Expression Wear's Custom T-Shirt Screen Printing Process

Screen printing is the process of pulling ink through an image burned screen onto t-shirts and other garments. Below we will take you through the steps we use to create custom screen printed apparel at Expression Wear.

1. Designing Art for Screen Printing

It all starts with an idea brought to us by our customers. The idea is taken to our in house designers who make a computer generated version of that idea, using the t-shirt color(s) the customer has chosen for their order. Once the design has been completed it is posted to our Art Approval Directory.

2. Producing the Art for Screen Printing

Once the screen printing design is approved it goes to our production artist, who takes the design apart with a process called color seperation. Each color of the design will have its own screen. Before the production artist can take the design to the screen department they must print each color on a film positive.

3. Preparing the Screen(s) for Screen Printing

Screen printing relys on well constructed screens. The film positives from the production artist go to the screen department, who prepares the screen by coating it with photosensitive emulsion. The color seperated positive is attached to the emulsion coated screens, and taken to be burned for t-shirt printing.

The screen is placed into a unit that exposes it to ultraviolet light. The ultraviolet light burns the design into the screen, removing the emulsion to let ink come through the screen. This is very important to get the best screen printing results.

4. Screen Printing Your Custom T-Shirts

Screen printing finishes by transferring the ink through the screen onto the shirt. To begin this process, the press is loaded with the t-shirt printing screens. Ink colors are then poured onto the proper screens.

The screen printer then loads the t shirt making sure that it is even and sitting straight on the screen printing plat. Once it is loaded properly the printer lowers the screen and pulls the ink across it with a rubber screen printing squeegee.

The t-shirt is then removed and placed on a belt that runs under a special dryer. This dryer will cure the ink at 320°F. At the end of the dryer, Quality Control inspects each garment to ensure the garment meets our high quality standards.