SCREEN PRINTING

The Print Shack is passionate about all things screen printing! We're frequently asked about the process, so we've simplified it for you with a step-by-step guide below.

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1. Artwork Preparation 

We need to make sure that your artwork is print ready. This makes the job flow a lot smoother and allows for the best quality print. For this process, we ask that you provide your artwork in EPS, PDF or Adobe illustrator format. If you are not sure what this means, please shoot us a message and we will do what we can to guide you. 

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2. Screen Exposure

This is part of your 'Setup Cost' and involves a couple of steps. Firstly, we separate your artwork into colours (if it is more than a one colour print) and print each colour onto a piece of transparency film. We then coat the necessary screens with a UV sensitive emulsion. When the screen is dry, we place the transparency film onto the screen and expose the image using a light. The emulsion goes hard, except where your image is placed, which washes out and creates a stencil. This will allow ink to move through the screen and replicate your artwork onto apparel. 

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3. Setting up Carousel

Next, we line up all your screens in our carousel (our right hand man/ the spinning apparatus you see in our gallery!). We tape them up, register the colours together, set the boards and prepare your inks for printing. 

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4. Printing your product

This is the fun part! Using a squeegee, we manually pull ink through the screen and onto your product, leaving your artwork perfectly placed on the garment. Depending on colours and inks, we may flash (dry) the ink, before placing another layer of ink on top. 

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5. Curing the Ink

Once all colours are printed onto the product, it is sent through an oven on a conveyor belt which literally 'cooks and cures' the ink into/onto the garment. This ensures the ink will never come off, we can guarantee that the print will last longer than the shirt its printed on! 

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6. Folding/ Packing/ Sending

All shirts are neatly folded and packed into our branded boxes or compostable mailers and sent your way! We will let you know when they are in the post so you can as excited as us! 

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Waa- Laa! Done, Finito. We will follow up with you guys to make sure everything is perfect, and when another order of the same design is required, we just repeat steps 3-6. 

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