Detailed Knowledge Of T-Shirt Printing Process

Plate making

Plate making can also be called black-and-white draft, color separation, plate making and so on.

Its main function is to make photosensitive printing. Therefore, the plate must be drawn on the plucent substrate. Its image is opaque ink (black or red). The pmittance of the substrate and the density of the ink layer are the key indicators to determine the quality of the plate making.

The formation of plate making images is mainly made by hand drawing, manual or mechanical engraving, photosensitive copy, laser Phototypesetting, printer printing, and so on. However, it is also used for plucent processing of ordinary paper, such as oil, as a plate making manuscript.

1. color separation

The special color separation of T-shirt design refers to the use of any specially designed color as a printing color alone.

We usually talk about five sets of color printing, twelve color printing, refers to the five spot color or twelve spot color in turn to form a color image printing products.

However, the amount of spot color is not equal to the amount of color of the image, because spot color can also be overprinted, so five spot colors can also print six or even eight colors of seven colors.

Spot color printing is mainly used for color block printing. Its reflection on natural scenes can only be simulated rather than reduced, which is the biggest difference from original color printing.

But with the development of screen printing technology and the development of new ink, in recent years, spot screen printing has sprung up, especially in T-shirt printing, the latest fashionable T-shirt design in the world.

Primary color separation refers to the decomposition of natural color images into three primary colors (Pin Hong, green, yellow), so as to carry out the three primary colors price printing, so as to restore the object image.

Any color in nature is made up of three primary colors, so theoretically, green, yellow, and three color plates can be used to print realistic restoration images. However, due to various factors, it is difficult to achieve the printing of tricolor prints.

Therefore, in printing practice, four color printing is usually used, that is, three primary colors plus black.

In recent years, in order to restore colors more vividly in the world, six color printing and seven color printing have been developed on the basis of four-color printing. The principle is to separate compound orange, purple and green on the basis of four colors, so as to reduce the grayscale to achieve high fidelity effect in printing.

In order to distinguish between spot color printing, we usually use the color or printing technology to separate the natural color patterns by the optical or digital technology. They are called primary color printing (which can be understood as reductive color printing).

It is worth mentioning here that primary color printing is not incompatible with spot color printing.

In the world, the latest development of color printing is the combination of primary color and spot color for special primary color printing. It has played the role of the two, complement each other, and has more advanced printing effect.

This has also been allowed to play in T-shirt printing.

I saw a T-shirt produced in the United States, a total of 12 color printing, in addition to four primary colors, but also equipped with eight sets of spot color, in addition to gold and silver, especially foam printing and crystal paste printing, the effect is not only strong sense of three-dimensional and special parts sparkling, really amazing.

Professional T-shirt designers usually design composition according to the principle of spot color or primary color. After getting such a design draft, they can separate colors according to their requirements.

But there are also some non color designers or customers who only provide the original manuscript of all kinds of pictures or drafts, so that they can be printed on T-shirts.

In this case, we have to communicate with designers and customers: first, we need to know what the creative intention is and how to express it. In order to achieve this effect, we need to use spot color printing or primary color printing or even primary color printing? We need to provide T-shirts with different printing methods to them so that they can understand and choose. Secondly, we should tell them about the cost of processing spot color printing and primary color printing so as to make them decide that they should be put into the plan.

2. color separation plate making manuscript

The color separation plate making manuscript is used for photosensitive manufacture of the corresponding color separation screen printing plate.

The quality requirements are: first, the pmittance of the substrate is good, and the two is the high density of image shading. The three is that the matching accuracy of the dichroic films must be accurate, and the edges of the lines are neat and neat, and the dots are full and clear.

(1) multi chromatic splitter positioning is generally based on cross lines, but in the process of printing, it is easy to reverse the color splitter, or make a mistake on the right or wrong side, or reverse the graphics. We use the left and right oblique methods to locate the cross line, that is, the left side is +, the right side is x, so that the error is eliminated.

(2) since red tearing film is more expensive and not easy to purchase, it can be replaced by red self adhesive paper.

As long as the red self adhesion is only applied to the PVC film (on the original manuscript or line draft), it can be carved with a graver.

Because the pmittance of the red self adhesive paper is far less than that of the red tear film, the light of the light drawing desk should be brighter.

In this way, you can achieve low price, good shade effect, and clean lines, no fear of water and humidity. What's even more wonderful is the convenience of modification. As long as you peel off the retouch, you can't reprint the red touch, and ink painting can only make minor modifications.

(3) if two patterns of printing plates are not connected or overprinted, two color sheets can be drawn on a diaphragm, and two plates should be dried when printing. The A version will close the B pattern and the B version will close the A pattern.

