Textile color screen printing technology details (1)

Abstract This paper introduces the characteristics of spot color screening printing technology and the difference between it and four-color printing technology. The requirements for manuscripts for spot color screen printing, the color separation technology for spot color screen printing, the ink used and the requirements for equipment, etc. Made a detailed explanation. It is pointed out that spot color screen printing technology has attracted more attention from people in the industry due to its advantages of high quality, high efficiency, and high profit.

Keywords: spot color; textiles; screen printing.
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Spot color screen printing and CMYK four-color printing

 Spot color screen printing is currently mainly used in textile screen printing. Why develop spot color screen printing technology? What are the differences and technical advantages of spot color screen printing and CMYK four-color printing?

 1. The fundamental difference between four-color printing and spot color screen printing is the transparency of the ink. Four-color printing technology requires the higher transparency of the ink the better (see Figure 1 A, B, C). In Figure 1A, the ink has a transparency of 100%. No matter which color is printed first, its composite color (overlapping portion) is emerald green (100% C+100% Y). If the transparency of the ink is only 50%, it is printed yellow ( Yellow is covered by darkness by fifty percent), and its composite color is bluish; first cyan, then its composite color is yellowish (see Figure 1B, C). This is the color cast often heard in four-color printing.

The spot color screen printing technology requires the lower the transparency of the ink, the better, that is, the higher the hiding power of the ink the better, preferably 100% hiding power, the printing effect is shown in Figure 1D, E. Why spot color screen printing technology requires the higher the hiding power of ink? Because, spot color screen printing technology is developed for the printing of colored textile fabrics. Obviously, when printing on colored textile fabrics, the hiding power of the ink is certainly better. It is like printing a white pattern on a black textile fabric. If the hiding power of white ink is not enough, it may be necessary to print three or four times to achieve the whiteness requirement. If the white ink's hiding power reaches 100%, it is enough.

So, what about using four-color printing on color substrates? Since four-color inks are highly transparent, the printing effect is, of course, confusing after the underlying color of the substrate has penetrated. The only way is to print a layer of white, and then print a layer of CMYK four colors. However, if textile fabrics are printed in this way, there will be two major problems: First, the ink is thick, and the hand feels bad; second, it is like a patch plaster. Therefore, printing on colored textile fabrics is not desirable. Only spot color screen printing technology is used.

2. Spot color screen printing technology has the following characteristics compared to CMYK four-color printing:

a. Color images can be printed on any color (including white) substrates.

b. The color of the image can be adjusted arbitrarily.
For example, in the orange color of a spot color screen pattern, we can not only adjust the color depth of orange, but also replace it with red, rose, gold, etc. without affecting other colors.

c. Brightness is much better than four-color printing.
In the four-color printing, the grayscale problem in the color is difficult to solve, especially green, purple, orange, etc., always bright, and the brightness is not enough. This is because there are several problems that are difficult to solve in four-color printing: the three-primary inks for color separation are difficult to match with the three-primary inks for printing; the three-primary inks are difficult to achieve 100% purity and 100% transparency. The spot color screen printing not only does not exist these problems, and the color is more abundant, you can use metal ink (gold, silver, etc.), fluorescent ink, color ink, etc., so that the color screen printing pattern is far more than four-color printing Beautiful, strange.

d. Spot color screen printing is usually more than four colors.
It can be seen that spot color screen printing technology is a new technology developed specifically for garments and T-shirt printing. This technology is also applied to other textile products and other substrates. Spot color screen printing technology is developed on the basis of four-color printing.