The Dynamics of Split Fountain Printing
One way to get a little more bang for your buck is by implementing an old technique called Split Fountain printing. Depending on how you set up the artwork and ink it could be possible to get a three or four-color look at a price only slightly higher than two-color printing. How's this done?

The example to the left is a straightforward one. On the print you can see four colors black, red, orange and yellow, yet we only use a two-color setup for printing. Basic color theory tells us that yellow and red make orange, so we can easily see where the fourth color comes from. That still doesn't explain how we can get the four colors from two. When the artwork is created it is setup as a typical two-color job. There is a single plate or screen made for the black, and in this case our split fountain plate was done as a red (see figure 1). Once the job goes to the press the magic and fun starts. The black screen is setup as normal. The red or split fountain screen is put on the press, but has two inks put on it. This is usually taboo because you typically don't want your inks contaminating each other. Now you take some sort of edge to pull the ink edges together, just so they touch. Grab the squeegee and give it a couple pulls across the screen to get that edge mixing. Voila! We have now made a two-color job into a four-color print. As the job progresses we pay careful attention to how the ink is spreading and mixing. If we didn't, pretty soon the colors would mix completely together and we would end up with a solid orange screen. On this job all the colors were managed perfectly, and once again we have a satisfied customer that appreciates the extra attention we give every project to make sure they look great.

Contact us today by email or phone 715.652.6887, if you would like to know how you could apply this technique, or any of our other special effects, to your next apparel project.

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