Often there is a dialogue about who is right or who is wrong between the designer and the printer. In many cases, the production department believes that “as long as the designers change their practices, they can print better.†The designers retorted: “I don’t know what that means.†Because the designers never go through the net. India training does not complain about them. In fact, designers should be encouraged to go to the production site to let them see the final printing effect of the entire job. The purpose of this article is to help designers learn more about screen printing processes and take more responsibility for the final print.
1. Responsible for printing orders
This may be contrary to the ideas of many printers. In terms of personal feelings, if you do it yourself, you will know it when you remember. Designers should specifically specify the printing sequence, the number of screens, and the number of exposures, as shown in Table 1. If nothing else, work in the platemaking, ink, and printing production departments for hours.
Table 1 Recommended screens, print sequences, and other labels on the film
Customer Name Job Number Ink Color Job Name Date Clothes Color Printing Position Silk Screen Number Remarks Printing Color Sequence
2. Learn from the sample
Designers often say that they do not see the final finished garments. This is puzzling. Can the printing company not afford a graphic designer a production sample for them to study?
3. Determine the correct printing sequence
For printing on light-colored garments, the print sequence is usually from light to dark, or from the minimum amount of ink to the large amount of ink, because the ink sticks to the back of the screen, and dark colors are not expected to stain light colors.
Print on dark clothing, usually on a white background, or in the field or tone dot. This layer of white must be photocured and then printed on it in various colors. The typical printing sequence is from light to dark, and any large area of ​​the main color must be printed last. See Figure 1.
Figure 1. On a dark-colored dress, primed with white ink, and then printed from the lightest color, with the largest footprint or main color.
For true four-color screening (CMYK) jobs, YMCK color sequence is used. Any spot color must be printed after a similar primary color, such as red after the magenta.
4. Screen selection
This will vary depending on the type of job you are doing. In general, a simple design uses a 45T (45 lines per centimeter) screen. More complex work, screen up to 77T. For finer mesh tuners, 90 to 120 mesh screens can be used. Should use the screen mesh version of 77~90 mesh, use 120 mesh or finer screen printing the above color.
5. Clothing printing is not paper printing
Decompose a large pattern into large dots (55 lpi to 65 lpi), transfer these dots to the template, and then print the dots on the finished garments, completely different from the paper printing.
Although some images can be printed using the three primary colors, most of the jobs are printed in spot colors. On black clothing, printing without CMYK primary inks will be very dark because of the printing on the background, and the standard spot color ink is used to print on the white background of the screen printing. This is the so-called "simulation" or "analogue" primary colors.
6. Design screen display and actual effect
The image you see on the monitor is fine, but the image on the screen is not what you will get. When screen printing, everything "expanded". This is the so-called "net expansion." If there is a 20% density area in the image, turn it into a 20% dot and print it out. The dot will probably expand to 40% of the original size, so that there will be nearly 30% dot density on the clothing, in dark Adjusting the area will become even more serious. 70% of outlets may be printed on site (100%). In the color separation must be considered lighter, leaving room for a large number of network expansion, see Figure 2.
7. Printers can't relax
After seeing proofs, sitting in the studio and making some minor changes is easy to do. Fine adjustment of two or three colors means that two or three screen printing plates are to be re-created, the old screen plate is removed from the printing machine, the new screen plate is installed, repositioning and test printing, etc. It is not easy.
The matching color is the same, and it is not easy to make the very small color patches printed on the glossy paper match the colors printed on the fabric as much as possible.
8. Have a common language
Dealing with designers every day, I found that there are two different languages. Producers will complain that "red" is not bright enough on black fabrics, and it may be strange why red is no longer bright. In fact, this has nothing to do with red. On black fabrics, red usually needs to be primed, probably because your background color is not bright enough, or the production staff needs to slow down the squeegee speed, use a lower mesh screen, change the squeegee angle, or use a comparison. The opaque white background color makes the background more bright, so that the printed red is brighter.
9. Limitations of the screen printing department
There is no reason to expect that the screen-printing department can make 2% of the screen points on the screen. This can't be done, but individual people can do it. Need to make a test film with different densities from 5% to higher, the platemaking department can print, let them print proofs and see what the results are. At the same time, if the tension of the screen plate used by the plate making department is not suitable, the resulting dot gain may be as much as 50% to 60%. This should be taken into account in the mesh modulation version.
If the screen printing shop cannot guarantee accurate overprinting, consider overprinting black and other colors in 2 to 4 positions of the spot color job.
Source: Bison