I think screen printing could work for emulsion on paper but probably not for film. When you look closely at printed ink which has been through a screen, you can usually see a witness mark of the mesh. If this was a film it would be enlarged at the printing stage and would be more obvious. However, for a paper, I'm not sure if it would matter - it would be like having a textured paper.
Also I don't know much about viscosity of emulsion at varying temperatures. Is it possible to coat (or print) and then get it to a suitable temperature for it to re-flow?
I'm not really an expert in screen printing as I'm an electronic and mechanical engineer who works for a company which specialises in industrial precision printing. Our products include conductive silver on polyester flexible circuits, membrane switch control panels and medical sensors such as those used to measure blood sugar for diabetes.
However, I have probably subliminally learned many aspects of screen printing over the last 20+ years and I can do it fairly competently myself both by hand and machine as I like to be able to use all of the machinery in our factory rather than just sit at a desk and get other people to do it.
Something else which might be of benefit to emulsion coating is surface treatment. We buy our polyester sometimes as raw material but often with an ink receptive coating or treatment to aid adhesion of the ink. I'm fairly certain that this would translate well to emulsion coating. Do you have materials with similar coatings/treatments?
Steve.
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