Welcome to the great debate! Before we give our opinion, it would be better if we discuss the facts and show you some figures. So it’s time for you to stick your eyelashes to your eyebrows and read the facts in order to make your own judgment. First, let’s discuss screen printing and then we’ll enlighten you about the digital sublimation textile printing technology.
Screen Printing
Screen printing, as the name suggests, is a printing method in which the use of a screen is involved. This screen is like a stencil which makes the ink pass through certain areas while blocking it in other areas. When this process is repeated numerous times with various colors, the desired image is produced.
Although it is still used by most garment manufacturers, it has some drawbacks. The most obvious one is that it is time consuming. If the desired image that has to be printed consists of many colors, then it will take a lot of time because the colors will be layered over the substrate individually. Also, the image printed using screen printing will peel off after it is washed several times in a machine. If you had ever owned a T-shirt whose printed images started to crack and then peel off, then it must have undergone the screen printing process.
Digital Sublimation Textile Printing
This is relatively a new technology when compared to screen printing. Sublimation printing uses a printer to first print the inverted image on the heat resistant transfer paper. This image is then pasted on the desired surface by using a heat presser that then copies the image from the paper to the T-shirt, mug or even tile. Heat press is used to ensure that the color pigments from the transfer papers are permanently bonded on the new surface and that the image printed on the surface of any item cannot be peeled off easily and is not even cracked after repeated use of the item on which the image was printed.
Okay… now that was a lot of information to digest but still, we hope that you get the picture. Apart from being a super cool technology, digital sublimation textile printing also has a limitation. It can only print a limited number of images on the T-shirt or on any other material. In other words, it may not be able to produce the output that is required to meet the demand. There are many researches underway that are aimed at overcoming this shortcoming of sublimation textile printers.
From all the above information about the two types of printing methods, it can be deduced that digital sublimation textile printing is surely the futuristic and innovative way of printing high quality images on the garments in lesser time. However, on the question of whether digital sublimation textile printing is an alternate to screen printing? We think our readers, after reading this article, will be better able to decide it for themselves.
