Silk Screen Printing

The most popular mesh is made of polyester.

Buy why go for silk screening or screen printing when it is easier to buy an inkjet or laser printer that can print on cloth, to say the least? Well honestly, it is not cost-effective and practical since shirt printing is not easy at all. You need some feat of magic to print at least one custom shirt in 5 minutes! Five minutes, my friend, is quite a "long" time --- considering you need to process each shirt one at a time. There's also a great risk for committing too many errors while printing the shirt, that's why silk screen printing is highly-recommended because it's cheap and cost-effective. It can process to as many as 100 shirts. Automatic screen printing can actually print 5 shirts or more at a time.

So how does silk screen printing really works? Traditionally, the process starts with the square wooden frame about the size of a t shirt. You can either prepare the screen yourself (if you know how to), or buy it from local craft stores. Next, you will put the polyester by stretching it over the frame. Now that you have the screen, make a stencil on the screen fabric which allows ink to be forced through its "open" areas to produce a design.

There are actually four (4) popular methods used for preparing screens. These are (1) paper stencil method, which is the best method for beginners; (2) screen filler method, wherin a screen filler is used to block out those areas which you do not wish to print; (3) drawing fluid - screen filler method, otherwise known as Tusche-resist or " positive!' method; and (4) photographic emulsion method, considered as one of the most exciting methods of screen printing. This method offers the widest range of possibilities.

For the actual shirt printing procedure, just place the t-shirt on a flat board and press the screen onto the fabric. With manual screen printing, you need to coat the screen with thick ink using a sponge. The ink will flow through the "open" areas of the screen. If the design has 5 colors in it, you need 5 different screens also to process it.

With the absence of automatic screen printing machine, silk screen printing process is a tedious task because you need to repeat the process over and over depending on the number of shirts needed for custom printing. So how do you save your hands from this grueling process of pressing squeegees again and again? Well, leave it with Shirtmagic.

Shirtmagic offers affordable silk screen printing services and they can process custom shirts within a short period of time. I personally recommend Shirtmagic for custom silk screen printing and bulk orders of custom shirts. Shirtmagic uses top brands like Hanes, Gildan, District Threads and Sport-Tek to ensure quality. For custom silk screen printing, they use automatic presses that can process more than 5 shirts at a time. They also offer big discounts for silk screen printing. Regular screen printed shirts usually starts at $13 a piece; with Shirtmagic's latest promo, you can get a custom printed shirt for only $7.99, minimum order of 36 pieces. Silk screen printing is ideal for custom uniforms, souvenir shirts and family reunions.