items is just a pair of hinge clamps. So those would be screwed into a board. And you can even give yourself a little bit of height to put the piece of paper or even Guzman underneath there and give you a little bit of heights bioprinting. It just holds your screen in place and allows you to have two hands in order to place the item and then print that garment. Dy is definitely well the most basic and cheapest entries into the printing. When you start printing t-shirts, this is probably one of the best options to get you started, especially with single color images. So this is called a singalong press. It has a board which is called Platon, and that is where we dress the shirt. And it's also got, if I turn this around, you can see from the side, it's holding the screen in place of a hits. Every time in the same place. It's also go a little adjustment there, off contact. And it just means that we can do some basic single color screen printing with a piece of kit that costs around a 150 pounds. There's going to come a point where you need to print multi-color images onto those shirts. And you need to do that by building up the layers. So a carousel is definitely going to be needed for that type of thing. This is quite a heavy duty carousel, but you can't get them as having foreheads, which means you can print up to four colors. And also they come with different formations of how many platens they have. So this is the MNR Creusa, and it can hold six screens, so six colors. And it can also hold 40 shirts at a time. So you can 3D print rapidly with this kind of care. This is definitely in the professional leagues, but there are so many carousels out there. You're going to be able to find one fewer budget. As this is just a single color image, I just need to learn it the ones gradients my carousel so I can just lay my head open. Now let's look into how I get that registered. As you can see, I've drawn some guidelines on to my Platon, including a net climb, which is really handy for gauging how far this print is going to hit onto the comments. I will now use my film positive and measure where that's going to hit onto the Platon. This is more than my simple ways of registering. So I'm going to take all this down and then I'm going to line up to that screen. So we're now ready to line up the image on the screen to the acetate. I can lower the screen and then just make some little adjustments until I can keep pushing the screen down and making sure that it's perfectly lined up with the acetate and stuck to that pattern. Now I can just tie to nap. And there'll be ready to go. A really important consideration for your printing is called your off contact. And what I mean by that is the distance between your comment or paper substrate and the bottom of the mesh. Because when you're printing, you want the mesh to come into contact with the garment and then snap back up. This can only be achieved if you've got a nice high tension mesh. If you have a psyche match, then it's not going to snap back. It's going to blow your image as you're printing. So I'm going to demonstrate the off contacts by coming in and giving you a little bit of a close up. But essentially it's about pounds, pound coins height away from the Platon to the undecided the screen. Because you literally want it to snap back. Once we have our screen arranged. And you're going to notice there's still areas of open mesh around the edges of the frame. That could potentially allow ink to get onto your teacher if you're not careful. So what we can do is use a screen tape, which is essentially a liberties. They have low tack tape to block off all those areas all around and say, I'm just going to show you how I do that. I've got a tape dispenser and I'm gonna give myself some lengths of tape. I'm gonna kind of semi folded in half, push against the mesh and then into the ideas around. You can also mask off. You'll read any registration marks if you are doing mostly calorimetry is at this point. So now the only thing that can pass through my screen is the area of open match where I've expressed my design. There are also different types of tapes available. So for example, there's the PMI tape which has two separate areas. This one's got a D sub one and this one doesn't. That would mean you can peel off really quick and easy. Some people also use packing tape. Probably advisor, advise against that because leave a residue on your screen, which can just make clean up a little bit tricky. So this white tape is relatively inexpensive and it doesn't really great job. Now we have a screen or registered, I can just take off this and feeling positive and just take some outside is really essential now that we think about how to stick down that t-shirt. So one of the most conventional ways of doing is with a spread these IP to protect the Platon, you might want to put on a pilot mosque. This is essentially like a giant piece of masking tape. And you can draw your registration lines on top of that and then give it a spray. And I'll hold Daniel Goleman. The alternative to this kind of palette mosque and the spray is kind of an all in one method. So this is called geotag palette adhesive. What you do is you lay down and it's like a double-sided tape. So you take the top layer off and it's already going to DC to hold down your sharp as you're printing. And then hold it for quite a few shots. And you just rub off any lead that may have built up and you're ready to go again. Say this is how we apply the adhesive, the spray adhesive to that plus an area. You want to give him a little bit of a distance and try and get it quite even. Now you would be ready to load up your shirt. I'm now going to give you the rundown on the squeegee. He's so if the most important part of the squeegee is the blade, so they come in different harnesses. And that means basically this flexibility and they often color-code them. So this red one that I've got here is the soft displayed. And that's going to lay down a lot more ink. That might be useful for laying down thick deposits of white and black garments, for example. The next one is the one that I go to the most often. And this is the medium blade dura mater. In this case, it happens to be this green one and it's a bit less flexible and it's going to lay down a, a normal deposit of that ink. So I'd use that for colored inks, counter comments. The final one is very rarely used by Gelman printers, but it might be used for laying down very, very fine deposits of ink. In such cases such as halftone printing, there's hardly any flexibility in there, and it is a very, very hot blade. Next, let's talk about those handles because you can get lots of different handles when you're looking for assignments comfortable. So this is very common with the wooden handles where they're kind of sculpted to your hand. The disadvantage to a wooden handle is that when you're cleaning it, you might make it a bit sticky when you take the varnish off. But they are a good entry level into the printing. Then you've got these ones. This is like a metal handle. It looks like it's economic Bachelet when you're printing with that for a long period of time, is a heavy blade and it's more difficult. This one is particularly made for automatic presses, so they can really clamped down on that