Screen Printing & Embroidery are mainly used for promotional clothing so choosing the best process to promote your company is a very important decision. They both have their advantages and disadvantages but either choose has a massive impact on potential customers.
The process of screen printing
There are many factors when it comes to screen printing, the artwork, the screens and the machines your t-shirts are printed on. Firstly we have to produce the artwork which is created in Adobe Illustrator and is known as Vector, this is then printed onto film which gets exposed on the light table.
Screens are made up of many types of meshes from a 43 which allows a heavier deposit of ink to a 120 which puts a minimum deposit of ink down for finer detailed designs, emulsion is placed onto these meshes and then the film placed on top. These are both placed under the exposure unit to expose. The film blocks the light allowing the surrounding emulsion to cure whilst the covered area breaks down, the screen is then rinsed and ready for print.
Depending on your design this process can be done 1-12 times to produce screens for an individual job so setting up a job can be very time consuming. The screens are spun automatically around the machine in sequence whilst the squeegee pulls the ink across the screen depositing the ink onto the shirt. All colours are put down wet on wet unless we have dark shirts where a flash cure unit is used to dry the base before proceeding to the next colour. Once all the colours are completed the shirt is then taken off and placed through the dryer and there you have it a printed t-shirt.
The process of embroidery
Embroidery consists of two processes firstly you need your design digitised using embroidery software (Wilcom) this coverts the artwork into a format the machines can recognise and replicate the design into stitches onto your garments, Once completed this can be loaded into an embroidery machine (SWF) ready for sewing.
The time for processing the design can take 10 minutes to run; most manufactures machines have eight heads which enables multiple production runs.
The machine has a start point so wherever the designer has located this depends on how the image was created, most images are produced in layers and work backwards depending on the garment type. Each element is stitched with its specified colour which is taken from the industries standard (Madeira) threads with a maximum of 12 colours per head.
Whilst we have discussed the processes we haven't spoken about the advantages and disadvantages of screen printing and embroidery.
The major advantage between them both is speed, whilst screen printing has alot of stages to produce the screen once complete the process is minimal with some companies producing around 20,000 t-shirts a day. Embroideries downfall is the digitising, most designs are small but when you have an intricate design this can take hours to digitise and when complete only a maximum of 8 designs can be produced at one time.
Last ability is a major issue as screen printing is the choice when comparing with digital transfers but when it comes to embroidery this wins hands down. Screen Printing is produced by using inks so after time and many washes the inks start to deteriorate, this is alot slower than transfers but faster than embroidery threads losing their colour. Embroidery is the perfect choice for corporate wear as these can be washed at high temperatures and multiple times.
Cost effectiveness is the most important issue for most people as applying these techniques to clothing isn't cheap. The majority of the cost comes down to the design, if you have a small left breast 1 colour design this will be roughly the same cost, if you look at the other end of the scale and the design is large with multiple colours, screens become very expensive and programmes can have thousands of stitches. These two basically level out but setups on Print can cost 240 pounds and embroidery programmes around 120 pounds.
My personal opinion on this topic is that screen printing achieves more effectiveness for promotional clothing when trying to sell a product and embroidery suits corporate clothing but overall the both have their advantages and disadvantages.
If you would like to some more information on these two types of processes why not visit Screenworks they offer very competitive prices and offer many other services.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_O_Porter
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