Despite all the advances in digital printing, a large proportion of all T-Shirts printed in the world today are still printed with a silkscreen. This will remain so for the foreseeable future. Silkscreen printing for large jobs is superior to all other methods in terms of price, quality and durability. As one of the first textile printers in Europe, we can offer certified textile screen printing according to GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard)!
Advantages:
Quality and washability superior to other printing processes
affordability (except for short runs)
good color reproduction
Disadvantages:
costly for small runs, because a screen must be created for every color
for photos and color grading fine prints don't look as good as on paper
Here are some photos of silkscreen printed T-Shirts, and impressions from the workshop.
4-color printing plus underbase
Printing machine with shirt
2-color printing plus underbase
Work with the machine
Motif Zebra with grid
Some silk printed shirts
On the machine
Pantone chart
How does screen printing work on textiles?
You send us a digital version of the desired design (best in as a .tif of at least 300dpi, but also any other professional graphics format is possible) and for the ink coloring if possible an indication in HKS or Pantone (see our FAQs).
We cover all of the following:
From your original file we separate the individual colors and templates - if it is printed on colored T-shirts - a pre-print.
We prepare a separate silkscreen transparency for each print color
From this transparency we create the image on the silkscreen
The screens are arranged in the printing machine. In short runs more than 90 percent of the entire work consists of mechanical equipment preparations.
Then, the actual printing.
Video of T-shirt printing via silkscreen
Photo series of T-shirt printed with 4 Color process plus underbase
The design
Underbase print
Red print
Blue print
Black print
White print
Ready for shipping
Product in action
Halftone printing on textiles
In order to convert photos or color gradients into print, the original artwork must be rasterized, ie. broken down into small pixels for the Halftone.
Since the surface of textiles as opposed to paper is relatively coarse, textile backgrounds can not be printed upon as finely. Conventional halftones in screen printing are between a 16 and 24 grid. In contrast to conventional offset printing in the four basic colors of CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), the artwork must be divided into more tones when printing textiles. On colored T-shirts it is often necessary to use six to ten print colors.
Full view Terra
Terra in detail
Full view Nie wieder!
Terra in detail
Full view Bad Ass
Bad Ass in detail
Full view Chameleon
Chameleon in detail
The tools in textile screen printing
For silkscreen T-shirt printing the following materials and steps are necessary:
