Screenprinting...

Welcome to our world, the wonderful world of screen-printing.

Everywhere you look these days you see decorated and designed T-Shirts. This is because everyone has figured out that screen-printing is a great way to get your name out there! Whether it’s for recognition, (sponsors) advertising or just a great decorative idea that you came up with – Screen-printing is the way to go.

We have to ask a lot of questions regarding every aspect of the process you are about to begin. However, once you know the routine and we have your artwork, printing requirements – style /sizes /color and of course the quantity of the garments you require, things go pretty smoothly.

So, sit back and enjoy - we’ll have some fun and make it a great experience for both of us!

Application of coloured inks:

First colour

Second colour

Third colour

Fourth colour - Final product!

1. ARTWORK
The starting point of any design creation. Everything we do is custom, so if you have an idea or logo that you’d like to put onto a printable garment this is where it all starts.

Any artwork on the computer is a good place to start. We work in Corel Draw to create and/or re-draw designs. A vectored format i.e. an .AI file, .CDR file or an .EPS file is a huge bonus to the artwork process. These files are "vector" artwork and this is the format that we use to create our positives & our screens.

If the artwork is not available in these formats or not in the computer, then we must re-draw them on the computer to create a vector format that we can work with to make our positives and our screens. Once we have the artwork as a vector image, we can then work with it to separate the different colors. For more detailed information, or questions regarding artwork please visit our Artwork FAQ’s

2. MAKING OF SCREENS
To print the design onto the garments we must first burn the image onto a screen. To do this we must take the vector artwork and separate it into the different colors required for the design.

These separations are printed out onto a clear film positive which are then “burned” onto a screen using a special machine and highly intense UV rays. For each color in the design, a different screen is required and must be burned.

3. SETTING UP
Once the screens are burned with the different color separations, they must then be setup on the printing press. This is done manually and requires quite a lot of skill as each of the screens must line up perfectly for the design to turn out right on the garment.

We have a manual print press that can print up to 6 colors at one time. The screens are lined up so that when the colors are printed they create your design. The garments are then run through our dryer to cure the ink and ensure that it dries properly.

Generally we recommend only about 2 or 3 colors for a design, as the fewer colours you have, the more you save!

4. PRINTING QUANTITY
The quantity of your order also has an affect on your printing price; the higher the quantity, the more you save per print!

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