Screen Printing in Dubai: One Screen for Every Colour
Ink is pushed through a fine mesh with a rubber blade, onto whatever is underneath. That simplicity is why screen printing in Dubai still prints textiles, bottles, panels, bags and glass that no other process will take, and why it is priced by colour count.
Screen Printing: tell us the size, the quantity and the date you need it by.
An estimator replies with a firm, VAT-inclusive price and a production date.From your file to the finished job.
Six steps happen between the brief and the finished job. Here they are, in the order they happen on our floor in Dubai South.
The Screen Is Made Photographically
Mesh is coated with light sensitive emulsion and exposed through a film of your artwork. The exposed emulsion hardens and the rest washes out, leaving open mesh exactly where ink should pass. One screen is made per colour.
The Squeegee Controls the Ink Film
A blade drawn across the screen forces ink through under pressure. How hard and how fast decides how much ink lands, which is why screen printing can lay down a far heavier deposit than any other process.
A Heavy Deposit Covers Dark Materials
That thickness is why a light colour prints solidly onto a black shirt or a dark bag. Digital and offset both lay a thin transparent film that would disappear, and this is the main reason screen printing survives.
It Prints on Almost Anything
Fabric, glass, metal, plastic, wood and board all take screen ink with the right formulation. The mesh does not care what is underneath, which makes this the most substrate tolerant process available.
Colours Are Mixed, Not Built
Each ink is mixed to the colour you want and printed as itself. There is no screen of dots approximating a shade, so a brand colour comes out exact and a photograph is close to impossible.
Registered on a Test Piece First
Multi colour work is lined up and printed on a spare before the run, since aligning screens is the step where a job either sits perfectly or sits a millimetre out.
What screen printing costs you is flexibility. Every colour is a screen to make, line up and clean, so a four colour design is four setups. Below a few dozen pieces that setup dominates completely, and digital or transfer printing is the sensible route.
Compare with UV printing, t shirt printing, and printing processes.
Setting up your file.
- 01Work at the finished sizeSet the page to the exact trimmed size of the piece, not a larger sheet with crop marks drawn in.
- 02Add 3 mm bleedRun background colour and images 3 mm past every edge that gets trimmed, so no white line shows after cutting.
- 03Keep text off the edgeHold text and logos at least 4 mm inside the trim line, clear of the blade.
- 04Send a print-ready PDFCMYK, fonts embedded or outlined, images at 300 dpi at final size. AI, EPS and high-resolution JPEG also work.
Quick answers.
Close to impossible. It prints solid mixed colours.
Each colour needs its own screen and setup.
Yes, with the right ink formulation.