Screen printing in India has come a long way

International screen printing expert and guru of screen printing Michel Caza, past president of FESPA and ASPT, had recently stated at FESPA Munich seminar that Graphic and sign are only 20% of screen applications when 35% lies in textile printing and about 45% in industrial applications. That ‘s because of industrial production getting shifted to Asian countries, screen printing is also getting more and more attention in this region.

In the last decade, Screen printing in India has come a long way. From a predominantly manual printing process there has been a big shift to semi-automatic and automatic printing process. There are more numbers of screen printing machines sold today than it was five to ten years ago. This has definitely improved the quality and productivity of print-shops.

The capabilities of screen printing on a wide range of substrates and light fastness properties make it a versatile process. Today due to fully automatic, printing machines now easily available in the market with affordable price, production capacity has also increased.

With the fast drying technology, better screen making, improved color management systems, printers are able to achieve high volume, high quality with low price which the print buyer demands today.

Screen Printing application encompasses a wide gamut of applications that include signs, POP displays, vehicle graphics, helmet graphics, speedometers, graphic overlays, credit cards, optical discs, garments and container decoration … the list will be too long but most important part of screen printing is that is not just a printing process for many industry but one of the necessary production processes and some areas have the compulsion of many years of outdoor life and meet other production requirements (e.g. vehicular designer decals require minimum 5 year outdoor life, a heat sensitive labels is supposed to withstand heat in a machine or equipment for certain temperature and after which it is supposed to ‘concede defeat’).

Screen Printing application is such that often we cannot consider those companies who have adopted screen printing process as ‘screen printers’ because for them screen printing process is one of those many activities which go into manufacturing of a product. For e.g. Ceramics, crockery and Tiles, PCB, speedometers, dials, textiles and garments, membrane switches, etc. In some cases screen printing is a decorating tool and in some cases it is a must without which not a single product can move out of the factory, e.g. metal labels, heat sensitive labels, QC labels – just a few to mention. It is an amazing world of Screen Printing!

I strongly believe that many of the exhibitions in the recent past have contributed partly for the growth of our screen printing industry that’s because printers are able to see new technology, under newer applications, new inks, etc.

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