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Welcome To Texas Hill Country Screen Graphics
Texas Hill Country Screen Graphics strives to beat any price and impress our clients with our supreme quality. Please read our about us page and check out our screen printing services to learn more about the Company. We offer custom silk screen printing and embroidery services as well as a great selection of apparel and products. Request a quote or call on us to find the best product for your needs and ask us ways you can save money and further customize your order.
What is Screen Printing?
Screen Printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh that has been stretched on a frame, to support an ink-blocking stencil (the stencil is your design burned onto the screen). The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfers ink onto a substrate. While most people generally think of the substrate in conjunction with clothing, screen printing is a technique used on a wide array of items including decals, clock and watch faces, balloons and many other commonly seen products.
History of Screen Printing
Screen printing was technique first used by the Chinese dating back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279A.D.). Screen printing was introduced to Western Europe from Asia in the late 1700’s. It was not until 1907 that screen printing was first patented by Samuel Simon of England.
Printing Technique
A screen is made from a porous, finely woven material called mesh which is then stretched over a frame made of either metal or wood. Areas of the screen are blocked off with a non-permeable transparency to form a stencil, which is a negative of the image to be printed.
The screen is secured onto the machine and placed atop a substrate such as fabric or paper. Ink is applied onto the screen and a fill bar (also known as a floodbar) is used to fill the mesh openings with ink. Once the operator floods the screen, the operator then uses a squeegee (rubber blade held in a rigid handle) to move the mesh down to the substrate and pushes the squeegee to the rear of the screen.
“Burning” the image onto the screen
- The original image is printed onto a transparency. The image may be drawn or painted directly on the overlay, photocopied, or printed with an inkjet or laser printer, as long as the areas to be inked are opaque.
- A screen must now be selected. Screens come in several different mesh counts and selected depending on the detail of the design being printed. The screen is then coated with emulsion and placed in a dark room to dry. Once dry, the screen is ready to be burned/exposed.
- The overlay is placed over the emulsion-coated screen and exposed via a light source containing ultraviolet light. The UV light passes through the clear areas and creates a polymerization(hardening) of the emulsion.
- The screen is taken to the wash-out booth and washed off with a pressure washer. The areas of emulsion that were not exposed to light dissolve and wash away, leaving a negative stencil of the image on the mesh.
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