Informational Presentation
Screen Printing 101 By: Saleh Samael
Essentials of Screen Printing
• Screen Printing Machine - multi-stationed for colorful images • Screens to hold image • Squeegee to feed ink through mesh • T-shirts as canvas • Ink • Emulsion
Step One: Laying Emulsion on Screen Emulsion: liquid chemical that is laid to dry, used to transfer a design/image onto a silk screen for printing Emulsion dries to act as a stencil for the image that will be printed on the shirt. Only after you ‘burn’ the image onto the screen. Emulsion scooper to even spread and lay the emulsion liquid onto the screen. You only want a thin layer. Emulsion is very light sensitive. Do not expose to bright light! Strong light will cure/dry the emulsion. You do not want it to dry until you are ready to imprint the image.
After emulsion is laid. Let is sit and dry in a very dark setting, preferably a dark room
Step Two: Burning the Screen
We are now ready for the exposure stage! • The dark areas of the printed image will • At this point you should have your block light from curing the emulsion. transparency paper ready to attach to Only within the dark areas is the mesh the emulded screen. of the screen exposed to feed ink though.
Step Three: Cleaning the Screen (Exposing the Image/mesh) • Pressure wash or hand wash the uncured emulsion until you can see through the screen. The exposed areas should be the shape of the image. • As you can see the black areas on the transparency print are now expose in the screen after washing.
Your screen is now ready to take on the ink!
Step Four: Printing • Place ink on the edge of screen along the width of the image. • Make sure squeegee fits to the size of image. • Pull ink across pushing down onto the shirt below. • Pull multiple times until image I fully depicted.
Make sure screen is loaded onto machine and centered/aligned with the t-shirt.
Step Five: Curing the Ink Image • After printing shirt it is essential to use the dryer to heat/cook the ink and cure it onto the shirt. • This way the ink or image will be permanently on the shirt.
Flash dryer
Conveyer Dryer