Offset printing how to use silk screen to play creative

1. Overview of Screen Printing Screen-printed printing plates are in the form of a mesh. When printing, the ink on the printing plates is squeezed down by a doctor blade and printed on the printing materials from the through-hole portion of the printing plate. The change of screen printing effect mainly depends on the screen design and materials, ink properties and so on.
Screen Design and Materials
The size of the mesh affects the fineness of the silk screen. The finer the mesh, the more suitable it is for printing detailed images. Now meshes are usually made from 63 to 150 metrics, but rarely more than 150. In addition to the technical limitations of mesh materials and manufacturing screens, it is more important that the inks also have a certain viscosity, so the larger meshes (ie meshes) Finer, it is often difficult for ink to pass through the mesh. In addition, many silk screen products require a thicker layer of ink to express the texture of the printed matter and to exploit the ink's specialty. When printing such products, finer meshes and appropriate inks should be used.
Screen printing ink screen printing ink is mainly divided into two kinds of thermosetting and ultraviolet curing. Thermoset inks are more choices and the cost is lower. However, the thermosetting ink layer may volatilize. Therefore, if there is not enough ink to wet the screen during the production process, or if the paused printing time is too long, there will be inevitably a plug-in condition, and the thermosetting ink will take a long time. Only thoroughly dry. Therefore, with regard to the convenience and effect of production, thermosetting inks are not UV curable inks.
In recent years, UV-curable inks have become more and more popular in screen printing. In addition to avoiding plugging problems, it is more important that they can be dried in a short time. In today's environment where productivity and efficiency are important, UV curable inks solve many problems for them. In addition, UV inks can produce printing effects that cannot be achieved by some thermosetting inks. For example, some UV inks can receive different burst patterns when receiving different wavelengths of UV light, namely, so-called special moiré patterns or ice pattern effects. UV inks are most commonly found in prints, but they are partially UV-cured. Although flexible printing can also be used for local UV polishing, on the basis of texture and outstanding image performance, screen printing UV glazing is undoubtedly superior.
2. Differences between Offset Printing and Screen Printing The basic principle of offset printing is that “oil and water are not the same”. Use this principle to make related PS plates. Ink, transfer printing through a blanket, is a simple printing method. There are many kinds of offset printing methods (water printing, waterless printing, flat pressing, round pressing, etc.), and the requirements for substrates and related consumables are relatively strict.
Screen printing is direct printing. Printing is performed by miss printing. The effect of printing is controlled by the thickness of the mesh of the screen, the hardness and hardness of the squeegee, and the angle pressure. There are various printing methods (flat circular roller type, round pressure Circular, flat and flat, and unconventional shapes, etc.) The range of substrates and printing consumables is very wide.
Traditionally, offset printing has a large volume of production and investment, and most of the fixed equipment is less adaptable to printing materials. Therefore, it is generally necessary to “print materials to relocate machinery”. Silk screen printing, on the other hand, has lower production efficiency and lower investment in general equipment. Different types of printing materials such as paper, film and fabrics can also be applied. It is therefore “machine-adapted to printing materials”. Screen printing products include a wide range of products, such as pressure gauges, matte patterns on tobacco and alcohol boxes, ceramic flower paper (paper pattern transferred to the ceramic), general print (local glazing), electronic products (nameplate and flexible Lines), ironing drawings, etc.
3. Offset printing and screen printing with each other
As product packaging is constantly seeking new and attractive to attract customers, the imagination of designers is more and more abundant and bold. It often crosses the conventions in the industry. Ordinary packaging and printing can no longer satisfy them. So, under such circumstances, we now often see offset printing and screen printing to cooperate with each other to create amazing prints! In the case of special-effect screen printing inks, scented inks, liquid crystal color inks, thermochromic inks, fluorescent color inks, matte inks, iced inks, mirror inks, foaming inks, light-storing inks, etc. can be casually spoken. Wait. The use of these inks was silk-screened on offset pieces to make a seamless fit. It's amazing how wonderful this world is!
The use of special silk screen printing inks is often seen on delicate and elegant packaging papers, and silk screen printing effects are used to make advertisements lively. For example, a night view of a Victoria Harbour, plus a little bit of luminous ink, the entire image will become realistic and interesting. In terms of functionality, anti-counterfeit packaging has become an important issue due to the proliferation of counterfeit products, and many anti-counterfeiting methods are achieved through screen printing.
4. The equipment and technology required for the silk screen printing process
In the screen printing and offset printing more and more popular today, Ke-style factory concurrently screen printing has become a trend. However, the traditional screen printing equipment, such as manual screen printing, is not only far from production efficiency and does not have thousands of hours per hour of offset printing, and more importantly, the quality of products is unstable. Even with a semi-automatic screen printing machine, the hand operation can only reach production of about 400 sheets per hour. However, the quality of printing is still different. Therefore, in recent years, some Ko-style plants seeking product innovation have begun to purchase high-speed automatic screen printers in order to attach special silk screen elements to traditional offset printing. Automatic screen printing machines such as Japan's Sakurai (SAKURAI) are different from semi-automatic machines in terms of automatic paper feeding, registering, scraping, and feeding to drying ovens. This can greatly increase production. What's more important is that the time it takes to install and adjust the version is short, and it is now adapting to the requirements of the “small quantity but many varieties” on the market today.
However, it should be noted that although the offset and silkscreen platemaking films are generic, sometimes they will need to be fine-tuned for the screen-printing film because of overprinting problems, because silk screen printing plates are often required to print extremely thick inks. The effect of the film is that, in the case of a special thickening of the drying sizing and the fact that the stencil is always an elastic body, if the film is not modified, it cannot be accurately overprinted. (Stanley Lee) ("Graphics")