Screen printing is a printing technique whereby a mesh is used to

transfer ink onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil.
A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh apertures with ink, and a
reverse stroke then causes the screen to touch the substrate momentarily along a line of contact.
This causes the ink to wet the substrate and be pulled out of the mesh apertures as the screen
springs back after the blade has passed.

History:

Screen printing first appeared in a recognizable form in China during the Song Dynasty (960–
1279 AD). It was then adapted by other Asian countries like Japan, and was furthered by creating
newer methods.
Screen printing was largely introduced to Western Europe from Asia sometime in the late 18th
century, but did not gain large acceptance or use in Europe until silk mesh was more available
for trade from the east and a profitable outlet for the medium discovered.
Early in the 1910s, several printers experimenting with photo-reactive chemicals used the well-
known actinic light–activated cross linking or hardening traits of potassium, sodium or
ammonium chromate and dichromate chemicals with glues and gelatin compounds. Roy Beck,
Charles Peter and Edward Owens studied and experimented with chromic acid salt sensitized
emulsions for photo-reactive stencils. This trio of developers would prove to revolutionize the
commercial screen printing industry by introducing photo-imaged stencils to the industry, though
the acceptance of this method would take many years. Commercial screen printing now uses
sensitizers far safer and less toxic than dichromate’s. Currently there are large selections of pre-
sensitized and "user mixed" sensitized emulsion chemicals for creating photo-reactive stencils.
 Etching is traditionally the process of using
strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design
in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on
other types of material. As a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most
important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today. In a number of modern
variants such as micro fabrication etching and photochemical milling it is a crucial technique in
much modern technology, including circuit boards.
History:
Etching by goldsmiths and other metal-workers in order to decorate metal items such as guns,
armor, cups and plates has been known in Europe since the middle Ages at least, and may go
back to antiquity. The elaborate decoration of armor, in Germany at least, was an art probably
imported from Italy around the end of the 15th century—little earlier than the birth of etching as
a printmaking technique. The process as applied to printmaking is believed to have been
invented by Daniel Hopfer (circa 1470–1536) of Augsburg, Germany. Hopfer was a craftsman
who decorated armour in this way, and applied the method to printmaking, using iron plates
(many of which still exist). Apart from his prints, there are two proven examples of his work on
armor: a shield from 1536 now in the Real Armeria of Madrid and a sword in the Germanisches
National museum of Nuremberg. An Augsburg horse armour in the German Historical
Museum, Berlin, dating to between 1512 and 1515, is decorated with motifs from Hopfer's
etchings and woodcuts, but this is no evidence that Hopfer himself worked on it, as his
decorative prints were largely produced as patterns for other craftsmen in various media.
The switch to copper plates was probably made in Italy, and thereafter etching soon came to
challenge engraving as the most popular medium for artists in printmaking. Its great advantage
was that, unlike engraving where the difficult technique for using the burin requires special skill
in metalworking, the basic technique for creating the image on the plate in etching is relatively
easy to learn for an artist trained in drawing. On the other hand, the handling of the ground and
acid need skill and experience, and are not without health and safety risks, as well as the risk of a
ruined plate.
Prior to 1100 AD, the New World Hohokam independently utilized the technique of acid etching
in marine shell designs.
 Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which
the inked image is transferred (or "offset") from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing
surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on the
repulsion of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planography) image carrier on
which the image to be printed obtains ink from ink rollers, while the non-printing area attracts a
water-based film (called "fountain solution"), keeping the non-printing areas ink-free. The
modern "web" process feeds a large reel of paper through a large press machine in several parts,
typically for several meters, which then prints continuously as the paper is fed through.
History:
Lithography was initially created to be an inexpensive method of reproducing artwork. This
printing process was limited to use on flat, porous surfaces because the printing plates were
produced from limestone. In fact, the word "lithograph" historically means "an image from
stone" or "printed from stone". Tin cans were popular packaging materials in the 19th century,
but transfer technologies were required before the lithographic process could be used to print on
