Screen Printing Equipment

There are three types of screen printing equipment that are widely and commonly used in the screen printing process. These are flat bed, cylinder and rotary screen presses.

Flat bed and cylinder presses are similar in way because both use a flat screen and a three step reciprocating process in order to perform the printing procedure. The screen is first moved into position over the substrate, then pressed the squeegee against the mesh and drawn over the area of the image. The screen is then lifted away from the substrate for the completion of the process. In flat bed press, the substrate to be printed is positioned on a horizontal print bed parallel to the screen. In cylinder press, the substrate is mounted on a cylinder.

Rotary screen press is designed for continuous, high speed web printing. The screens are seamless thin metal cylinders. Open-ended cylinders are capped at both ends and fitted into blocks at the side of the press. Ink is pumped into one end of the cylinder to have a constantly maintained fresh supply. Free floating steel bar is the squeegee inside the cylinder. The squeegee pressure is maintained and adjusted by magnets mounted under the press bed. Rotational screen press is often used for textile printing, wallpaper, and other products requiring unbroken continuous patterns.

Textile screen printing equipment includes a two-tier manual printing press, electric infrared dryers, quartz flash cure units, numerous automatic printing press, gas dryers, infrared flash cure units, automatic takeoff equipment, and ancillary equipment such as silk screen registration systems, ink mixers, textile silk screen coaters, silk screen stretchers, adhesive applicators, and cool down units.