Guide to T-shirt Screen Printing

T-shirt Screen printing is the most common form of t-shirt printing and dates back hundreds of years. Today it is still a very popular form of printing onto many different substances not just t-shirts. Here you can read more about the process of Screen Printing in more detail. If you dont want to read all that and want condensed version, than read on.

Well, as a guide only, to determine weather your design is suitable for screen printing you need to quickly count how many different colours there are in your design. If it's just 1 colour you will need to get more that 10 printed to make it worth while. Most screen printers will not reccomend printing less than 25 pieces, as the cost of the screen, film and set-up charges make small runs very expensive.

For example: Just to set up for a single colour screen print, the printer will charge you a film charge ($20-$40 per colour) depending on your printer. This is the cost of putting your design onto a clear tranparency, known as film (this is not overhead projector tranparency, the image is much more opaque, or black or not see through when held up to the light). This is what is used to turn your design into a stencil onto the silk-screen ready for printing.

There is the Screen charge usually ($50-$75 per colour) again depending on your printer. This the cost of perparing and exposing the silk-screen ready for printing.

Also if you have a small run there is usually a set-up-charge ($10-$30) depending on how small your run (the number of prints in a continuious order) of shirts is.

After all of this, there is the actual printing price. ($1.00-$5.00 per print)

Usually this is the price quoted by most t-shirt printers when you ring for a quote. They''ll say for example "Its $3.00 a shirt plus a once off set-up charge" Probably $100.00. Well if you want 10 shirts done thats $13.00 a print not $3.00 a print. The once off charge is only good if you go back and get more done. If you want more done you should get them done together, right now, it will reduce the total cost per shirt. Printing 25 instead of 10. The cost could will be $2.00 per print with a $80 set-up-charge. This will make them $5.20 each compared to $8.00 each for 2 runs.

This is certainly something to think about. If you really don't really need 25 and its a waste to get extra, than you might want to think about getting digital printing done.