What are screen printing setup fees?

What the fee actually pays for

Screen printing reproduces artwork mechanically, one color at a time, and every color needs its own physical stencil. Getting there takes three steps before a single shirt is printed. The artwork is separated into its individual colors and a film positive is output for each one. A mesh screen is coated with light-sensitive emulsion, exposed through that film and washed out, leaving an open stencil of exactly that color. Then the screens are mounted on the press and registered so the colors land precisely on top of each other.

That work takes the same time and the same materials whether the run is 24 shirts or 1,200, which is exactly why it is billed once rather than folded into the per-shirt rate. The charge scales with colors and locations, because each color is another screen and each location is another press setup at $25.00.

When it is charged and when it is waived

Prep bills on runs of 24 pieces or fewer. Above that quantity there is no setup charge at all; the volume absorbs it. This is one of the reasons the jump from the 24-piece minimum to a slightly larger run costs much less than the piece count suggests, and why the per-shirt number falls so steeply in the first few tiers.

Reorders are the other half. Screens and stitch files are kept on file, so reorders skip setup. Tell us it is a reorder when you request the quote and the setup line simply does not appear.

How the per-shirt price falls with quantity

The table below is the engine's own per-piece price for a 1-color front print at five common quantities. It is decoration only; the blank garment is priced separately from the live wholesale catalogs at wholesale times 1.75.

Colors drive setup, shirts do not

If you are trying to bring a quote down, the two levers are the color count and the number of print locations, not the piece count. Removing an ink color removes a screen, a film and a pass through the press, which shows up in both the one-time prep and the per-shirt rate. Dropping a back print removes an entire press setup and roughly halves the decoration cost of the job.

A well-drawn 1-color design almost always looks better than a 4-color design drawn to justify the colors. If the artwork genuinely needs the colors, that is what halftones and simulated process are for, and we will tell you honestly which side of that line your file sits on.