Our Screen Printing Service

This is where it all began all those years ago when Andy got his hands on his first squeegee and pot of ink, oh how things have changed!

Since then the screen printing department has grown beyond recognition, running four semi automatic presses we can produce upward of 20,000 printed t-shirts per day; yes that’s 100,000 during a standard working week! This doesn’t however mean we have forgotten all those smaller customers that got us where we are today, as we will still produce orders with a minimum of 25 items.

The screen printed t-shirt is an excellent item of promotional merchandise and is used by many of our customers for promoting their corporate event or promotional show and makes up a large proportion of our day-to-day work. Our print department is packed with staff that love printed t-shirts and take real pride in their work, regularly producing some extremely complex screen prints, including;

 

• Four & six colour process - Photographic reproduction onto white and light coloured garments
  
• 12 colour simulated process prints - Photographic reproduction onto coloured garments
  
• Discharge printing - A printing technique used to bleach and re-dye the fabric producing vivid colours and an extremely soft feel
  
• Glossed glitter printing - Producing a glossy image with a sparkle in many different colours
  
• Foil printing - Produces a mirrored foil look
  
• Flock printing - A textured raised print with a suede feel
  
• Metalic printing - Similar to foil but with less of a glossy finish
  
• Puff printing - An additive used to add to any plastisol ink to give it a raised finish
  
• Phosphorescent - This one glows in the dark!
  
• High build - A technique used to print plastisol inks so they give a sharp raised finish on the garment

 

The Process of Screen Printing

There are many factors when it comes to screen printing, the artwork, the screens and the machines your t-shirts are printed on. Firstly we have to produce the artwork which is created in Adobe Illustrator and is known as Vector, this is then printed onto film which gets exposed on the light table. Screens are made up of many types of meshes from a 43 which allows a heavier deposit of ink to a 120 which puts a minimum deposit of ink down for finer detailed designs, emulsion is placed onto these meshes and then the film placed on top. These are both placed under the exposure unit to expose. The film blocks the light allowing the surrounding emulsion to cure whilst the covered area breaks down, the screen is then rinsed and ready for print.

Depending on your design this process can be done 1-12 times to produce screens for an individual job so setting up a job can be very time consuming. The screens are spun automatically around the machine in sequence whilst the squeegee pulls the ink across the screen depositing the ink onto the shirt. All colours are put down wet on wet unless we have dark shirts where a flash cure unit is used to dry the base before proceeding to the next colour. Once all the colours are completed the shirt is then taken off and placed through the dryer where it’s cured and ready for despatch in the packing department.

So, why use Screen Printing over Transfers?

Screen Printing is Screenworks choice for t-shirt printing because of the quality and detail you can achieve over a vinyl heat transfer. Screen printed t-shirt have alot going for them as they wash well, have many more techniques available and overall look more punchy than transfer printed t-shirts.

Why use Screenworks Ltd for printing?

Our combination of highly skilled experienced staff, up to the minute automatic and manual machinery and top of the range raw materials make Screenworks print the only answer for your custom t-shirt. Don't forget if you prefer embroidered clothing we can offer this service so why not visit our embroidery page.

So why not get in contact today!