What is screen printing: Screen printing belongs to stencil printing, which is known as one of the four major printing methods along with flat printing, embossed printing, and gravure printing. It involves stretching silk fabrics, synthetic fiber fabrics, or metal screens on a mesh frame and using manual coating or photochemical plate making methods to produce screen printing plates. Modern screen printing technology uses photosensitive materials to create screen printing plates through photographic plate making methods (making the screen holes in the graphic and textual parts of the screen printing plate through holes, rather than blocking the screen holes in the non graphic and textual parts). During printing, the ink is transferred to the substrate through the mesh holes of the graphic and text parts by the pressure of the scraper, forming graphics and text that are the same as the original. It is known as a "universal printing method" that can print anything except for air and water.

Main advantages:
1. The printing adaptability is extremely strong. Different printing materials such as metal, plastic, ceramic, glass, paper, and fabric can print on surfaces of different shapes, regardless of the size of the printing area. No other printing method can compare or replace it;
2. Simple process, low investment, and quick results;
3. Thick ink layer, strong three-dimensional effect, good ink adhesion, and bright color;
4. Multiple types of inks can be used: oil-based, water-based, synthetic resin emulsion type, powder type, etc;
5. Extremely strong light resistance and better color quality than offset printing; 6. Large printing format; 7. It has anti-counterfeiting function.

Limitations:
1. Not suitable for reproducing fine lines and dots in the original manuscript;
2. Poor registration accuracy;
3. Slow speed
4. Only suitable for monochrome color coded original documents with clear text and lines, and color original documents with high contrast and clear hierarchy.

Applicable fields: widely used for cigarette labels and high-end wine labels, with exquisite printing and favorable anti-counterfeiting measures;

Future Trends:
The research and development of water-based screen printing ink has attracted the attention of screen printing material factories and screen printing processing enterprises; Screen printing materials will develop towards high-quality direction, and water-based inks, high mesh screens, and high-resolution photosensitive adhesives will be the future development direction. Previously, the mid to high end market for photosensitive adhesives was dominated by foreign products, but now some domestic manufacturers have also started producing resin based photosensitive adhesives with high resolution and high durability; Domestic mid to low grade wire mesh can basically meet the current needs of the domestic market, but high-end wire mesh still needs to be imported. Developing high mesh wire mesh will be the future development direction. Screen printing will play a significant role in the field of anti-counterfeiting printing.

The combination of screen printing and traditional printing methods will be widely used.