It can even dry a piece of paper, add an ink ribbon between the AB patterns, and print two colors with one block at the same time.

3. handmade manuscript

Manual manuscript is the most basic traditional method, mainly for manual manuscript and manual engraving.

Hand made manuscript tools mainly include: light drawing table (OA table), drawing ink pen, drawing compass, triangular plate, curved plate, carving knife, steel ruler, drawing PVC film, PCV film drawing ink, red tear film, red self adhesive paper, etc.

T-shirt design manual manuscript, first of all, there must be a lamp light drafts table, light source is generally fluorescent lamps, such as the use of incandescent lamp, you should use frosted glass or a piece of copy paper under the glass, so that light is soft and does not hurt the eyes.

If you need to trace at home or in a temporary place, the emergency method is to place the stool on the floor, and put a piece of glass on the four stool legs, then put a lamp on it, so that it can be used.

Drawing ink pen, mostly using needle pen, pen diameter 0.2 ~ 1.3mm.

In order to prevent pen blockage, put a hollow cotton (or sponge) in a bottle and add half bottle of water. When the drawing pen is disused, insert the pen into the bottle, so that the pen head is no longer blocked.

Steel ruler is used to cut red tearing film and self adhesive paper.

When drawing with triangular panels, curve boards, etc., the beveled edges should be faced down to avoid ink being towed by the ruler.

The general drawing ink can not be used to draw the diaphragm because it is slow drying, poor fastness, and it gets wet when it rains.

It is better to use special film drawing ink to draw PVC diaphragm. If you can't buy it at one time, you can replace it with Yide ink, but you need to boil it to make it thicker.

When you paint large area with Yide Ge ink, pay attention to the ink layer not too thick to avoid cracking.

You must wash your hands with soap before hand drawing, because the grease on your hands will affect ink painting if you stick it on the diaphragm.

Draw according to the size and the sequence of printing.

The printing paste has the covering power, so its various shapes can be printed more or more. Even the light color draft can be used as the background color of the dark color.

For example, if the fabric is dark, you can consider the white background. The printing sequence of the paste printing is the opposite to that of the printing process. First, draw the dark draft, then draw the light draft, and finally the white manuscript.

The water slurry is mainly used for printing white T-shirts, and is a pparent printing coating. Therefore, the overlap of the touch lines is between 1 and 2mm, and if the overprint is too many, it is easy to appear the compound color of two color overprint.

The drawing order is to first draw a colored draft (usually black) with contour lines, and then draw the manuscript from light to dark in the light of this diaphragm.

Foamed printing plates should be kept in a bubble screen with a high bubble of about 1 to 2mm and a low bubble of about 0.5 to 1.0mm.

The basic requirement of hand drawing (engraving) is smooth, smooth and clean lines, and the ink drafts must be trimmed, especially the sharp corners.

4. computer Digitalization

With the development of computer technology and production, computer digitalization design and drafts and manuscripts have become quite popular in China.

Compared with manuscript manuscript and photographic manuscript, it has the advantages of higher quality, faster speed, more convenient production, and lower cost. Especially its color separation and screening quality far exceeds the level of manual and photoelectric production, and has become a widely used production hand.

A series of works on t-shirt design, color separation, screening and film production are carried out through operation of professional graphic design software and publishing software.

General purpose software such as Adobe LIIustrator, Photoshop, CoreIDraw and so on are mainly used for the design and manufacture of image and text, but it will be more convenient to use homemade professional screen printing and publishing software, such as Wen Yuan Ge and montai.

Programs that digitally process T-shirt patterns by computer are generally: Graphic Input - design edit - effect color draft - color separation - Screening - setting the screening angle - output.

If you give it to a professional person, you must tell some technical requirements: first, the color separation intention.

Is the primary color separation or spot color separation or primary color separation, etc., so that the production staff will be clear.

Two, screening.

T-shirt printing screen is generally less than 60 lines, and the limit of the number of wire added depends on the production characteristics, fabric texture and color.

Mucilage printing is usually not suitable for screen printing. Under special circumstances, the screen printing technology should be applied, and the number of mesh lines should be below 40 lines.

The net number of water paste printing is generally about 50 lines.

The number of lines added to hot melt ink can be selected between 35~60 lines. If the fabric is darker, a line of 35~45 can be used to make the ink cover more powerful. The number of foam ink, crystal ink and wire mesh should be coarse and unsuitable.

Because the hot melt ink will never plug in the net, the 70~80 wire screen can also be used.

The dot shape of T-shirt printing usually uses oval and round dots.

Three, the angle of T-shirt screening is usually 15`, usually starting from 5`.

