ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF FLATBED SCREEN PRINTING

Screen printing is the most popular printing method and is widely used for T-shirt printing. Flatbed screen printing and rotary screen printing are two main types of screen printing.

Flatbed Screen Printing

Common in printing plants, flatbed screen printing machine could be automatic, semi-automatic or manual. Firstly, users of flatbed screen printing machine glue the fabric to a moving continuous belt. Lower the fixed screen in the front of the machine onto the area to be printed and wipe the printing paste with a squeegee. Then advance the belt on which the fabric is glued to the pattern-repeat point and re-lower the screen. The printed fabric makes its step-by-step progression and passes by a dryer. Flatbed screen printing machine only prints one color. When the total length of fabric printed by the first color, the dried fabric gets ready for a second cycle and so on till the pattern is finished. The advantages and disadvantages of flatbed screen printing are listed below.

Advantages

01.Cost-effective

There are 13 advantages and disadvantages of flatbed screen printing. Lower flat bed machine price is an advantage of automatic flatbed screen printing machine. Flatbed screen printing is most suitable to decorate woven and knitted fabrics. What is more, flatbed screen printing is an economical method of printing design of 4-24 colors on fabrics like terry towel, single jersey, silk sateen and terry towel. At the beginning of 1900s, flatbed screen printing became a cost-effective and improved method of printing decorative fabrics. Now, low flat bed printing machine price is still a significant advantage of flatbed screen printing over rotary careen printing.

The flat bed printing machine price is  3k-4k TK in BDT. While the cost of rotary screen printing is higher, with 5k-6k TK in BDT depending on diameter of the screen. Because flatbed screen printing is a method requiring the fabrication of screen for all colors utilized in an artwork, it is better reserved for orders of large volume. The more garments in order, the lower the flat bed machine price is.

02.Versatile

There are 13 advantages and disadvantages of flatbed screen printing. Versatility is an advantage of flatbed screen printing. Convenient to print on special garment, flatbed screen printing is the most versatile printing method. Flatbed screen printing can be done on nearly all kinds of flat surfaces including fabric, plastic, wood, metal, etc. Flatbed screen printing can develop all kinds of design measurements for all screen sizes used in the printing technology.

Flatbed screen printing can perfectly print CMYK’s design which is impossible with rotary screen printing. Also, it will surely pass the Nickel test without metal (nickel) presented in fabric, while rotary screen printing will fail the test.

03.Durable & Long-lasting

Durability and long-last are advantages of flatbed screen printing. For the thickness and composition of ink utilized in flatbed screen printing, product designed by the method is able to withstand much more stress than others without losing the print quality. Flatbed screen printing won’t break the screen during machine running.

Fla tbed screen printing presses rubber Squeegee of the frame to automatically print fabric, while rotary screen printing requires blade squeegee or stainless steel rollers of different sizes to prepare color. Also, flatbed screen printing will show join mark or repeat mark unattainable for rotary screen printing if the print is total body coverage design in printing.

04.Various Inks & More Colors

Flatbed screen printing is available for any desired ink deposit and any ink system, which are advantages of flatbed screen printing.  Allowing for greater ink thickness than others, flatbed screen printing can accommodate various fabrics and designs when finishing the pieces.

Flatbed screen printing is able to print over 12 colors. Rotary screen printing can print 20 colors, but it is usually done less than 12 colors because of complexity of machine setting.

05.Better Results

Presenting better results is an advantage of flatbed screen printing. Flatbed Screen printing allows textile printers to create advanced designs of improved registration, different colors and increased sizes. Flatbed screen printing is the automatized manual silkscreen printing with specific screen designed for every design motif and color. Flatbed screen prints a finite area instead of a continuous pattern. Flatbed screen printing is an ideal choice for printing fine line and whole surface. It enables the printer to highlight the tiniest detail or a color and volume intensity unavailable with other printing methods.

It has the advantage of allowing several squeegee strokes on every screen, in order to apply print paste of large amounts. Flatbed screen printing is of better sharpness and smoothness in design than rotary screen printing. Flatbed screen printing allows critical designs like 1-pixel line, spray, 1-pixel dot to open on the screen perfectly in Laser exposing machine, which is impossible for rotary screen printing. Thus flatbed screen printing enables the development screen design fully matches the buyer design.

06.Vairous Design Measurement

Various design measurement is an advantage of flatbed screen printing. The most significant innovation of flatbed screen printing is its integration with semi-rotary offset printing machines. Thus flatbed screen printing can develop all kinds of design measurements for screens of different sizes used. While the circumference or diameter for rotary screen printing is usually 641-1018mm because developers create design repeat by calculating screen diameter during design process of rotary screen.

07.Less Waste

There are 13 advantages and disadvantages of flatbed screen printing. Less waste is an advantage of flatbed screen printing. There is lower color wastage in flatbed screen printing for color given manually on flatbed screen. While there is higher color wastage in rotary screen printing because color automatically passes to rotary screen from drum assisted by the flat bed printing press.

08.Easy to Operate

Easy operating is an advantage of flatbed screen printing. Pinhole is less possible to come out in flatbed screen printer than it does in rotary one, for it prints fabric slowly by ups and downs of the screen. While pinholes occasionally come out on rotary screen for fast screen rotation and machine running. Therefore, it’s necessary to retouch to remove the pinhole and remove the screen from machine.  The machine then restarts for further production.

