Screen Printing

Future Predictions

There is no doubt that screen printing as a technology is ever-developing. With it’s most recent advancement, it is likely that screen printing will take over the advertising industry. We live in a day and age where energy efficiency and emissions are of large concern. Even though it pays a bit more to get a UV curing ink technology system, it’ll likely save money from elimination of other extra expenses and it will minimize impact on the environment.

There’s modern technology that allows for screenprinting without the use of mesh material. Without reclaiming screens, they could be thrown away and essentially people could lose money that way and create landfill. So without the worry of inhaling fumes of reclaimer and contributing to landfills, a digitally etched stencil might help with that for the future. It is a metal sheet that is laser cut, increasing accuracy and time efficiency. This high precision engineering affords control of the process within a window of a few microns. It is also metal, so it is more likely to be recycled.

The most interesting advancement has been at Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. They managed to find a way to make the world’s first screen-printed digital watch. To make this even possible they used screen printed paste inks to apply the necessary, conductive, resistive and electroluminescent inks onto the fabric! There’s word going around about more “smart fabrics” such as this.

It’s amazing to see how far screen printing has come. In the future we can expect to see this important and prevalent technology be more green, cheaper and combine electro-technological innovations integrated with fabric.