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Screen Printing Shirts in Canada
At Colortex we use the process of screen printing in order to decorate your apparel or your clients garment. We are one of the rare local company with that much history and manufacturing power. This means that you can bring your brand alive with large quantity, while keeping the famous quality local clothes offer. Browse our collection if you want to order and make your custom clothing today!What's The Screen Printing Process?
The process of screen printing accounts for the majority of the individual apparel pieces we produce in our printing shop in Ottawa. Before you can start seeing the actual design printed on apparel, there are multiple steps that need to happen before being ready to print the apparel. It's a process of using an aluminum screen with varying mesh counts, to support an image positive of the soon to be screen printed artwork.. The image positively forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink onto the materials. The ink is placed inside of that screen and mesh which is then pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A special squeegee, not your window cleaning ones, is manually or automatically moved across while applying pressure in order to push the ink into the mesh openings for transfer by capillary action during the squeegee stroke.
Which Screen Printing Machine Do We Use?
At Colortex, our screen printing department is equipped with 2 automatic presses, one manual press and a large energy efficient dryer in order to cure all of our apparel.
How Much Garment Can We Print?
We have the capabilities to print over 40,000 shirts weekly so we can most certainly handle large-size orders. Not to say that we don't work on small orders, but our minimum is 24 units.
Is Our Clothes Top Quality ?
Due to our high quality screen printing equipment, we are capable of having turnaround times that are highly beneficial for your clients or in order to get your new custom clothing collections or replenish your sold out collections.
Screen Printing Ink Explained
Being that screen printing is an art form, no ink can be perfect for every fabric style and screen print designs. For that reason, we work with 3 different ink styles in order to create our screen prints. These are the 3 most common types of inks we work with but are constantly testing new things.
Plastisol
Plastisol screen printing ink is considered to be a solid in such that the ink does not dry and needs to be cured in order for it to dry. Due to this property, all of the ink stays on the fabric when laid on top of the fabric. This makes for a high opacity underbase screen print which allows you to print bright and bold colours when creating your clothing line.
Water-Based
Water-based inks are a type of ink that rely on solvents that evaporate to hold the pigments. The most common solvent is water. What this means is that the water base inks are not as thick as Plastisol ink. Due to the evaporation properties, the inks absorb into the fabric instead of laying on top of the fabric. Water based inks require a high level of knowledge and have its limitations with fabric compositions.
Discharge
Discharge ink is most often combined with water based inks or used as an underbase for plastisol. This ink actually does not leave any colour on the garment, what it does is takes the dye out of the fabric. Discharge inks are really useful for dark coloured garments in order to remove the dye. The limitations of discharge inks is that it only works efficiently on 100% cotton and not with all dye colours.
Know your Screen Printing Methods & Techniques!
When thinking about screen printing, the first thing that comes to mind is that it is the process of printing a design on apparel but there's much more than simply printing ink on a shirt in order to make the designs come to life. The printing methods and techniques that can be used in order to make the final product exceed customer expectations vary substantially and no method works all the time.
Foil
You are looking for your design to have a sleek shine to them or a portion of your design needs to stand out from the rest. Foil is a two step process where it combines a screen printed base layer of specialty adhesive ink for the foil to adhere to the base layer and then the foil gets applied to the base layer and peeled off after it has been pressed onto the base layer.
Puff and raised
As the technique explains, puff screen prints are prints where instead of having a soft flat print it is puffed off of the garment. This technique comes to live by combining plastisol inks with a puff additive. The printing process is very similar to a regular print, but once the plastisol ink with a puff additive is exposed to heat it puffs up. Once the ink puffs up it provides a texture to the screen print while offering a 3D feel to the print.
Simulated Process
In order to achieve the most photo realistic prints possible, screen printing using the simulated process is achieved by applying a similar technique as CMYK. This process is achieved by colour blending spot colours and halftones. By overlapping the colours it creates new colours.
Tone on Tone
This is one of our favourite techniques for a variety of designs as it is one of the most subtle ways of screen printing on a garment. This technique is achieved by screen printing a colour of the same colour as the garment or slightly different. This screen print makes for the artwork to be visible to the eye but very lightly all depending what tone is used to print on the apparel.
4 Colour Process
Four colour process also known as CMYK has been one of the oldest methods to reproduce colours with screen printing but is not so common anymore due to the arrival of simulated processes. This technique is best known and used on white or light coloured garments by using cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink in order to create colours by blending them together.