the tin.
The first rotary offset lithographic printing press was created in England and patented in 1875 by
Robert Barclay. This development combined mid-19th century transfer printing technologies
and Richard March Hoe's 1843 rotary printing press—a press that used a metal cylinder instead
of a flat stone.[2] The offset cylinder was covered with specially treated cardboard that transferred
the printed image from the stone to the surface of the metal. Later, the cardboard covering of the
offset cylinder was changed to rubber, which is still the most commonly used material.
As the 19th century closed and photography became popular, many lithographic firms went out
of business. Photoengraving, a process that used halftone technology instead of illustration,
became the primary aesthetic of the era. Many printers, including Ira Washington Rubel of New
Jersey, were using the low-cost lithograph process to produce copies of photographs and
books. Rubel discovered in 1901—by forgetting to load a sheet—that when printing from the
rubber roller, instead of the metal, the printed page was clearer and sharper. After further
refinement, the Potter Press printing Company in New York produced a press in 1903. By 1907
the Rubel offset press was in use in San Francisco.
The Harris Automatic Press Company also created a similar press around the same time. Charles
and Albert Harris modeled their press "on a rotary letter press machine".
 Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is
the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to
reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation) usually on the
medium of paper. The world's first movable type printing press technology for
printing paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around AD 1040 in
China during the Northern Song Dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng (990–1051).[1]Subsequently
in 1377, the world's oldest extant movable metal print book, Jikji, was printed in Korea during
the Goryeodynasty. Because of this, the diffusion of both movable-type systems was, to some
degree, limited to primarily East Asia, although various sporadic reports of movable type
technology were brought back to Europe by Christian missionaries, traders and business people
who were returning to Europe after having worked in China for several years and influenced the
development of printing technology in Europe. Some of these medieval European accounts are
still preserved in the library archives of the Vatican and Oxford University among many
others. Around 1450 Johannes Gutenberg, introduced the metal movable-type printing press in
Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mold. The small
number of alphabetic characters needed for European languages was an important factor.
Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony and
these materials remained standard for 550 years.
History:
In 1193, Zhou Bida, an officer of Southern Song Dynasty, made a set of clay movable-type
method according to the method described by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays, and printed
his book Notes of The Jade Hall.
The claim that Bi Sheng's clay types were "fragile" and "not practical for large-scale printing"
and "short lived"[14] was refuted by facts and experiments. Bao Shicheng (1775–1885) wrote that
baked clay moveable type was "as hard and tough as horn"; experiments show that clay type,
after being baked in an oven, becomes hard and difficult to break, such that it remains intact after
being dropped from a height of two metres onto a marble floor. The length of clay movable types
in China was 1 to 2 centimetres, not 2mm, thus hard as horn.
There has been an ongoing debate regarding the success of ceramic printing technology as there
have been no printed materials found with ceramic movable types. However, it is historically
recorded to have been used as late as 1844 in China from the Song dynasty through the Qing
dynasty.
 Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant
of etching. In intaglio printmaking, the artist makes marks on the plate (in the case of aquatint, a
copper or zinc plate) that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing
press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper. This can be
repeated a number of times, depending on the particular technique.
Like etching, aquatint uses the application of a mordant to etch into the metal plate. Where the
engraving technique uses a needle to make lines that print in black (or whatever color ink is
used), aquatint uses powdered rosin to create a tonal effect. The rosin is acid resistant and
typically adhered to the plate by controlled heating. The tonal variation is controlled by the level
of mordant exposure over large areas, and thus the image is shaped by large sections at a time.
History:
The painter and printmaker Jan van de Velde IV invented the aquatint technique in Amsterdam,
around 1650. The cartographer Peter Perez Burdett later introduced his 'secret' aquatint technique
to England in the 1770s.[3] In the United States the printmaker Pedro Joseph de
Lemos popularized aquatints in art schools with his publications (1919–40), which simplified the
cumbersome techniques, and with traveling exhibitions of his award-winning prints.