What is Screen Printing? Pt 2: Inks

Inks and Screens

It may look messy, but Screenprinting Ink can transform a plain shirt into an amazing product.

Screen Printing has a lot of elements, but one of the most basic elements of Screen Print design is Color. Color provides contrast or total subtleties, and can make or break a piece of art. Our color is achieved largely with paint-like textile inks called plastisols, which provide the most brilliant color available in screenprint art, as well as the best possible wear and washability.

In it’s most basic form, textile inks are made from particles of pigment suspended in kind of liquid base. Some are water-based and some, like plastisols, require solvents for cleanup. Modern textile inks are easily disposed of with environmentally sound methods and are completely harmless to wear.

Automatic Presses can seem complicated (and are) but the basic ideas of screenprinting are fairly simple.

Inks are pushed through a stencil in the screen by an ink squeegee, either by hand on a manual press or by a adjustable head on an automatic press. In principle, it is a simple process, but there are dozens of variables that must be accounted for to achieve higher quality images and prints.

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