What Are The Steps Needed For a T-shirt Printer?

For the production of printed garments for promotions, merchandise and fashion there are mainly 3 particular methods of screen printing employed. For any t-shirt printer, 'Spot Colour' printing is the most common and works exceptionally well for a great variety of graphics. Spot color printing is used for those graphics that do not have photographic properties.

A graphic design professional typically determines the exact Pantone colours that the ink will be matched to in order to produce a high fidelity image. In order to isolate the hues of the ink in the image, Pantone coated or noncoated references are selected. Used in publishing, printing and design whereby each colour is identified by a unique pantone name and number, the Pantone matching system is an international colour reference.

This method of spot colour printing is particularly suited to the printing of branded promotional garments or merchandise where colour identity and uniformity must remain constant throughout a diverse range of products.

An additional method of screen printing used is called 4 Colour Process. This method of printing is used mainly for photographic images and illustrations that consist of a wide range of colours, tones and graduations. The method used to print images found in magazines and books is the 4 colour process as well.

The inks, though they are translucent, will merge together on the white background, which will reproduce the tones and hues of the original. This is certainly a much harder procedure to do on material than it is to do on paper. But the method used is about the same. This type of printing will of course only work on white garments and will not be suitable for coloured fabrics. The print set up costs are higher than that of simple spot colour designs and as such only suitable for larger print runs of 100+.

When garment screen printers reproduce such full colour images onto coloured fabrics a method called 'Simulated Process' is used. Using method similar to spot colour, as used by a t-shirt printer to achieve the overall look and feel of the original image the artwork is separated into various colours and shades.

For transferring heavy metal imagery and fantasy imagery from CD covers to black T-shirts for band merchandise, this popular method is used by printers everywhere. This, for a t shirt printer is the most expensive. For that reason, it is used entirely on large print runs. This is because it costs more to set up the colour separations, and it takes a greater number of colours to print the pictures.