Silkscreen - 43 ArtWork

Making a Squeegee for Print Screen – The Blade

8 Comments / Silkscreen, Printing / D Almeida

The squeegee is the other part of the basic screen printing equipment. In a manual and artisanal context, the frame and squeegee can be considered as the screen printing machine – the former supporting the image matrix to be printed and the latter operating actively and directly on the former, in order to reproduce that image by pressure exerted on the ink and through the mesh. The squeegee is a piece consisting of a part, usually made of wood or aluminum – the handle – and a part made of rubber or synthetic plastic – the blade -, with the purpose of distributing and pressing the ink during…

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Silkscreen – About The Stencil

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A stencil is the equivalent of a mold for an image, as a way to reproduce it identically without having to draw or paint it endlessly – a principle also common to a printing system. In this case, the image becomes the matrix. In the context of screen printing, this stencil refers to the screen itself, right after the entire process of waterproofing the mesh along with the opening of the matrix, and which, by the nature of its constitution, is defined as a permeographic stencil. Generally, there are three ways of producing a silkscreen permeographic stencil, between indirect and direct methods: 1.by collage – cutout (indirect)…

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Silkscreen Preprinting- The Positive

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The photosensitization stencil process requires an independent matrix, usually produced on transparent film – a so-called photolith, if generated photomechanically; or a slide/film positive, if generated manually or digitally. Currently, the term photolith is still used in some professional environments (Western Europe), derived from what was the lithographic photomechanical and which expanded to other printing techniques. A photomechanical process means that the mechanical phase (printing) depends on a photographic phase, which implies a light-capturing process. Before the computer age, a photolith was effectively generated by photographing and developing an original on a sensitized surface (a complex compound of insulating layers, sensitized with silver chloride), in a darkroom.

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Silkscreen – About Inks

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In screen printing, all choices depend, first and foremost, on the substrate. The substrate corresponds to the lower layer, which in a printing context refers to the surface to be printed, whether it is two-dimensional or three-dimensional. The chemical (composition) and physical (shape and roughness) characteristics of the substrate, as well as its intended purpose, define the type of ink to be used. Ambient temperature and humidity regulate any prior or additional procedures. Inks can be classified according to several criteria, based on their visual, structural, or drying/curing characteristics. Visual characteristics are, naturally, related to color and opacity, reflected in the optical impression generated when…

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