Mesh

A comprehensive Guide to Optimal Screen Printing Mesh Selection Part-1 Mesh: Mesh is a key component of Screen Printing. It is also known as Silk Screen mesh. In structure it is a woven fabric. It is the main ingredient of making a screen or stencil through which printing ink is pushed to create different images on different fabrications.  Materials of Mesh: While historically Silk fiber was used for making screen mesh. Modern screen printing mesh are generally made of manmade fibers such as Nylon, Polyester, Stainless Steel. Compared to other synthetic fibers Nylon Mesh is a common choice to most of the printers considering the durability and resistance to the chemicals.  Structure: The structure of mesh fabric refers to the way of interlacement of individual threads to form the fabric. Two popular weave structures ie Plain weave and Twill weave are used for mesh fabric formation. In Plain weave each weft (horizontal) thread passes alternatively over and under each warp (vertical) thread while creating a simple criss-cross pattern. This structure results in a uniform mesh with equal sized square mesh opening. This structure is widely used in screen printing. Twill structure involves a diagonal pattern in which each weft thread passes over a certain number of warp threads before going under. Twill structure is very rare in screen printing but it may be used for specific applications.  During the mesh formation it is followed by some Grid Pattern and the fineness of the weave is measured in threads per inch (TPI) or thread per centimeter (TPC).  The relationship between the structure and mesh fineness is proportional to each other.  Higher the TPI or TPC Finer the mesh. Detailedness of the artwork depends on the fineness of the mesh. Popular Mesh Count:  Mesh Selection Procedure: Choosing the correct mesh count is supper important when it comes for screen printing. In the screen printing, the mesh count refers to the numbers of threads per inch on the screen. The choice of mesh counts depends on numerous factors which includes the types of inks, substrate materials and desired level of outcome of an artwork. Based on the different application of inks mesh selection varies.