When we approach a garage, an electrician or any professional whose field of work we do not know, there is always the fear of this lack of familiarity. We don’t really know what he does? Are we getting a good service or product or are we being worked on… If you have such a concern regarding screen printing or printing on shirts at a printing house – this guide is for you! We will try to break down the elements you will need or want to know before you make the first contact with the printing house.
G o o d l u c k!
We will divide the guide into four areas that you should pay attention to when you come to a print shop to print with screen printing:
- The graphic we want to print.
- What we need to know about the fabric on which we print.
- What faults there may be in printing.
- Costs and when is it worthwhile to print with screen printing?
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Part 1- The graphics:
What is important to know when transferring graphics to the printing house for screen printing?
We will talk about three options related to graphics:
The first situation is that you do not have your own graphics and the printing house is ready to provide a graphic design service. In such a situation you can be calm and know that the graphics will be suitable for printing (after all, the printer knows what he needs for printing), but on the other hand there are some things that you should pay attention to:
- First of all get a visualization of the graphic and confirm it. In the approval, pay attention to check phone numbers and correct spelling – I will have to redo entire works because a client approved graphics without checking.
- Secondly, pay attention to the colors – if the graphics are colored, ask the printing house to make sure that the colors look like the graphics sent to you, but keep in mind that almost every print has a certain percentage of difference.
A second situation is that you bring ready-made graphics designed by a graphic artist of your choice. In this situation you will usually be asked to bring a good quality image file or PDF to the printer. In addition, it is better to ask the graphic artist to prepare a file with one color from the start (if the graphics are not colored). Note that gray and black are considered two different colors, so are dark gray and light gray – any change in shade is considered an additional color in terms of screen printing.
It is better not to have shading or very small details in the graphics because the plastisol is a very thick ink and therefore there can be a situation where not enough ink will transfer to the fabric and part of the graphics will disappear or in the opposite situation where there are small parts in the graphics and they will stick to other parts.
My tip: After the printing house has received the graphic – check with him if it is suitable for quality printing? Is it necessary to thicken or separate certain parts? And what is their general opinion about the quality of the print.
A third situation is that you designed the graphics yourself – by design software or by drawing. If you used professional software for design (Photoshop, Illustrator or CorelDrow for example) pay attention to all the highlights we mentioned before and also make sure you save the file on the CMYK setting and 300DPI, these are the main settings that printing houses (not only in the field of printing on clothing) work with.
If you chose to design with another software, please note: WORD or PowerPoint are not design software. And usually the graphics created in them need to be adjusted by a graphic artist. Therefore, if you choose to design with these programs, try to make sure to design only text and not images.
Another emphasis is – even if you saved the graphic as a PDF, it does not solve the problem! A PDF file designed in Photoshop and a PDF file designed in WORD are different in terms of their suitability for printing.
In many cases (for example, when printing t-shirts for trips, for events or when printing t-shirts for youth movements), the printing house receives hand-drawn graphics. If you chose to prepare the graphics in this way, consider the following points:
- Always make sure to color the graphics uniformly, preferably with a thick black marker and as few light and thin elements as possible.
- Also, try to draw the graphic on a white page and without dirt or details in the background (for example, don’t draw on a notebook page with lines or decorations).
- Keep in mind that the graphics should be as clear as possible, so don’t draw a small drawing. Paying attention to these highlights will make it easier for the printing house to transfer the graphics to the screen in a good way and you will get better quality work.
Learn about professional design software
Easy to use software with free option
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Part 2- the shirt
What do I need to bring to the printing house to print shirts?
Usually the only thing that the printing house will ask of you is the graphic – whether in the form of a file or in the form of a printed drawing. There are situations in which you would prefer to bring your own shirts, especially if they are shirts that you know and are comfortable with or when it comes to branded shirts, and by bringing the shirts it can lower the cost of printing.
But keep in mind: if it’s normal shirts, it will usually be cheaper for you to take them directly from the printing house – mainly because if there are faults or mistakes in the printing, the printing house is the one that will absorb the cost of the shirts that were not printed correctly. On the other hand, most printing houses will not take responsibility for shirts that they do not supply, and then you will absorb the cost of the shirts that did not turn out well in the printing.
What shirts can be screen printed on?
