Silk Screenprinting

You're about to read an article on screenprinting.

Now you’re reading an article about silkscreen printing: First, you get a silkscreen (If you haven’t figured out what it is yet, it’s a screen of silk stretched to have high tension around a wooden frame.) And you take a squeegee and get emulsion, or light sensitive ink on as much of the screen as you can cover. You must do this quickly because as I said before, the ink is light sensitive, so if you let it out in the light for too long it will harden, and then you’ve wasted a bunch of time, money, and ink. You take whatever you’re printing, which must be monochrome of positive space (which is empty, and won’t get printed in the final print,) and negative space (which is what does get printed. It tends to be black, you’ll see why in a second.) You take your design that has been printed (or drawn) on transparency, so only the black shows up. The black blocks out light, so when the emulsion hardens the space that was covered by the black doesn’t. After nine minutes and forty-five seconds, you remove the transparency and wash out the silk screen. The hardened Emulsion will remain undamaged, while the soft emulsion will clean out. You then take your screen, press it against the material that you’re printing on, and rub your ink all over the now transparent part of the screen. A lot. You remove the screen and wait for the ink on the material to dry, and you can repeat the process as many times as you want (until you clean off the silkscreen altogether.)

Interview Questions:

How is this different from relief printing?

This is different because you don’t worry about the order that it’s printed in, you don’t cut it multiple times, and there’s a lot less stress that comes with each time you print, because you know you can do it as many extra times as you want. It's also used to print on fabric, not paper more commonly.

How is screen printing used in the real world?

Screen Printing is used to mass produce designs on fabric. Companies like Gildan use screen printing to print basic designs for clients hundreds and hundreds of times.