Most people who commission a print from us have never watched one being made. That is entirely reasonable — there is no particular reason you should know. But the process explains a lot about why we ask for the files we ask for, and why certain designs cost more than others.
So here is the whole thing, start to finish.
First: is this even a screen job?
We run several processes in the studio, and part of quoting a job is deciding which one suits it.
- Heat press vinyl — best for one-offs, names and numbers, and bold shapes in one or two colours. No screen involved.
- Dye-sublimation — full colour, photographic detail, but only on polyester and only on light garments. This is how mugs and most drinkware are done.
- Screen printing — the most work up front, the best result at volume, and the only method that gives you that slightly raised, durable ink lay on a cotton garment.
The rough rule: under about ten units, vinyl or sublimation almost always wins on cost. Over about twenty-five, screen printing pulls ahead and keeps pulling. In between, it depends on how many colours are in the design.
Everything below is the screen route.
Step one: the artwork has to become pure black
A screen is a stencil. It has open areas that let ink through and blocked areas that do not. There is no in-between — no 50% grey, no soft edge. So the first thing that happens to your artwork is that it gets separated into pure black shapes on a transparent film, one film per colour.
This is the single biggest reason we ask for 300 DPI minimum, or vector. A low-resolution file has soft, anti-aliased edges. When we force those into pure black and white, the softness becomes a ragged, stair-stepped edge, and that edge prints. Vector art has no resolution at all — it is described mathematically — which is why it is always our first choice.
Gradients are the other thing worth knowing about. A screen cannot print a smooth gradient, so we simulate one with a halftone — a field of dots that grow and shrink. It works, and on the right design it looks superb, but it is a distinct look. If you send us a soft gradient expecting it to stay soft, we will come back to you before we print.
Step two: coating the screen
The screen itself is a fine polyester mesh stretched tight over an aluminium frame. Mesh count matters: a coarse mesh lays down more ink and suits bold blocks, a fine mesh holds more detail and suits line work. Choosing wrong at this stage is not recoverable later.
In a darkroom lit only by safelight, we coat the mesh with a light-sensitive emulsion using a scoop coater — a metal trough drawn steadily up the screen. One pass on the print side, one on the squeegee side, sometimes more depending on the job. The aim is an even, thin, consistent layer. Too thick and you lose detail; too thin and the stencil breaks down mid-run.
Then it dries. In the dark. For several hours, or overnight if the humidity is up — and in Gauteng in summer, the humidity is frequently up.
Step three: the burn
This is the part the title refers to, and it is anticlimactic to watch.
The film positive goes onto the coated screen, black side down, and the two are pressed tight together under glass. Any gap here means light creeps under the edges of your artwork and softens it. Then the whole assembly is exposed to a UV light source for a carefully measured time.
Wherever light hits the emulsion, it hardens permanently. Wherever your black artwork blocked the light, it stays soft and water-soluble. Exposure time is the variable everything else depends on: too short and the stencil washes away in the next step, too long and fine detail closes up and will not open at all. Every emulsion, mesh count and light source combination has its own correct time, and finding it is done by testing, not by reading the tin.
Step four: washout
The screen goes to the washout booth and gets a gentle spray of water. The unexposed emulsion — the part your artwork protected — softens and rinses away, leaving open mesh in exactly the shape of your design.
This is the moment of truth, and it is genuinely satisfying to watch an image appear in a screen. It is also where problems show themselves. Detail that will not open means overexposure. Emulsion sliding off in sheets means underexposure. Pinholes mean dust on the film or a coating fault.
Once it is clean, the screen dries again, gets checked against a light, and any stray pinholes get blocked out by hand with tape or blockout fluid. Then it is ready.
Step five: registration and printing
On press, each screen is aligned so its colour lands exactly where it should relative to the others. This is registration, and on a multi-colour design it is most of the skill. A millimetre out on a two-colour job with a fine outline is the difference between crisp and blurry.
We pull a test print, check it, adjust, pull another. Only when it is right does the run start. Each print is then cured — passed through heat until the ink reaches the temperature at which it permanently bonds to the fibre. Undercured ink looks fine and washes off on the third wash, which is why we do not guess at this stage.
Why this shapes your quote
All of the above happens once per colour, before a single garment is printed. That is why:
- Colour count moves the price more than quantity does. A one-colour run of fifty is often cheaper than a four-colour run of twenty.
- Small runs carry the full setup cost. Ten shirts and a hundred shirts require the same screens.
- Reorders are cheaper. If we still have your screens, the setup is already done.
- Vector artwork saves you money. Time we do not spend redrawing a low-resolution logo is time we do not bill.
What to send us
If you are about to commission something, this is the short version of what makes a job go smoothly:
- Vector where possible — AI, EPS, SVG or PDF with live paths. Zip it before uploading.
- Otherwise 300 DPI or higher at the actual print size, on a transparent background.
- Tell us the print size in centimetres. “Chest logo” means different things to different people.
- Tell us the garment colour you have in mind, because it changes how we handle the ink.
Everything else we can work out between us. Send us a brief and we will come back with a real number and an honest turnaround.