Silk Screen Printing

Legendary references point out to the fact that silk was discovered in Asia. In Silkscreen printing, screens were originally made of a piece of absorbent fine silk. Silkscreen printing originated from simple Japanese stenciling art forms. The modern Silkscreen process has evolved from ideas adopted by John Pilsworth in 1914 in San Francisco, California. This is known to be the first reference material on how to use a Silkscreen to form multicolor prints. It is a source of information that is applied even today.

Screen printing, also known as Silkscreening or serigraphy, is a printing method that usually creates a sharp edged single color mage using a stencil and a porous fabric. An image created using this technique is called a screen-print or serigraph. In electrical terms, silkscreen refers to the writing on a printed circuit board. This method maybe used in etching copper wiring on a circuit board.

This technology gained its popularity from the “Pop Art Movement” of the 1960s. At present, this method is increasingly being used in fine arts and small-scale commercial printing. Silkscreening gained popularity during the First World War. The industry flourished in response to the increasing demand for printing flags and banners. Consequently, the use of graphic stencils also increased.

There are several ways to create a pattern for screen printing. The simplest way to create a silkscreen pattern is by hand. One can acquire a desired shape by cutting a piece of paper or plastic film and fasten it to the screen or by creating an illustration on the screen itself. A more artistic method involves painting a picture with drawing paint. After it dries, it is coated with screen filler. This is again dried and then, water is squirted on it. This washes away all the material leaving behind a stencil spray. This method permits the artist to stay true to the portrayal technique and yet create multiples.

Silkscreen printing is most commonly used for t-shirts, garments and other fabrics. It is also used on ceramic objects, metal, wood, paper, glass, and synthetic items. This technique is essential and ideal to represent bold and graphic designs. Today screen printing is more flexible than conventional printing techniques and is being increasingly used in a wide variety of industries.

Screen Printing provides detailed information on Screen Printing, T Shirt Screen Printing, Screen Printing Equipment, Silk Screen Printing and more. Screen Printing is affiliated with Post Card Printing.

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Minimizing the Cost of Label Printing

Let's get the facts straight. However people artfully avoid the issue, printing labels are expensive. Shed all the buzzwords telling you it is a "creative investment" or that any cut backs in budget will severely "hamper the image" of the label. Label printing, though a good investment unto itself can be effective and yet still be friendly to any company's budget. So let's dream up a few buzzwords of our own and "creatively minimize" the cost of label printing without having to sacrifice the quality and image of the label. Here are a few tips on how to minimize the cost of label printing.

1. Minimize the number of colors in your label design. This cost cutting technique refers to the use of ink colors when printing. The more colors the label has the more expensive the label printing becomes. Of course the label printing company might persuade you that a full color label is the best way to do label printing. Obviously they will recommend that. It means for business for them. However, by simply cutting your label design to one or two colors can really give you a significant amount of savings. If you have a simple logo or label, then minimizing colors won't be too much of a sacrifice. This can free your money up to invest on other matters.

2. Aim for the smallest possible functional size for your label. Most printing companies would say the bigger the better. Some friendly and wise printers however will say that size doesn't necessarily matter. You can achieve the same amount of impact and recognition with a functionally smaller label than a big one. It is all in the label design. If your label is easily recognized even from afar they you can cut cost and use a smaller size. If you can, use the standard sizes for label printing. Most printing companies offer these sizes because it is the most widely used. They won't even charge extra if you use their standard label sizes.

3. Standardize your different label designs. If you have a several label designs for printing, try to standardize the color and size of their text. This may not be the best creative solution but it is an economical one. Using these standard colors and text sizes will make it easier for the printer to run the labels together. This should save you some money especially on big bulk label printing orders since the printer may only need to change a few things before using the same printing process for a different label.

4. Printing management. In all printing activities, not just in labels, printing more of a same type and design will always cost less when divided on a per unit basis. Play this cost saving rule by printing mass quantities of your label in longer time intervals. The more you order the better. Make sure you have a ready supply for a few months time. Any excess labels in production can be kept for future use. Printing a large amount of labels may have cost you more initially, but down the line you'll be saving money since you won't have to print labels every so often.

5. Using paper labels or other standard materials. If your label won't be exposed to harsh environments like freezing temperatures or high moisture environments, you might want to consider printing the labels in some standard paper or other materials. These kind of materials are relatively affordable and when exposed to normal everyday activities can stand on their own. If your products are on the standard everyday kind of product, then using paper labels can save you a lot of money big time.

Great! Those should cover the basics on how to minimize the cost of label printing. Use these techniques to keep within your budget for your labels. In these hard times, any kind of savings even in the business process is welcome and much needed.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit Label Printing.

Charen Smith writes articles about Internet Marketing. She has an extensive knowledge and experience when it comes to business strategies, techniques and business solutions.

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Benefits of Digital Label Printing

By tradition, label and sticker printing has been prepared on big, mechanical printing presses. This has constantly been a complex and costly process, relating your artwork to do films in order to generate flexography printing plates - which are then loaded on to the printing press, the inks are mixed and the machine is standardized. All this actions must take place before printing a single label or sticker. Digital printing has brought drastic changes in all this things - it carries custom label and sticker printing into the 21st century.

There are four main advantages of digital label printing to be followed as:

1. Speed - With no plates to generate, and very little arrangement of the machine, a custom label job in printing on a digital printing press can be printed within minutes not hours. Many other printing presses can take several hours to set up for a four color process job, while the digital printing press is ready to go almost instantaneously. By the digital printing process, we can have 4 or 5 custom label jobs away the door whereas the old style printing press is still being set up.

2. Quality - If you want elevated resolution and exciting colors then you require digital printing. Digital printer can print at 230 line screens, while most flexography printers print at 133 or 150 line screens only. The customers can actually see the difference in the custom label's detail and color. Suppose, if you are selling your products at the retail level, you should think that digital label printing is best when it comes to the quality of the label.

3. Cost - Since there are no plates to produce, no film to yield and minimal machine setup, fixed prices for the digital printer are very low in association with other printing shops. Hence if you want to print a reasonably small number of custom labels (say less than 25,000), you will constantly get a better cost with digital printing. This manner you can order only the products you want, rather than a vast number of custom labels just to get the best unit price - which apparently affects your cash flow in a positive way.

"Gang running" - is an important technique that refers to the capability to join several different designs into a single printing press job. In flexography printing, this is impossible - as each custom label design needs separate plates and setup and consequently each product carries considerable cost outlays. In digital printing, it is possible to "gang" together multiple labels and designs (so long as they're the same size) into a single job. For example, 10 designs of a 3" x 4" custom labels and need 250 stickers of each design, it would treat as a single 2500-label job and cost it accordingly.

4. Flexibility - Perhaps digital printing's supreme power is its flexibility. With digital printing, print 1,000 custom labels and every label can contain different data. It is completely variable data printing. Whether you wish to include names from a database, multiple barcodes, consecutive numbers, or just several editions of the same label, digital printing can hold it with ease .

Richard is an expert author for label dispenser and Bottle labeler machine. He has written many articles like Bottle label applicators, Bottle labeler, and label dispensers. For more information visit our site http://www.dispensa-matic.com. Contact me at richard.rinfo@gmail.com

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