Technology, Economics, and Screen Printing

The screen printing process that we used in class was manual screen printing. Manual means to use the hands. Manual screen printing is still used to a large extent. Much of the manual screen printing is now done in developing countries. This is because labor is not as costly as it is in industrial nations. Also, in industrial nations there are lots of mechanical equipment used to print with in the screen printing industry. There is a relationship between technology and how complex something is. Usually, the more technological sophistication (complex), the less manual or muscle input there is. For example, the first cars had a crank on the outside that was turned by hand to start the car. Today, we have electronic ignition and simply turn a key (less manual input). This principle also applies to the screen printing industry. That is, there is less manual input today, now that there are more complex machines to do the work. There is less manual input in using the equipment, but there is a lot more mental input that goes into designing modern equipment. There are many technological problems that must be solved in designing, maintaining, and producing screen printing equipment. In designing, there are still some of the same factors that you considered when making your prints. For example, how to register the print or how to distribute the ink evenly using a machine. This is still important today and designers are trying to improve on existing designs.

Below is a automatic carousel printing system that is used for printing t-shirts (fig. 21). The t shirts are slid over the holder (base support) labeled A below. Can you see the part that comes through the neck hole of the t-shirt? Then they start moving through the individual presses at D below (there are 8 presses). There are 8 different colors that are controlled by the inking system at C below. Each press prints a different color on top of one another until it arrives at B below, where it is removed for packaging and shipping. Of course, you can print less than 8 colors on the t-shirt if desired. For example, you would turn of presses 7 and 8 for a 6 color t-shirt. It is easy to see how this system would save time and would not require as many people to operate (less manual input). But think about how long it took to design and manufacture this system. The registration system is accurate so each color prints exactly on top of the next! Remember, how difficult it was to make your different colors register perfectly?

Sometimes an advancement in a material can create a need for technological advancement. When hand operated presses (like in our class) were used, a person could make up to 50 prints per hour. This was sufficient, because the prints had to be dried. There was not enough space to dry the thousands of prints. If the workers were producing any faster, there would not be enough room to store all the prints during drying. Remember, you learned that you cannot print the second color or stack the prints until they have dried. Then, little by little inks started to be developed that enabled prints to dry faster. This is when there became a need to make faster printer systems and equipment. So it was the development of fast drying inks that created a need for faster production with the aid of machines.

Once one printing company had a new technology, other companies had to have the same technology to compete or they would go out of business. This competition also serves to lower the prices of goods for consumers. For example, if a company can now make 50 more t-shirts every hour, then they can lower the price of a t-shirt. But you might ask why would they want to lower their price for a t-shirt when they can make more money at a higher price? This is true to an extent. But it is also true that if they lower their price they will attract more customers, which will also create more income (revenues). You have just read an example about the complex relationship between, society, economics, and technological developments. Economics has to do with whether consumers want a product at a certain price. If companies can produce the product for a profit that the customer wants at a certain price, then the company will produce. The following are some more of the machines used in modern screen printing. See if you can notice how the equipment performs processes similar to the ones we used manually in class (figs. 22, 23, and 24).