Screen printing is the process of transferring a design onto a flat surface with ink through a mesh with squeegee.
Colours are printed one by one in order to produce a composite image or design.
Each colour can be mixed to match desired hues and levels, the combination of which depends on how the individual colours interact with another. The hues and opacity of the ink will allow for different combinations to be built up.
We use Sico Aquaset inks which are water based. This allows us to use less chemicals in the printing process – both for the environment and our health.
Colours are mixed by eye so there may be some slight variations, standard Sico colours or Pantone PMS numbers may be used to get as close as possible to the desired result.
Once each to-be-printed colour is separated into black and white layers, any greyscale images or designs will need to be bitmapped. While there are many options when bitmapping, typically one can use a half tone or diffusion method.
To ensure the bitmap is not too fine for our meshes there is a limit to the bitmap fidelity.
● For halftone we use an output of 300 pixels/inch with a maximum frequency of 35 lines/inch, and round shape.
● For diffusion bitmaps we use a maximum output of 100 pixels/inch.
● Vector lines should not go under 0,75 pt.
For CMYK halftone, the following angles are used to avoid moire:
C : 22,5° M : 82,5° Y : 7,5° K : 52,5°
● For diffusion bitmap, angles are not necessary!
Some standard papers are kept in stock but any special requests will have to be sourced in time. And do make sure to include a few extra test sheets – more or less 10% of the total number needed – in order to ensure good alignment and compensate for any misprints.
We have the following in stock (70x100cm long grain):
We can print up to 70x100cm but do bear in mind to allow some margin when designing your file(s), as full bleed printing can smudge if there is not adequate margins, and to allow space for trim and registration marks.
As our cutting machine can only cut up to 70cm, larger formats will have to be trimmed by hand.
We do not have a minimum order, but the starting costs make up most of the price of printing, so we recommend to print at least 10 copies.
Our drying racks allow for a max of 50x B1 prints per run.