How Different Screen Printing Machines WorkThe realm of screen printing has become as elaborate as lateen sails, perhaps more complex due to the rapid advancements that are taking place all around the world. The exciting and rapid developments in the screen printing machines arena have brought forth improved quality, speed and capability. As the industry technology moves forward to blend in both old and new elements of screen printing, the print provider will have more tools available to them than ever before. To be in this industry today is kind of exciting and fun but also highly challenging. This is because the traditional niche market lines no longer exist but meeting client expectations by making the right technology choices is critical to success and taking the realm of screen printing to greater heights. Screen printing machines are pretty simple to understand. The most basic screen printing machine for creating T-shirt has a single screen so that it can be dropped down onto a printing surface. This method of screen printing allows the mass production of printed shirts. A multi-color screen printing machine press is a little more complex. With multiple screens on arms that revolve around a center axis, each screen is set up with a different colored ink. When the first screen is dropped on to the shirt, then a stroke is made. It represents the first color of ink on the T-shirt. One of the most widely used printing processes to apply decorative and functional coating is rotogravure printing. This implies the use of a rotary press and "gravure" which means a gravure cylinder where the design is engraved or etched into copper and is chrome plated. The cylinder is a hollow shell which may have either a steel or centrifugal cast iron. There are two types of rotogravure presses namely, the direct gravure coater and the offset gravure coater. In both processes, the ink is loaded into the cells in the same way. In the direct process, the ink is transferred directly to the substrate when it is pressed against the engraved cylinder. However, in the offset process, the ink is transferred to a rubber covered transfer roll before it is transferred to the substrate. The offset process is mostly considered to be a better option for printing on rougher substrates. Offset printing is another screen printing process. This screen printing machine uses metal or plastic plates to transfer ink to a rubber roller and then onto a balloon. Yes, we are talking about balloons with printed matter on it. Using the offset printing process, it is possible for the balloon to have a thin layer of ink with a hard edge around it. The best offset or LITHO printing works well but the minus point is that it lacks the color density of screen printing. Inkless Printing technology is another development in screen printing which is considered to have expanded the scope of this field. By exploiting the potential of ZINK paper, it ensures that ink is not required to carry on the process of printing. How this works is that the dye crystals are embedded in the ZINK paper and activated by heat from a ZINK printer. When this happens, the dye crystals colorize to produce high-quality images. |