Customized T shirts and Screen Printing

Customized T shirts have now become a rage in the garment industry. The craze for personalized T shirts is as vivid among the old as in the young. The technology that gave the spurt to customized T shirts was Screen Printing. Though known to the Chinese as early as 1207 AD, screen printing was acknowledged in the western countries only in the 19th century. The technique was first patented by Samuel Simon in England in 1907. In the United States screen printing was popularized by Andy Warhol in around 1962 when he used the technique, their called serigraphy to depict pictures of actress Marilyn Monroe screen printed in garish colors.

Initially screen printing was used popularly for printing expensive wall paper. Then it moved on to be used for linen, silk and other fine fabrics. Screen Printing has since been one of the most popular ways of printing on fabrics and has been quite a success with customized T shirts. Screen printing basically involves transferring your design or picture onto a template, a fine fabric or screen. Each color of the design needs a separate screen. It has been a fairly successful way for printing T shirts with texts and graphics. But screen printing has not been all that great with photographs in print on T shirts. Also it is sensible to use screen printing only when a large number of t shirts are to be printed as for small quantities it is not economical.

Most commonly polyester mesh is used for general purposes other than those basically synthetic threads are used. Special mesh materials of nylon and stainless steel are available to the screen printer.  Screen-printing uses a mesh of polyester, which resembles a screen hence the term “screen printing,” the mesh coated with emulsion that is photo-reactive. When this emulsion exposed to light is leaves a stencil imprint of the graphic that is to be printed, each color to be printed has its own screen.  Screen-printing method because resembles a stencil and forces ink through a screen deposits many times the thickness of ink onto the substrate being printed. Each color has to be printed separately after the first color dries. Since the ink deposited is thicker, the resistance to fading due to sunlight exposure is a benefit. Disadvantage is each color is printed by resetting a new screen for the next color to print.