Welcome to the best free screen printing learning website. In this printing lesson you will learn how to prepare screen for tee shirt screen-printing.
This screen printing lesson demonstrates how to stretch mesh on screen printing frame to prepare our screen. First of all choose a screen printing frame of screen this is made up of wood or metallic, what ever the frame you choose for screen-printing check its edges these should be plane, smooth and align perfectly with uniform surface so that when you put this frame on some uniform surface it uniformly touches the surface an it not tilted from any side for making you frame surface smoother paint it with varnish if it wooden.
Then is the choice of mesh it depends on your screen printing design and ink you are using for screen-printing. if you design is thin and has many tiny details then the mesh you should have greater number of holes per square inch so use 250-355 mesh type and ink should relatively thing so it could easily pass through tiny holes on substrate for screen-printing. But if your design is big and you ink is thick then you should use 100 to 250 mesh count.
Material you need: _
- Frame (Wooden or Metallic)
- Mesh
- Nails and hammer or
- Glue with Strong bond properties.
Procedure:
- Starting from one side spread the mesh on screen and you nail it on the screen printing frame but spreading should be uniform and smooth and there should be no wrinkles in mesh.
- Then move to opposite side and fix the mesh on frame with nails and then other two side remember that mesh should be stretch as much tightly as possible any wrinkle or loose mesh can cause poor screen printing.
- If you are using nailing technique then there should equal distance among nails of opposite sides.
- For using Glue buy some excellent quality of powerful Glue which can stay longer and intact. Stretch the mesh on screen printing frame tightly and remove any wrinkle or detention present. Then apply glue to all four edge the glue will strongly hold the mesh on frame.
- Then cut the extra mesh out of screen boundary when glue has been dry.
Now you screen is ready to be coated which you will learn in later lesson of screen printing.