bare metal. I'll show you my favorite ones. I found that these ones have really, really good, the lightweight, but that also sculpted to your hand. And they clean up well because it's metal, so there's no varnish or anything like that to worry about. Also, it's important to make sure that your, your blade is very tightly clamped all the way along. And you don't have too much like dangling off each edge. So that one would be quite easy to replace. So that's probably my highest recommendation. Finally, we have these ones that are becoming really popular. There, the easy screeches. So in this case, they're a little bit of code to store with your other squeegee. So that might be something that might put you off. But they do technically mean that you don't have to have as much strengthen your wrists because you're using more of your arm strength. Another advantage is that the plate isn't screwed in so you could technically clean that off, flip the blade and then you've got a nice sharp edge to print with again. So you're going to have to do a bit of trial and error, but that's my rundown on the screen fees. Let's talk about the two most common inc types for printing. So you have water-based ink and plus 2. So plus 0 is most commonly used in the garment declaration industry because it's very easy to work with. It can't dry on the screen. And it's also quite easy to care and try and get those prints running off that press Quit grew. The alternative is the water-based ink. So water-based think is easier to clean up. However, is technically motor code to print with because you will have some drawing in if that ink into the mesh. Which just means you have to be a little bit quicker and more prepared when you're printing. And also it leaves a hat nice hands-off feel onto that garment. So there are advantages that when we're thinking about which one to go for. People who are often swayed towards the water-based when they start out because they don't need as much curing equipment, such as flash drives and conveyor dries that you would need for plaster printing. Today I'm going to demonstrate using a black water-based ink. That's because this is the most common ink that people start out screen printing with. Just before I put the Incan is really important to have your stack of garments ready to load quite quickly. And also be prepared as to where you're going to put these garments when they're drawing. I'm just going to load up that screen with some ink. So I've got my spatula and we actually work with quite a lot of ink. And then once you're finished, you're going to scoop my spirit back in. So be quite generous at this stage. I'm going to let the ink the entire length of the squeegee area and make sure that it's loaded wider than the image. Say, I'm ready to print with that. Now, the first thing I'd say is get my squeegee covenants and ink so that it glides across the surface of that screen. The next thing is I've raised this screen of the surface of the garment. So if while I'm trying to do is load that open mesh area with ink, this is called your flood stroke. So I can build a wall up just before the image area. And it's just the way to the squeaky. And it said light pole from the center of the squeegee where the image, and you can go beyond the image a little bit. Now it's time to put the square root we write down and then go back top. And then just before you print strike you to push down. And you can feel that Platon underneath. So now you've got your pressure correct? Your angle is just going to be about 45 degrees or before the squeegee blade stops the buckle underneath itself because we're going to share that ate through the mesh. So I'm pushing down and I'm going to pull it towards myself and go beyond the image to get a really nice print. I can now lift up and have a low CEC of Bath. It looks really nice and crisp. If you did want to put in another layer where you can do is basically use a hairdryer to make it just a little bit touched on really quickly. Then you can go ahead and do another print. In between those prints, you can keep your home, keep, keep your mesh flooded. And now I'll just give you a little bit more time where that water-based ink isn't drawing into that open mesh because you come in is stuck down at this point and this is nice and tight. You can actually go in and do another layer. And then you've got a really nice dense the positive ink and that shuts ready to take off and get your next one on there quick. As soon as he finished printing with that water-based, think it's important to get it back in the top and get that cleaned up because water-based ink can really stay in and that mesh. So this is something I'm gonna do right now. If you're printing onto paper, you don't need to worry about carrying that. You can essentially just let it air dry. But however we are printing on to Gelman's so we need to make sure that these have lost, say, there's a couple of ways to do it. We have a competitor acid, we're going to pop that on the conveyor belt. However, you can also use a heat press to get that aid kit. Hopefully now you have a big sack of shit, so freshly printed in kids. The next thing we're going to do is get those screens reclaimed, ready for your next job. 5. Clean up and Reclamation: Now you've finished printing those shirts. You can actually reclaim this screen back to new by removing the emulsion chemically. So I'm just going to run you through that whole screen Rec commission process now. It's important to remove the ink off your screen before you do your, your reclaim. And that's just so that you don't spread to ink all over your booth and well over a year equipment. So a plasticizer link There's designated plus, so I'll increment this. And a chemically different from the water-based ink weavers. And sometimes if you're quick enough, you can actually just remove the water-based ink for the sponge and a little bit of water in a bucket. I'm about to use my dip tank to do my reclaimed. But before I do that, I don't want all this take floating around in there, so I'm gonna take that off. I'm just going to dip my screen in the solution or so in there is water and there is also a morpheme remover. You can do this by hand with a bucket and some emotion remover, concentrate and just apply it with a brush and that's pretty much the same. This is just a little bit less labor-intensive. I'm going to set my timer for two minutes and then it's ready to rinse off. The screen has had two minutes in the dip tank, so it's definitely ready for me to spray off now. So I'm just going to put my power washer and a rents are all off. So I can follow that up with a Tay Grace now to make sure they're on any chemical residues on that mesh. So it's the same as before. Hello spray of the screen decrease and rinse off and we're ready to go. Now the screen is all clean and decreased. We're ready to store it in a nice dry, clean area. The next one we come to do off screen prints were ready to go again with a fresh screen. 6. Outro: Thank you so much for following along on this mini-course. We really appreciate any reviews and feedback that you might have done. It gets follow us on all those other sexual channels like YouTube and Instagram. And also, just good luck with your printing and I hope it goes really well.