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Silkscreen Printing CD and DVD

At Precision Disc we have two standard print solutions for our replicated CD and DVD discs - up to six spot-colour silkscreen printing as well as CMYK offset printing.

While silkscreen printing is definitely 'old school' technology, when compared to CMYK offset printing spot-colour silkscreen printing can still provide superior print results for some designs. We won't get too involved in the graphic design aspect within this article but we do have other resource material available on the topic of graphic design.
 

 
The benefits of silkscreen printing on CD or DVD

Silkscreen printing spot-colours for CD and DVD utilizes pigmented inks with a gloss finish. This is different than CMYK offset printing which utilizes translucent inks and has more of a matte finish.

Due to the consistency of the pigmented spot-colour inks they provide better and more consistent coverage for large areas of solid colour and, additionally, the gloss finish is very appealing to the eye.
 

Basic design rules for silkscreen printing your CD or DVD

As noted above, when compared to CMYK offset printing, silkscreen printing can provide superior print results for some designs... some, but not all. The best results generally come from artwork that is designed as follows:

• Maximum of six colours (including white flood)

• Using line art - not bitmaps.

• Utilizing large areas of solid colour.

• Graphics that are bold and don't feature a lot of fine detail.

• Text that is relatively bold - not small or featuring fine detail.

• Avoiding drop-shadows and other effects that feature less than 100% solid colour.

• Don't use Photoshop as it outputs graphics and text as bitmaps - not line art.

The fundamentals of silkscreen printing for CD and DVD discs

• Film - One piece of (positive) film is created for each individual colour in your design. Our silkscreen printing machine can accommodate up to six colours.
   

• Screens - Silkscreen 'screens' are made from polyester mesh that is tightly stretched over a metal frame (in a similar fashion to how a canvas is stretched for painting). They mesh is coated with photo-sensitive emulsion and is then imaged with the film created from your artwork. One screen is required for each piece of film. To image the screens, the film is placed against the screen and is then exposed to bright light for a set amount of time.
   

• Stencil - After the screens have been photo-imaged, the film is removed and the screen is washed. Any areas of emulsion that were hidden behind the opaque areas of film will wash away, and any areas of emulsion that were exposed to the bright light harden and stay in the screen. This produces a stencil-like image in the screen.
   

• Registration - The imaged screens are installed on the silkscreen printing machine and then individually aligned so each print colour will be in registration with the disc.
   

• Printing - The print operator pours an amount of ink onto the screen which is automatically flooded across the stencil image by the silkscreening machine. After the stencil image has been flooded with ink, the machine then forces the ink through the stencil image onto the CD or DVD using a pliable rubber 'squeegee'. The silkscreen printing machine's table then turns so the disc is aligned under the next screen, and the process is repeated.