Starting from 20`, the net angle of the seven colors is still separated by 15`.

Four. In particular, we should draw the attention of the production staff to the positive picture of Zhengyang film, which is different from the usual printing plate making manuscript.

The main methods of output are:

(1) printer draft.

Inkjet printer, laser printer and wax printer can be used. The cost of laser printers is higher, but the cost of using them is slightly lower. The cost of ink jet printer is low, but the cost of using ink is high. The cost of purchasing wax printing printers (also called dry printers) is high.

For the quality of film, wax printer is the best, laser printer is also good, inkjet printer is poor.

(2) engraving machine.

That is, using computer engraving machine to engrave the pattern on the red (black) self adhesive paper and paste it on the PVC film, but the lettering machine's precision is not as good as that of the printer, and it can only be used for printing with poor accuracy.

(3) laser typesetting.

Laser Phototypesetting is the highest quality method for making films.

Just because the laser phototypesetting equipment is very expensive, only a certain size of the plate making center will be configured.

The price is higher than that of the printer, but the quality is much better.

Digital direct plate making technology

There are three main applications of computer to plate (CTP) in screen printing.

1. ink jet (wax) CTP plate making.

The technology is to print the image on the prefabricated version of the screen precoated optical adhesive by means of computer controlled lithographic inkjet or wax spray printer.

This ink image replaces the effect of plate negatives, exposing and developing the printing screen.

The United States and Switzerland have all produced ink jet (wax) CTP plate making machines.

Gao Bo (Gerber) in 1992 produced a C T P plate making system for T-shirt printing plate making: Screen Jet (the largest panel area 65cmx95cm), and now it has sold hundreds of units in the world.

2. spray glue CTP plate making.

Unlike the inkjet CTP, the photosensitive polymer glue is sprayed on the screen. The image is exactly the opposite of that of inkjet printing.

3. laser CTP plate making.

A computer controlled optical system is used to scan the prefabricated photosensitive screen with a modulated laser beam. The point of the laser beam scanning is exposure curing, and then becomes a printed screen after washing.

Compared with the current plate making technology, CTP technology has obvious advantages.

The process of making plate negatives has been cancelled, which is much more convenient and fast, and the quality has been improved.

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Screen making

1. screen making materials and tools

The screen is made up of mesh frame, silk screen and photosensitive adhesive. The materials used include nail net nails, sticky mesh adhesive, sealing tape and so on. The main tools for making screen are: wire mesh, net clamp, nail net, glue gluing machine, glue scraper bucket, dryer, printer, water jet and so on.

T-shirt printing usually saves a certain number of pattern plates and has a long shelf life. Generally speaking, the net frame is considered from an economic point of view.

Wood frame material is good for Chinese fir, too hard for wood nails. It is difficult to mesh nails. Loose wood is easy to deform and loose.

The use of nail net is faster and more convenient than sticky mesh adhesive, but the screen mesh stability is poor.

If you can combine the two best.

Because most of the T-shirt printing uses waterborne coatings, the polyester mesh should be used, because nylon mesh is easy to expand and relax when it meets water.

2. net

The screen technology of T - shirt screen is the same as that of ordinary screen.

But it should be noted that the screen should be suitable for different printing materials.

For example, if a set of screen printing materials includes water slurry printing material, foam printing material, gold and silver paste printing material, then 120 mesh mesh should be used for water slurry, and 80~100 mesh mesh should be used for foaming slurry and gold silver paste, and 140 screen mesh is recommended for screen printing.

For printing with chemical fiber or purified fiber fabric, 140~160 mesh mesh should be used for waterborne pulp printing, and 240 mesh for printing ink.

3. photosensitive plate making

Water based printing paste uses water sensitive glue, thermosetting ink and solvent photosensitive glue are all available. Solvent soluble photoresist is preferred because stripping is easier.

In the screen printing photosensitive glue should pay attention to the adhesive layer is uniform, the general printing surface glue layer is thicker than the scratch surface glue layer.

The thickness of photographic film is quite different from that of printing material, fabric and figure.

(1) the screen film should be booklet.

If the film is thick, there will be more printed materials, which will make paste paste more easily.

(2) chemical fiber fabrics, whether they use ink or waterborne pulp, and thermosetting ink, should be kept on the screen, so as to prevent the paste from printing.

However, if the fabric of Oxford is more coarse (more than 400 denier, used for school bags, etc.), the film can be thicker.

(3) screen printing must be thick for printing and foaming printing.

Especially when printing paste on dark fabric and rough fabric, the screen layer should be about 3 times the thickness of the screen adhesive layer (0.3mm or above), so that the paste will be strong covering and smooth.

