FASHION INDUSTRY DICTIONARY
Define Screen Printing.
Screen printing involves the preparation of a printing screen made from fine-mesh screen fabric of nylon, polyester, or metal tightly mounted on a wooden or metal frame. (At one time, the screens used for this process were made from fine silk yarns, and the process was called silk-screen printing. The process is still often referred to by that name, although screens of silk are no longer used.) The screen fabric is coated with an opaque, nonporous film. The pattern areas of the opaque film are removed, leaving the fine-mesh screen that will be the printed pattern. Most commercial screen fabric is coated with a film that is photo-sensitive, and the removal of the pattern portion occurs through a photochemical process. Printing is done by placing the screen on top of the fabric to be printed. Print paste is poured into the frame and forced through the mesh areas of the screen by a squeegee. Each color in a print design requires its own screen and seperate application of color. A 3-color print, for example, requires 3 screen frames and 3 applications of color to the fabric. Also, each color of the design must be precisely located on the screen so that it becomes properly placed and avoids, for example, the green stem of a flower being located in the middle of a red rose petal. Print registration is the industry term to indicate when all of the color of the print have been supplied to the fabric.
There are 3 systems for making screen prints and each uses basically the same principle:
- Hand Screen Printing - became popular in the 1920s and is still widely used. It was the only method of screen printing until the mid-1950s, when modern technology devised a way to automate the process.
- Automatic Screen Printing - in the mid-1960s, further developments were perfected.
- Rotary Screen Printing - is now the most widely used method of screen printing.
