The Pros and Cons of Screen Printing

One of the most common topics that comes up when considering screen printing is in which cases it is more useful than other methods of printing, such as digital printing or offset printing.

Screen Vs. Digital Printing 

Screen printing is a manual process which involves extensive setup in preparing the screen for printing designs. It requires a greater investment of time and resources in order to setup for a screen printing run than it does for digital. Furthermore, you need to use a different screen for every color used in a design - and screens can't be reused for another design.

When is Screen Printing Advantageous?

At first glance, you may be wondering how this could possibly compete with the more modern process of digital printing.

How can a manual printing process which requires a more time and resource-intensive setup up be advantageous to its digital counterpart?

Print Quality

There are certain types of jobs that, believe it or not, can be done much more efficiently with screen printing.

For example, you are able to get higher quality prints for jobs that require detailed color contrast and/or bright colors.

Job Size

Aside from difference in quality, the size of the print run is a great determining factor in which method to utilize.

Digital printing takes the cake when it comes to short print runs. With there being no investment required for the digital printing setup process (which isn't much more than file prep), it's the cost-effective option for low volume print jobs.

However, when it comes to bulk orders, screen printing actually becomes the more cost-efficient alternative. Why? Digital printing has fixed pricing (the amount of ink being used, equipment runtime, etc.). As the number of prints go up, the average cost per print does not start to drop.

On the other hand, more prints produced used for a single screen makes the cost of large volume jobs much lower. The bulk of the cost in screen printing is the initial setup, which becomes relatively smaller when talking about bulk orders.

So to sum up, digital printing is best for short runs while screen printing is best for bulk orders (when considering job size alone).

So there's the basic rundown of when screen printing is advantageous over digital printing. Leave a comment below if you have any questions or comments!

What is Screen Printing?

What is Screen Printing?

Screen printing is a method of printing commonly used for bulk orders of printing custom images on fabric. Not to be mistaken with DTG (Direct-To-Garment) Printing, screen printing involves the use of a thin mesh screen to transfer ink to the desired surface.

The first step is to create a negative of the image you want printed on clear film, using black ink that will completely protect the covered areas from UV light exposure. This film is then placed on your mesh screen.

For each color being used in the design, a separate screen must be prepared. Once that's taken care of, an emulsion is applied which will harden during the exposure stage to create the stencil itself.

Place each screen into a UV exposure unit, take them out and wash off the emulsion. At this point, you'll have a screen stencil with the design being the only area on the mesh screen which will allow ink to pass through.

The next step is to place the screen (or screens if you are using multiple colors) onto the T-shirt or other printable material and then to roll ink over the screen. The areas of the screen that weren't affected by the UV exposure, because they were covered by ink on the negative, will not let ink through.

You are left with your printed design!

Ballard Screen Printing Introduction

Thanks for stopping by my blog! I created the Ballard Screen Printing Blog, because I love working in the screen printing industry and enjoy writing. I figured it would make sense to combine the two and give myself some place to write about screen printing.

Full disclaimer: I'm not an expert in the industry by any means; I own a small family run print shop, and we are happy with the success we've had. I'm not here to be your new printing business guru, but rather to write some informative/entertaining content related to the printing industry. I hope you enjoy the posts to come!