T-shirt Printing In Canada: Our Products
Our T-shirt screen printing service accurately and vividly prints your graphics to cloth. Screens are used to ink garments. Each screen is customized for your design to produce crisp, accurate prints. Our specialists make long-lasting, high-quality prints with top-of-the-line equipment and inks. We collaborate with clients to copy their designs properly and flawlessly. With a variety of ink colours and T-shirt styles, you can create a unique and personalised product that stands out. Screen printing is ideal for designing company T-shirts or personalized gifts. We can even help you choose your fabrics!
We offer screen printing on other clothing products!
We offer screen printing on a variety of clothing items, including:
Screen printing shirts online for custom clothing
Our Canadian screen printing facility loves making unique personalized apparel. We print vibrant, accurate images on a variety of clothes using the newest screen printing technology. We can help you design custom T-shirts for your business or sports team. Our professionals work directly with clients to guarantee their ideas are flawlessly recreated and every detail is correct. We offer many garment styles and ink colours because each job is unique. Being a Canadian company, we're committed to excellent service and Canadian-made products. Our screen printing expertise can realize your concept for a lot of different fabrics.
Address: 5369 Canotek Rd #1, Gloucester, ON K1J 9J3
Phone: (613) 748-0770
Opening ours for service
- Monday: 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
- Tuesday: 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
- Wednesday: 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
- Thursday: 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
- Friday: 8 a.m.–12 p.m.
- Saturday: Closed
- Sunday: Closed
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have a professional screen printing machine?
Our shop has skilled screen printers. To assure creating high-quality prints, we use cutting-edge equipment. Our top-of-the-line screen printing machines can print precise and colourful designs on a variety of clothes. We enjoy showing off our equipment to customers. Our equipment is displayed and explained on a page on our website. Visit this video to see our shop.
What is the difference between screen printing and Serigraphy?
Screen printing and serigraphy are commonly interchangeable, however they differ slightly. Both methods print, but the materials and outcome are different. Screen printing is utilized for clothing and advertising products, while serigraphy is employed for fine art. Serigraphy, a sophisticated technique of screen printing, focuses on limited-edition art prints. Serigraphy produces exquisite prints because the ink is placed more delicately and precisely than in screen printing. While the two procedures are similar, "serigraphy" is generally used to refer to a more artistic screen printing technique.
What is Silk Screen Printing?
Silk screen printing, also known as serigraphy, is an elaborate printing process used for millennia to create distinctive and eye-catching designs. This method uses stencils on porous fabric mesh stretched across a frame to transfer ink to the target surface. Silk was used as fabric mesh, hence "serigraph" comes from the Greek words "seicos" (silk) and "graphos" (writing). Modern screen printing uses polyester mesh, which is more durable and cost-effective for creating design on fabrics. Silk screen printing is perfect for bold, graphic, and long-lasting designs. Limited edition art prints, personalized t-shirts, and other promotional materials are appealing since each print is an individual work of art. Silk screen printing is a time-tested method for producing high-quality prints.
Since When are you screen printers?
Since 1994, we have been screen printing. With over 29 years of experience, we consider ourselves to be one of Ottawa's top screen printing businesses, providing our clients with the greatest screen printing goods. Look at our story here!
Can you make my Screen printing designs?
Yes! We have designers and we do the client's design very often!
What is screen printing vs digital printing ?
Printing method distinguishes screen printing from digital printing. Since each colour requires a print screen, screen printing is done one colour at a time. Multi-color designs may take longer and cost more. Digital printing creates a full 4-color process print in one pass, making it faster and cheaper for multi-color graphics. Another difference is detail. Digital printing can copy elaborate drawings and photos more accurately than screen printing. Our professionals can help you decide between screen printing and digital printing for your custom printing needs.
How do you do screen printing ?
See our entire procedure here!
Are your screen printing orders made by hand?
By the end of 2014, we upgraded to an automatic screen printing press, but every order still requires a team of professionals to satisfy our high standards. An experienced operator is needed to set up and supervise the automatic press to ensure accurate and colourful prints. Even with the automatic press, each garment must be loaded and inked by hand to ensure accuracy and consistency. We use an automatic press to speed up the procedure, however every screen printing order is made by hand by a team of talented and experienced experts.