Screen Printing - What We Do | The Flippin Sweet Print Co.

WHAT IS SCREEN PRINTING?

Screen printing is a traditional process and involves pushing ink through a mesh stencil screen for every colour in the design. Each screen is aligned (registered) on our press to make sure all colours line up. We then print each colour in sequence onto the t-shirt until the final image builds. Due to the preparation time involved in the screen printing routine this process is more suited to orders of 25pcs and upwards.

We use a 6 colour carousel and manually hand print your garments using waterbased and phthalate free eco friendly inks to create the perfect combination of soft but vibrant printed textile garments.

– We also understand the value of minimizing the effect our printing has on the planet. This is why we make significant efforts to keep our inks as Eco friendly as possible. Not only do our inks look and feel great, they contain no phalates or plasticizers which also allows the use of Eco Friendly cleaning solutions. As an example of our efforts we recently switched out our aerosol pallet adhesives to a waterbased alternative which not only helps the planet, it helps our lungs too!

We screen print because we love it! We are passionate about screen printing and put a lot of care and attention into producing the best quality, soft and vibrant print possible.

Wholesale Prices

Take advantage of our competitive, quality assured wholesale pricing. Colour and Quantity based prices.

Low, 10 Shirt Minimum.

Low minimum of 10 shirts for single colour printing. Two – Six colour printing has a Low minimum of 20 shirts.

Make it retail ready

Everything you need from screen printed neck, hem tags and poly bagging so your t-shirts are retail ready.

THE PROCESS

Screen printing is a craft, each step has to be carefully considered and prepared to ensure best print results. We have briefly outlined the various steps we take before printing your t-shirts, to give you a general overview.

ARTWORK SEPERATION

Your vector or high resolution artwork is broken down in to layers. Each layer is a separation of the colours/screens needed to build up the final print image.

FILM POSITIVES

We then output (print) the layers to individual film positives. The film positives are transparent sheets printed with a high density opaque black ink.

SCREEN COATING

We coat the mesh of the clean degreased screens using a photo sensitive emulsion which when exposed to uv light hardens and adheres to the mesh.

SCREEN EXPOSURE

The printed positives are taped and positioned on to the emulsion coated screens. The screens are placed in to our exposure unit which hardens the emulsion.

TEST SHIRT

We load each screen with a little ink and perform a test print on a recycled shirt. This way we can check all the screens line up and the final print is as expected.

SCREEN WASHOUT

We take the screens to the washout booth, the area not exposed to the uv light (image printed on the positives) can then be washed out. This reveals the print image as a stencil.

TAPING UP

Once dry, the screens can be taped up along the inside edges (to ensure no ink spills out on to your garment) and any registration marks are covered ready to go to press.

PRESS REGISTRATION

Using the registration marks as a guide, we place each screen on our print carousel. We use the “micro-registration” adjusters to dial in the screens, ensuring the design lines up.

INK PREPARATION

We don’t stock any ink colours ready mixed other than White. This means for every order we mix just enough ink to complete the job in the colours we need, so little is wasted.

LETS PRINT!

Once we’re happy with the test print, we fire up the driers and prepare to print your full order of shirts. Watch a little clip we put together of printing in the action