The production and process requirements of the T-shirt printing screen are basically the same as that of the conventional screen making. However, since the screen is thick or thick with a mesh of about 80 mesh, it is necessary to master the exposure time when printing, so as to avoid the aliasing of the image.

Prepress technology not only determines the good or bad of T-shirt production, but also determines its success or failure.

In operation, a beautifully designed T-shirt, which is not very well printed, can still be sold, because consumers know little about printing technology. But if the design of a T-shirt is not good enough, you can print it more finely, and the quality of the fabric will be better, and no one will buy it.

Because buying T-shirts is culture, T-shirt design is worth more than T shirt.

Therefore, the design of T-shirt pattern plays an important role in the composition of T-shirt.

Of course, this is not to say that the quality of printing is not important.

T-shirts with high print quality, even those who do not know the printing technology, will be able to distinguish their stop times from their feelings.

In practice, we have summed up a sentence: whether the pattern decides whether to sell or not; whether the printing decides whether to sell well (price).

In addition, in terms of exposure to print, our enterprises usually do not have very precise time requirements for exposure. However, if we use the print test table to test, we will find that the control of the printing time may have little effect on the rough lines, but it has great influence on the fine lines and the mesh points. If we want to make high quality web plates, we must seriously determine the exposure time.

It is the same set of four color screen negatives. Due to the different density of dots, the exposure time should be different. The exposure time of low tone screen should be a little shorter. The exposure time of high-profile screen should be a bit longer to avoid high light spot being washed away.

In addition to computer production, pre press technology can be said to be not difficult to master. The important thing is to be serious and keep improving.

T-shirts can be classified from two aspects: business scope and printing process.

T-shirt classification:

1. T-shirts, namely T-shirts, which are targeted at social consumers to enter conventional commodity circulation channels.

2. T-shirt, a T-shirt for the purpose of carrying advertising, belongs to the advertising media. Its contents can be commercial advertisements, political advertisements and public service advertisements.

3. tourism t-shirt t-shirt tourism has a considerable status in the souvenir market abroad. Tourist attractions, scenic spots and historical sites and cultural landscapes must be accompanied by a large number of tourist T-shirts and T-shirts.

Tourism T-shirt is the best embodiment of national culture, regional culture, customs, culture, natural landscape culture and political history and culture.

4. group T-shirts - large to international social group organizations, small to a team, band, own T-shirt is always proud.

5. theme T-shirts - major historical themes, cultural entertainment projects, political activities and celebrity fun will also be reflected on T-shirts, satisfying people's desire for participation and remembrance.

In recent years, such as the theme of 97 Hongkong's return, the theme of the 98 World Cup has brought a huge tide of T-shirts, which has achieved considerable social and economic benefits.

6. brand T-shirts, many famous brand clothes also often produce their own brand T-shirts to achieve the name (advertising effect) benefit.

T-shirts can be printed according to the following categories:

1. the local printing T-shirts are printed mainly on the front, back, front left upper chest, cuffs, back collar and so on.

Local printed T-shirts account for more than 70% of T-shirts.

2. the printed T-SHIRT - printed T-shirt is divided into three categories: cloth printing, cutting printing and garment printing.

Among them, all the printed garments need to be produced by special T-shirt printing machines, which represent the highest level of technical equipment for T-shirts printing.

3. waterborne pigment printing - mainly used for white T-shirt printing.

4. pulp printing - mainly used for dyeing T-shirt printing.

5. thermosetting ink printing - all kinds of fabrics (including chemical fiber) are suitable, is the most promising T-shirt printing ink, because it is suitable for the use of advanced computer design, adapt to the adoption of modern automatic production mode, symbol of contemporary technology development trend.

Especially on the dark fabric, the effect of printing is more difficult than that of the glue, which speeds up the speed of the glue withdrawal from the T-shirt printing.

6. pfer printing T-shirt mainly consists of two types: hot melt adhesive and deinking.

7. the special types of pigment printing are mainly printing, flocking printing, photosensitive, water sensitive, heat sensitive pigment printing, luminous pigment printing, fragrant pigment printing, multicolored decorative film (laser chip) printing, etc.

8. special technology processing, such as anti dye printing, discharge printing and batik, tie dye T-shirt and so on.

9. embroidered T-shirt

10. composite technology - what are the requirements for the pixels of the heat pfer image and material processed by the above printing and processing technology in a T-shirt pattern? First, the size of the production is set and the resolution is generally 200-300.

For the selection of image material, we suggest that it is best to use 3 million pixel digital photos, and the pictures downloaded on the Internet or photos are usually 75.