Screen printing process is adopted for T-shirt printing.

Screen Printing Makes Your T-shirts with Good Air Permeability

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Technical Background

On a hot summer day, a casual and comfortable T-shirt is a perfect choice for people who like casual wear. T-shirts come in a variety of styles, such as simple, fashion, funny and retro. The main reason why T-shirts have so many of styles is that they are printed with different patterns in different ways. In addition, different printing processes demonstrate patterns in different ways including but not limited to three-dimensional, abstract and blurry.

Technical Requirements

Wearing a T-shirt stresses on leisure and comfort. Therefore, it is particularly important to choose a printing process that can make the printed pattern breathable, soft and comfortable.

Solution

T-shirt printing mainly includes screen printing, plastisol printing and heat press printing.

T-shirts are placed on desks for drying after screen printing.

Screen printing for T-shirt printing

Heat press printing is used for T-shirt printing.

Heat press for T-shirt printing

Screen printing

Originating from China, it is the one of oldest T-shirt printing process. It is also known as ink printing. The ink used is somewhat similar to pigments we usually use in painting. It is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. One color is printed at a time and requires one screen template. Therefore, several screen templates are required to produce a multicolored image or design. However, it requires low marginal cost and provides great air permeability. The specific printing process is as follows:
1. Place the T-shirt that needs to be printed on the top of the substrate.
2. Put the template on the top of the T-shirt. The template consists of a nylon printing mesh and a wooden frame for fixing the printing mesh.
3. Then pour a small amount of ink onto the printing mesh.
4. A blade is used to move across the printing mesh to fill the open mesh apertures with ink and permeate onto the T-shirt.
5. Remove the T-shirt from the screen printer, and then you can see the printed pattern clearly.
Plastisol printing

It is also known as plastisol ink printing that adopts chemical ink as a pigment to solidify the ink on the fabric under high temperature. Plastisol printing also requires making printing template. However, compared with ink printing, it delivers poor air permeability and it is easy to fall off when it is applied on chemical fiber clothes. However, this printing process can be applied on T-shirts and Polo shirts to reduce the possibility of falling off.
Heat press printing

It is also known as hot stamping printing that takes transfer paper as a pigment. The printing process is to print the pattern on the transfer paper, first and then transfer the pattern on the transfer paper onto the clothes under high temperature and high pressure. Currently, it is the most popular printing method among small batch T-shirt custom services. Though free from making printing templates and simplifying the printing process, it delivers poor air permeability and easy to fall off after a period of time.

Therefore, screen printing is your best choice to make your printed pattern breathable, soft and comfortable.

Results

T-shirt patterns adopting screen printing delivers great air permeability, amazing softness and comfort. Its large batch production, cheap price, bright color, long shelf life and fast delivery make it become more and more popular in the printing industry.

The picture shows the printing effect of screen printing on T-shirts.

Screen printing T-shirt patterns

The picture shows the T-shirts produced by screen printing.

Screen printing T-shirts