Unt Diving Eagle

[jimbojimjim]

50 shirts 10-11 bucks each screen printed

Screen printed, really? How many colors? Did he have to simplify the design?

[Sound_Man]

haven't gotten to the color seperation yet, it will end up simplified some w/out the fading/shading

looking to see if i can get it direct printed

[pollock]

To keep it "vintage," I need to go ringer-t shopping.

Now you're talkin.

[GreenBat]

50 shirts 10-11 bucks each screen printed

I want 4, 2-XL and 2-L

[Mean Green 93-98]

50 shirts 10-11 bucks each screen printed

Put me down for an XL.

[JayDub]

Put me down for an XL...I'll give you $20 if the remaining $ goes to the Andrew Smith Scholarship fund...

[BeanCounterGrad'03]

For those of us whose only job is to make the shirt look good while wearing it, please explain what a screen print is.

I have an idea of what it is, but I'm not sure.

[GreenBlooded1]

For those of us whose only job is to make the shirt look good while wearing it, please explain what a screen print is.

I have an idea of what it is, but I'm not sure.

Straight from Wikipedia:

A screen is made of a piece of porous, finely woven fabric (originally silk, but typically made of polyester since the 1940s) stretched over a frame of aluminum or wood. Areas of the screen are blocked off with a non-permeable material to form a stencil, which is a positive of the image to be printed; that is, the open spaces are where the ink will appear.

The screen is placed atop a substrate such as paper or fabric. Ink is placed on top of the screen, and a fill bar is used to fill the mesh openings with ink. The operator begins with the fill bar at the rear of the screen and behind a reservoir of ink. The operator lifts the screen to prevent contact with the substrate and then using a slight amount of downward force pulls the fill bar to the front of the screen . This affectively fills the mesh openings with ink and moves the ink reservoir to the front of the screen. the operator then uses a squeegee (rubber blade) to move the mesh down to the substrate and pushes the squeegee to the rear of the screen. The ink that is in the mesh opening is transferred by capillary action to the substrate in a controlled and prescribed amount, i.e. the wet ink deposit is equal to the thickness of the stencil. As the squeegee moves toward the rear of the screen the tension of the mesh pulls the mesh up away from the substrate leaving the ink upon the substrate surface.

Textile items are printed in multi-color designs using a wet on wet technique, while graphic items are allowed to dry between colors that are then printed with another screen and often in a different color. The screen can be re-used after cleaning.

While the public thinks of garments in conjunction with screen printing, the technique is used on tens of thousands of items, decals, clock and watch faces, and many more products.

[FirefightnRick]

A couple of other things to add since I have helped do this process before.

The ink isn't ink at all, it's a liquid plastic. The screens are treated with a chemical that cleans them thoroughly first of any other substance, and then is coated in a light sensitive chemical and stored in the dark or at least away from any bright light, similar to how a person who develops their own film stores their pre-developed film.

Then you take your image and break it down into the different colors and place each color of the image on it's own separate screen. Once taped down to the screen you expose it to a bright light, usuall in a cabinet full of neon type bulbs similar to what you see in any business office, school room etc. When the light hits the screen and exposes the areas where the image is not, it hardens the chemical. The hardened chemical blocks the pores in the screen and seals it from allowing any of the ink to pass through. When you take the image off of the screen, you then wash it with another chemical that removes the original chemical that wasn't exposed to the light. This is done for each color in the design. Most machines, my friends included, can handle up to 8 colors and the thing looks like a giant spider and is usually manipulated automacially or manually by compressed air.

You then fill the different trays with the appropriate colored ink, slide the T shirts over a cuf and it rotates up underneith the tray that has the appropriate color in it. It's usually a pile of ink, maybe one to two cups worth. The shirt then is pressed up under the tray and once in place a squeegee rubs the ink across the screen twice: across and back. This presses the ink through the holes that wasn't exposed and clogged up by the second chemical in the light booth. Then the machine drops the shirt down and rotates it to the next tray and does this all over again until all the colors are added and the image is complete.

Then you carefully remove the shirt from the cuf and lay it on what looks to me like a giant pizza oven and it slowly passes on a conveyor belt into this oven, which heats the plastic to 400 degrees and melts the plastic into the fibers of the t shirt. It passes out to the other side of the oven and your done.

This is why I have at times mentioned that when you wash your favorite silk screened T's to first turn them inside out and then allow to air dry by hanging them up rather than putting them into the dryer. Over time a dryer will affect the quality of the image.

Rick

Edited August 10, 2007 by FirefightnRick