How to Print Onto a Balloon

Custom balloon printing uses screen printing, a common printing technique where an image is created on a silk screen by light exposure. The screen is a fine mesh stretched over a wooden or metal frame. Special ink is forced down the silk screen and the image is transferred onto a balloon, partially inflated sitting underneath the screen.

To get the image onto the silk screen a design is created usually on a computer using one colour. If a shaded or multicolor design needs to be used, then common art packages such as adobe illustrator is used to transform the design into one colour. The design is printed onto an A4 sized acetate film. The acetate film is used with an exposure box to transfer the image onto a silk screen. Exposure boxes use light to seal the silk holes. Blocking the light with a design made on acetate film mean the ink applied to the screen will only flow through where the light has not exposed thus making a stencil and a transferable design. If an image does require multiple colours, then a separate screen is made up for each part of the design that has a different colour. As the process is far greater for multiple colour, the cost increases greatly and this is why the majority of balloon printing is based on a single colour.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Wooden Frame
• Silk Screen
• Ink
• Exposure Unit / ultra violet light

1. A screen is made of a piece of porous, finely woven fabric called mesh stretched over a frame of aluminum or wood. Areas of the screen are blocked off with a non-permeable material to form a stencil, which is a negative of the image to be printed; that is, the open spaces are where the ink will appear. A common way to do this is to print onto acetate paper your image and place the acetate onto your screen, then place your screen and acetate into an exposure unit for 15 minutes. If your don't have a exposure unit, you shine a halogen lamp onto the screen for 20 minutes,

2. Ink is placed on top of the screen. The operator begins with the fill bar at the rear of the screen and behind a reservoir of ink. The operator lifts the screen to prevent contact with the substrate and then using a slight amount of downward force pulls the fill bar to the front of the screen. This effectively fills the mesh openings with ink and moves the ink reservoir to the front of the screen.

3. A squeegee (rubber blade) is used to move across the screen. As the squeegee moves toward the rear of the screen the tension of the mesh pulls the mesh up away from the substrate (called snap-off) leaving the ink upon the surface of the balloon.

Resources

• screen printing onto balloons