Welcome to the complete screen printing website where you will learn how to screen print. Here you will learn all the process of screen printing in complete details and better comprehension. Screen printing is very easy to learn skill and on the other half screen printing is one of the high profit scale business as well. The most important thing in screen printing is screen, from which screen printing derives its name also. Now you in the basic learning of the screen printing so you will learn how to prepare screen by stenciling.
Screen printing is not a newly originated designing method. Screen printing is very old technique of coloring and designing. It is thought that screen printing was first originated as designing technique in China. Silk was used as the screen mesh, blocking holes and cutting out design from paper and placing on screen printing mesh.
But these were lengthy and difficult processes; along with this these processes were less efficient and had many short coming in screen printing stencil.
Photographic-emulsion has made screen printing much easier, efficient and has removed the risk of any designing malfunction. Photo-emulsion is a paint made of colloidal solution of the gelatin as solvent and light sensitive part is any of silver halides, silver bromide, silver chloride or silver iodide. There are also many other ingredients present as toner, color, binder etc. but the most important ingredient part with the above is sensitizer, which is actually a catalyst used to accelerate the sensitivity of the Photo emulsion paint that is Potassium Dichromate. Present with photo-emulsion paint either in powdered form or liquid form.
“This whole paint mixture has a very useful property that it gets hardened to great extent when exposed to light or Ultra Violet rays and remains soft when it is not exposed to light.”
When we buy screen printing Photo-emulsion paint it is of two types one is direct emulsion having one part of screen printing photo-emulsion, it has sensitizer mixed in it before hand. It is very good but have a short coming for new screen printers that it get hardens very soon during exposure so a few second more or less exposure can result into over or under exposure that give a poor stencil when washed. But once you are well known with the exact screen exposure time you should use this type of paint.
Second type of Photo-emulsion paint is Dual Cure Photo-emulsion it has two parts one part is screen printing stenciling emulsion paint bucket and other part is sensitizer, this sensitizer as told above is Potassium Dichromate which enhances the efficiency of the paint and catalyses the light sensitivity of the paint. Before use its aqueous solution is prepare and then it is mixed with photo-emulsion paint and then homogenized with stirring.
Then using squeegee this paint is coated on the screen printing screen on both sides, and the screen is let to dry in dark.
After drying the screen printing screen is take out and a dark opaque design on the butter paper or plastic sheet is placed screen and then exposed to the light for specific time which you can learn in other tutorials.
After exposure the screen is washed with water pressure so that the under cover design area of the screen is washed away.
Now the screen is dried and used for screen printing tee shirts etc.
For details watch this free tutorial video now.
[pro-player width=’600′ height=’380′ type=’video’]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg0tV1Mfi6E