What do you need to know about the shirts that the printing houses provide? Most printing houses work with several suppliers and shirt importers. There are a few printing houses that import the shirts themselves, but mostly it is the big printing houses that have an economic reason to do so. In terms of the quality of the shirts, you should know that an important measure of the quality of the shirt (when it comes to cotton shirts) is the weight of the fabric. In the simple and cheap shirts, the weight of the fabric is 140 or 150 grams (meaning that a square meter of fabric weighs 140 or 150 grams – gsm). On the other hand, the higher quality shirts weigh 170/180 grams per meter and there are even higher weight shirts. The meaning of the fabric weight is that as it increases, there is more density of fabric fibers. Many printing houses work with shirts weighing 140 grams – which are cheaper to reduce the printing costs more.
If you want better quality shirts, you can ask for shirts weighing 170 grams, but keep in mind that you will probably have to add to the price. It is important to remember that it is usually better to go to the printing house itself to see and feel the shirt fabric and its quality.
What is the screen printed shirts made of?
Today there are two main types of fabrics that printing houses work with: cotton and polyester. T-shirts are usually made of 100% cotton – and there are those who prefer them because of the softer feel of the fabric, but keep in mind that cotton absorbs water and sweat, so this can have an effect if the shirts are used by workers who are outside for most of the work.
In addition, cotton has a certain shrinkage after the first wash (most manufacturers talk about up to 5% shrinkage) and this should be considered when choosing the size. To deal with the shrinking issue, most cotton fabrics today also incorporate polyester fibers (even if the shirt is defined as 100% cotton).
On the other hand, polyester fabrics do not absorb water, and most of the polyester shirts that the printing houses supply are defined as ‘sweat wicking’ or sports shirts. These shirts are made of polyester and their weave is usually airier to allow sweat to evaporate more easily.
Keep in mind that unlike the cotton fabrics, in the sports shirts the preference is for lighter weight fabrics. The great advantage of these shirts is that the polyester does not shrink after washing and in addition the color of the shirt does not fade over time (which does happen with the cotton shirts).
Are there fabrics that are not suitable for screen printing?
In general, you can print on almost any type of fabric. The fabrics with which there are usually problems are nylon fabrics and fabrics that have been treated to repel water, so the color does not always set perfectly on them. If you have chosen to print on fabrics that contain nylon, you should ask the printer how durable the ink will be on the fabric and whether he uses an ink intended for printing on nylon.
Another and very important matter on the subject is that there are fabrics that, due to the way they are dyed, create a situation where the color rises upwards and this affects the color of the print.
This happens mainly in softshell jackets or dark polyester shirts. Usually on these fabrics the printing is done in white color and after some time you see that the color of the print becomes dark. To deal with this problem there are paints that have been produced with very high opacity. If you chose to print on a product that has a chance of such a color increase, you should ask the printer if he uses opaque white ink.
Another way to deal with this problem is to print in two layers or with a white base: in this situation, you first print a layer of white color and then dry it, on top of the first print you print again, thus creating a two-layer print that provides much better visibility. There are printing houses (unfortunately not many) that print all their prints in this way and thus provide a much higher quality print.
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Part 3- Why didn’t my print come out well?
The answer to this question is related to almost everything that is mentioned on the site to one degree or another, but I will refer to three possibilities:
Unclear printing or details that don’t look good:
The first reason can be related to the graphics themselves – the graphics were not well designed, too small details in the graphics, poor quality graphics (eg pixelated graphics). There is also the possibility that the process of projecting the graphics onto the screen was not good (an example of this is that the slide was not attached to the screen hermetically during the projection of the light and therefore there is a gap or displacement of it that creates an inaccurate stencil).
A second reason for this can be related to the screen – if the screen was dirty or there are blockages in the screen holes, this will be reflected in the print. During printing, the screen sometimes gets dirty from its ink and therefore transfers stains to the shirt.
Another situation that sometimes happens is that the screen itself is not fixed properly, so during printing there is a shift of the entire screen, which creates an inaccurate print. A mesh with an incorrect density can also affect the print (if you want to learn more about this, click here).
A third reason for inaccurate screen printing can be related to the human printer’s technique – sometimes it happens that during printing the printer (or the printing machine) does not apply enough pressure in pushing the ink through the screen, or applies unequal pressure on each side of the screen, and this can affect the appearance of the print.
Solution tips:
First of all – carefully check the graphics that are sent to the printing house – avoid tight and small details and ask the printing house to check the graphics and assess whether it is suitable.
Correct choice of the fabric for printing – detailed graphics that can be printed on a cotton shirt may not turn out well on a hoodie (because of the thickness of the fabric) or on a sports shirt (because of the airy weave and the holes in the fabric).
Malfunctions related to the printing process are the responsibility of the printing house and must be corrected, so it is important to make sure before starting the printing that the printing house confirms that the graphics are good and suitable for printing on the type of shirt you requested.
