The Art and Screen
Ever wonder how apparel is printed? Well these are the beginning steps!
The art is created on design software to make it clean crisp lines also known as vectored artwork. Once the artwork is ready to go, we print the art using another software that allows the design to be printed in dark black ink. Once this ink dries on the film, we line the art up with our screen.
The green material on the screen is called emulsion. When the art is all lined up and ready to go, we set this foam board over top the screen with emulsion and hit start! The way the emulsion works is pretty fascinating. The green emulsion is water soluble when not cured. Under the foam board is a set of black lights that are activated when we hit start. The black lights cure the emulsion everywhere on the screen but where our dark black artwork is. After 2 minutes and 45 seconds, we are ready to remove the foam board and wash out the artwork!
With the black lights curing the emulsion and not curing where the dark artwork is, water will wash the emulsion away and leave the art! After washing out the emulsion, we let the screen dry.
Next will be getting the screen taped off and ready to sling ink!