English
Screen printing belongs to orifice printing. A simple understanding is to use screen glue to seal the excess mesh area, leave the required image or text, and use a certain pressure to transfer the ink to the substrate through the holes of the stencil to form an image. or text.
Screen printing carriers can choose clothing, paper, special paper, conventional metal, plastic products, and many other substrates.
Common screen printing applications in life include product descriptions, clothing patterns, various product LOGOs, business cards, etc.
1. Silk screen printing process
The general process is as follows:
Screen printing file output → film production → screen production → color printing → ink curing
01. Silk screen file output processing
It is a screen printing production file sent by the designer to the manufacturer. Because screen printing production is mostly monochrome or multi-color overprinting, we need to process the document at the early stage of design.The best document format is vector files, such as aicdrepspdf. If the graphics are small or the resolution requirements are low, high-definition image formats are also acceptable.
02. Document layered design
Because screen printing can only be used for single-color printing and single-color overprinting in a narrow sense, the designer needs to perform layered processing on the file. For example, black and red/black and blue in the picture below need to be screen printed twice.
Nothing is absolute. There are also some artistic creations that do not need to ensure consistency and can achieve multi-color simultaneous screen printing. This is basically not applicable in production, so what we need to talk about below is single-color printing and single-color overprinting. , to be precise, it should be single effect or single effect overprint layering.
Layering according to single effects includes layering according to color, and also includes layering according to ink model, thickness, transparency, changing levels of graphics, screen mesh, film line number, etc.
After the layering is completed, the designer should also pay attention to the order of each layer. Different orders will also affect the effect of the final screen printing work.
You should conceive the effect you want in the early stages of design, and then convey it to the manufacturer in the form of a document.This not only saves costs, but also effectively controls the effect output.
After you are familiar with the whole process, you can even recommend the manufacturer to use ink and glitter with a certain effect from a certain manufacturer to achieve the desired effect.If you are still not familiar with it, leave it to the manufacturer. If you meet a good master, sometimes you will make amazing works.
03.Film:
Film, photosensitive film and film used in photography, film used in movies, is the old translation of film. Now it generally refers to film, and can also refer to the negative film in printing and plate making.
The film in screen printing is like the film of a photo, except that the film in screen printing changes the development carrier from photo paper to a screen brushed with photosensitive glue.
The film base materials used in screen printing production mainly include PVC, PC, PET, and PP. The size depends on the size of the machine, and general products can be satisfied.
Film output:
It is an exposure process similar to the old-fashioned camera film. It first processes the graphics and text into a dot matrix image (that is, the graphics and text are composed of dots) through the system, and then converts it into a signal that controls the laser. The laser is used to compare the film with the film. Move vertically and horizontally to hit the laser dots, or dots, on the corresponding positions of the film to expose the corresponding parts of the film. Then, through the development and fixing process of the developing machine, the unexposed parts are washed away, and dots are formed on the film. Array image.
In addition to laser printing film, we often use murexine. The 'blue light film' among the murexine is the most widely used in China today. It can not only achieve the accuracy of laser film, but also more accurate plate positioning and time. The steps are also greatly shortened and reduced.
Traditional laser film production process:
Computer tracing→color separation→phototype output→development→fixing→washing→drying→printing→printing
'Blu-ray film' plate making process:
Computer tracing → color separation → Blu-ray film output → printing → printing
The specific difference is the difference between cost and quality. For designers, as long as they meet the product application requirements, the rest is left to the master to decide. We only have a brief understanding.
Film thread count:
For designers, the most important thing to pay attention to is the thread count of the film.
Film output is precise, and this precision is expressed by the number of lines.The term id and cmf designer must still be unfamiliar to some beginners and even some who have been working for two or three years, but it should be basic knowledge for designers engaged in the graphic printing industry.
