What is screenprinting?

Screenprinting (also known as silkscreening or serigraphy) uses a stencil to produce a clear and sharp image onto a wide range of materials, including cloth. This method is commonly used to produce t-shirts. The only colours that are used when screenprinting are cyan, magenta, yellow and black, and the process involves a nylon material being stretched over a frame which acts as a screen. This has certain areas blanked off, meaning that the spaces left are where the image will appear.
The ink is placed on the screen which is then transferred to the material being screenprinted. Screenprinting can be a very efficient way to produce large quantities of a design or print, although it can only print one colour at a time so colour mixes can take more time and effort.

In order to print your design, a stencil is created. There are several ways to create a screenprinting stencil:
-- A paper stencil can be cut to the correct shape and then stuck onto the screen.
-- Special paint can be used to block parts of the screen to form a stencil.
-- Photo-emulsion technique can be used. This is becoming increasingly popular and involves using the original image placed onto an overlay. This overlay is then put over the screen which has been painted with an emulsion, and they are exposed to strong light. The emulsion that was not exposed to the light (due to the image on the overlay) dissolves and washes away, leaving a negative stencil of the image.

Screenprinting has become a preference over inkjet or dye sublimation, because of its low cost and ability to print on any media. The surface being printed does not have to be subjected to pressure, nor does it have to be planar. This gives the method immense flexibility, and screenprinting is used for anything from design printing on clothes to circuit-board printing in electronics.