Screen preparation of flatbed screen printing process is easier and every screen usually takes 30 minutes to expose. While the time for rotary screen printing is more than 30 minutes with complicated Screen preparation process.

Disadvantages

01.Lower Productivity

There are 13 advantages and disadvantages of flatbed screen printing. Lower productivity is a disadvantage of flatbed screen printing. The production rate of flat screen printing is lower. But Rotary Screen printing is faster with production rate 3 times higher than that of flat Screen printing

Flatbed screen printing

There are two steps in flatbed screen printing. Firstly, the floodbar passes over the screen filling mesh opening with ink. Then the squeegee passes bringing the substrate and stencil into contact to transfer ink. The printing and flooding process on the rotary system are both parts of the same continuous motion, and the separate stroke of these functions is unnecessary.The approach not only reduces printing time, but also removes the floodbar from the flatbed screen printing process as a variable.

What’s more, in order to ensure registration accuracy of multicolor print and keep good edge definition, every sheet printed on the flatbed should be held stationary within the print cycle. In the process of adding print stroke and separate floor to the equation, substrate size has an impact on flatbed’s productivity. That’s for the bigger the substrate is, the longer the time every print cycle needs and the longer distance squeegee assembly travels. Flatbed screen printer with common manufacturer specifications can certainly support the printing speed up to 10-15 m/min if its quoted production rate is converted into linear speed.

Rotary screen printing

The situation is different with rotary screen printing. Rotary screen printer applies images to the entire substrate width when the materials continuously move through the printing mechanism. Not the size of substrate but the speed of substrate movement is the only factor influencing production rate, and it is mainly limited by rheology and type of the ink used. For the way rotary press operates, its production rate is reported by linear measurements and usually fall into the range of 30-100 m/min, depending on the specific application and model.

02.More Difficult Material handling

Flatbed screen printing

More difficult material handling is a disadvantage of flatbed screen printing.After printing, the substrate continues through a dry unit . Then it can be led to the rewinding unit or onto the finishing or printing operation configured inline with the machine. For independent flatbed and multicolor in-line system, it requires more time-consuming and cumbersome handling methods to transfer the printed sheet to other finishing areas.

Rotary screen printing

Because rotary screen printer operates with web-fed material, it doesn’t need to send substrates into the printer piece by piece, while is common with automatic flatbed screen printing machine. Handlers thread the required material simply from the reel at one end into a rotary screen printing machine which goes on pulling more material through according to requirement.

03.Off-contact and Image Integrity 

Flatbed screen printing

There are 13 advantages and disadvantages of flatbed screen printing. Off-contact and image intergrity are disadvantages of flatbed screen printing.The screen in flatbed screen printing is usually made by polyester mesh stretched onto a frame. To obtain good printed edge detail and definition, the user leaves a small gap between the substrate and stencil. Within the printing cycle, the squeegee narrows the gap, depressing the screen to bring the substrate and screen into contact. The fabric’s tension makes it snap off the substrate behind the moving squeegee, enabling the ink transferred to retain t the stencil’s detail. Without off-contact, its screen will stick to the substrate and the image will be blurred or smeared.

The problem lies in that the screen-pressing process for transferring the ink stretches the image and the screen, resulting in distortion of the image printed. The closer the squeegee is to the screen edge, the greater the distortion will be. It means that image distortion is inevitable with flatbed screen printing.

Rotary screen printing

By contrast, rotary screen printing machine bypasses the issue of image-distortion. That’s for only when the surface of the cylindrical screen moves between the impression roller and the screen, will it contacts with the web. Users of rotary screen printing machine refer to maintaining the contact line as kiss printing. There is nearly no off-contact in rotary screen printing, for the screen’s rotating away from the printing surface is of the same function as creating snap-off.

04.Combination printing

Flatbed screen printing

There are 13 advantages and disadvantages of flatbed screen printing. Combination printing is a disadvantage of flatbed screen printing.Flatbed screen printing is versatile and available for lots of applications, some of which are impossible on rotary machines, like rigid stock printing. But one thing rotary screen printing can do and flatbed screen printing rarely can is inline combination printing.

Rotary screen printing

Rotary screen printing is modular in design and is able to be integrated within production line utilizing other web-printing processes including flex, letterpress, and offset. Roll-to-roll combination printing is applied to lots of applications, like cosmetic label, beverage industry, personal care, promotional graphic,flexible packaging and graphic overlay.

Users of combination printing can utilize different ink-deposit and different imaging methods with detail-resolution characteristics varying considerably. If users of combination-system intend to deposit UV ink at the thickness of 30 microns, the rotary screen module will offer the best solution.The printing machine allows deposits of 20- 300 microns, decided by the ink. However, it’s better to choose offset or flexo printing module in combination system when the job requires high-resolution halftone or very fine detail. The combination units bring complementary technologies together for providing the most production flexibility.

With strong ink-deposit capability, rotary screen printing provides the most brilliantly colored and opaque print with the technology employed in combination printing. Thus, it’s often used for high-visible image element  or undercoat in application printed with offset images or flexographic.

Also, rotary screen is most suitable for specialty ink and coarse halftone. Another advantage for rotary screen printing is manufacturing tactile image, like Braille text. Rotary-screened coatings and varnishes are usually used for offering extra resistance to environmental and chemical exposure.

05.Weaker in 3 Technologies

	printing vertical stripe	reverse or disperse printing	time for color separation
Flatbed Screen Printing	can’t	can’t	longer
Rotary Screen Printing	can	can	shorter