silk-screen also silk·screen

n.

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1. A stencil method of printmaking in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. Also called screen-printing, silk-screen process.

2. A print made by this method

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Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which an be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A fill blade or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink into the mesh openings for transfer by capillary action during the squeegee strike. Basically, it is the process of using a stencil to apply ink onto another material.

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Spot Color

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Spot-Color is the term used to describe separation and printing with one ink color for every color in the design. Each color that makes up the composite image will be printed using a separate screen. A slightly more advanced type of spot-color uses halftones to create the appearance of a gradient using small dots of the solid ink colors. This technique can be taken a step further to combine two gradient screens and produce the appearance of more colors then are actually being printed. The small dots being printed so close together trick the eye into seeing the color they make when mixed.

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Four Color Process

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Four color process printing is a more advanced separation and printing technique that uses four colors of transparent ink to produce the colors from the original design. The four colors, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK), are printed as halftones that interact with each other and the white background of the shirt to create color and tonal values. A wide spectrum of colors can be represented but some colors are impossible to produce. Four color process is used mostly for photographic or digitally created designs because many shades and colors can be created with only four screens. High screen counts and screen frequencies are required to create the tiny halftone dots. One drawback to four color process is that the garment must be white.

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Simulated Process

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Simulated process is another advanced technique that uses halftones of a few ink colors to represent the colors in the original design. This process differs from four color process in that the inks are solid opaque colors usually printed on dark colored shirts. Because the shirt colors are normally dark, simulated process generally requires the use of an underbase.

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Underbase

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An underbase is a layer of ink, usually white, that is printed under the other ink colors when printing dark garments. When printing most colors on dark garments the color of the shirt will show through the ink slightly. For instance, yellow ink printed directly on a royal blue shirt will look very green. To prevent this, a thin layer of white ink is printed, then "flash" dried, and the yellow is printed on top. This gives the top colors a good neutral base and reduces or eliminates the shirt color showing through.

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Flash

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Flash curing is the process of "gelling" a layer of ink with a spot heating unit while still on the press. To "gel" the ink layer the temperature is raised to the point where the ink begins to dry but is not completely cured. The ink will be dry to the touch and will form a solid surface to print additional colors on. When the garment is run through the drier the flashed layer will cure completely and bond to the ink layers on top to form a solid film.