Print does not look good enough on the fabric:
The meaning of these words is not – is the graphic beautiful, but how visible is the graphic on the shirt?
The first reason for this is simply an incorrect choice of the printing shades – it happens that a customer arrives with a ready-made logo and insists on printing the logo in the colors he chose without giving thought to the question of how it will look on the shirt?
For example: when the logo has shades of navy blue or dark gray and the color of the shirt the customer chose is black – then the visibility of the print will probably not be good.
Another reason for this is the graphics – it is important to adjust the size of the print so that we do not print a logo with many details in a small size and then the print does not look clear. In addition, in graphics with small details, sometimes there is not enough volume of ink for each detail and then the graphics are not clear.
Another cause of a visibility problem that mainly affects dark shirts is that some of the ink is absorbed into the fabric and the print loses its opacity.
Solution tips:
Paying attention to what the printer says – most printers have the ability to recognize when there is a clash of colors that may harm visibility, so if the printer recommends changing the colors in the logo or the colors of the shirt, listen to him.
Note that you receive from the printing house a simulation of how the shirt will look and how the colors will look.
If necessary, it is worth requesting a print in two layers in order to increase the degree of visibility, especially on thick fabrics that may absorb some of the ink – although this involves an additional fee.
Don’t be fixated! More than once I have asked a client to take down part of the graphic or change parts of it – especially when it is small, so that in the end the visibility will be better. Of course, this should be done with thought: in the front print (which is usually printed small on the chest), you can give up the website, phone or email (which we will not give up in the large back print), but on the other hand, the company’s logo will not be deleted under any circumstances.
Another way to deal with problems of clashing colors is to add a white stroke around the graphic. This makes it possible to keep the original colors of the graphic (even if it is a dark graphic on a dark shirt) by separating the dark colors from each other with the help of the white frame.
A screen printing color fading:
There are situations where after the first wash parts of the print are erased. This situation usually happens when the ink fixing step is not done properly: either the paint was not dried with enough heat or the fixing was not done for a long enough time. During the fixation phase, the plastisol color must be heated to a temperature of at least 160 degrees Celsius, while the inner layers of the color (those that are next to the fabric) must also reach this temperature.
If the shirt spent too short a time in the oven (under the heating elements) and only the outer side of the color had time to dry, we will see that the print starts to peel or come off in the washes. This situation is of course the responsibility of the printing house and must correct the work (note that this is fading that appears shortly after you received the shirts from the printing house, and not natural fading that occurs with time and washing).
My tips:
When you collect the shirts from the printing house, you will select a few shirts and press the print with your finger – the plastisol ink after fixing should not be too soft or sticky. In addition, you can gently scratch the print with your fingernail – if the print is scratched or peels off, then that’s a problem. Just remember to do this when the shirt is cold and not immediately when it comes out of the dryer.
If you discovered the problem only after washing – check if it happened only on a few shirts or the entire quantity, and of course make sure to come back to the printer with as many shirts as possible. The reason for this is that this fault occurs in one of two cases: either in the first shirts that were printed and this is because the dryer probably did not reach the desired temperature when the shirts were put into it – and in this situation you can easily ask the printer to replace the damaged shirts.
A second situation is that the dryer was probably set to an inappropriate heat and then the defect will be in the entire order and in such a situation it is better to bring as many samples of damaged shirts as possible to prove to the printer that it is necessary to compensate for all the shirts that were in the order.
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Part 4- When would we prefer to use screen print?
We have come to the end of this guide… we will summarize things by comparing the situations in which we would like to print with screen print and the situations in which it probably won’t pay off:
When would we prefer to use screen print?
1. Bulk order – at least 40/50 shirts.
2. When the graphics to be printed are not colored.
3. When the main demand is for cheap printing.
4. When it comes to work that will repeat itself (for example, a company that prints clothing for employees).
5. When all the shirts we want to print are with the same graphic.
When would we prefer not to print with screen print?
1. When the graphics are colored.
2. When it comes to a small amount of shirts.
3. When we want to transmit quality and representativeness.
4. When there are different details in the graphics – for example names, numbers or when large and small sizes of shirts are mixed (which affects the size of the print).
Conclusion
I hope the (not short) article was able to give you an initial idea, and even beyond, before reaching the printing house. In addition to everything I wrote, don’t forget to get opinions from other people who have printed at the printing house, be clear about your requirements – both in terms of the quality of work, in terms of costs and in terms of delivery time. And good luck!
