Experimentation - Screen printing

SCREEN PRINTING

As part of my research into print processes i wanted to try preparing a screen i have screen printed in the past but not prepared the actual screen. I first began cleaning the screen off using liquid and a sponge to get off any excess designs off the screen. We did this in the spray unit and used the jet spray to spray it off.

These are the products we used.

We next left it to dry for around 20 minutes. Once the screen was clean and dried i next needed to put emulsion over the screen. This is so when we put the image into the exposing unit it will expose on to the screen.

Applying the emulsion: I had to pour a thin layer of emulsion into the silver troff so i would be able to then pull it over the screen using this device to get a thin and even layer.

Once you've applied the thin layer of emulsion it shouldn't be to dark or your screen won't expose.

The next step is to leave your screen again unitl its dried before exposing it in the light unit.

When i came to the exposing stage-

Unfortunately when i came to expose my screen for screen printing one of the teachers in the screen printing room didn't expose my screen properly when i came to wash it off there was no design on the screen. I was really annoyed because its such a tedious process cleaning and waiting for your screen to be ready. So i had to re-clean my screen and start again.

When i came to start form the beginning my screen had been taken by someone else the whole situation completely put me off screen printing and i was really disappointed i had wasted my time and had no design work to show from the experimentation. I would like to try screen printing again but i my main point of experimenting this process again was to try preparing the screen i at least now know how to do that properly.