Tshirt Screen Printing 101 & Screen Printed Tshirts Basics

Step 1 - Screen Printed Tshirt Artwork Stage

The graphic artist goes creating innovative custom designs to fit customer's needs. They size the artwork to fit each position on the shirt. When artwork is approved by customer, the design is broken into separate colors and printed on transparencies or veluums. These transparencies are then passed on to the screen room for the screen burning process.

Step 2 - Burning to Screens

Transparencies from the artwork stage are taped to tightly meshed screens. These screens have already been coated and dried with a special light sensitive photo polymer screen emulsion. This emulsion turns very hard when exposed to light. The transparencies prevent light from hardening the polymer on designated parts of the screen when it is exposed on the burn table. The emulsion hardens in an exposure time of approximately 3-5 minutes. From here, the screen is taken to a high pressure wash tub where the unhardened portions of the polymer are blown out. This leaves a template screen that can be used to print shirts.

Step 3 - The Tshirt Screenprinting Process

Depending on the quantity of the order, manual or automatic presses are used. The burned screens are attached to the top of each station, and they are set to move up and down. The screen printed tshirt is placed by hand onto a palette which rotates to each station. Once at a station, the screen moves down and a squeegee is drawn across the screen pushing ink through the open mesh onto the custom t-shirt. At each station the tshirt picks up another color until it has revolved around through the print cycle. Once the design is finished being printed it must be dried.

Step 4 - Drying & Completion

At this stage, the screen printed tshirt is placed on a conveyor belt to run through a 350° dryer so the ink will cure. This prevents the ink from fading or washing out in the laundry. The shirts are then "caught" at the end of the dryer. From here, they are counted, inspected and then boxed. These boxes are then labeled to await pick-up by the client.