Ink and Fluids

Experimenting with your inkjet press is something that should be part of your monthly plan. Here is the second of three experiments to help you really get to know your press. The first experiment was about paper. Today we talk about ink volume.

Web-fed inkjet devices with UV or hybrid solvent/aqueous pigment inks are delivering amazing quality on an ever-expanding range of media. Factoring the cost of ink into your buying decision may make you think twice about going web or sheet fed.

Inkjet Tip of the Week: Some inkjet devices come with valuable cost-saving features. Here are a few to look out for:

Inkjet Tip of the Week – Use Ink Wisely. Using a standard, default profile could be costing you money. When creating custom profiles, be sure to print profiling patch charts with different TAC settings such as 260, 240 and 220,  for high, medium and low ink usage options. Print efficiently and economically based on the customer’s needs, not default settings.

Since the dawn of the age of high-speed inkjet presses buyers of those presses have been encouraged to buy their ink from the hardware vendor. Good reasons were given, including concerns about contaminating print heads and print quality. The reasons still stand – but options are emerging.

After the trainers leave and before you develop buyer’s remorse, there are tricks to living with your press that will allow you to maintain your inkjet excitement. That is the purpose of this series, starting with this first episode on dealing with ghosts.

Welcome to the latest post in the “Shift Happens” series. In this post, we will focus on aqueous ink chemistry and factors affecting color shift. Knowing the type of ink and understanding its chemistry is just as important as understanding how it reacts to your surface conditions. Find out why.

Printing from the first tower allows ink twice as long to dry helping reduce roller build up and print defects in finishing.

If you are using inkjet coated or primed offset coated paper, different papers will have different porosity levels on each side of the sheet.

Have you ever received a pdf file which called for bright red or a blue shade, but didn’t print correctly with colors visually different from what the customer was targeting? Shift can happen from paper to paper or from device to device. It can even happen to the same color printed in different areas on the same page in certain conditions. Color shift is any change which is unexpected and doesn’t meet customer expectations.

When looking at a big ticket item like a production inkjet device, the one with the lowest price may seem like the best choice. The cost of the machine is the big number (the race car) that will play the smallest role in total cost of ownership. It’s the operating costs that can make or break your return on investment.

Have you ever wondered why it is difficult to find 3rd party ink suppliers for production inkjet devices? Mark Bale discusses the pros and cons of OEM supplied inkjet inks versus 3rd party and the key questions to ask if considering working with 3rd-party ink developers.

Mark Bale provides an overview of the important differences in inkjet ink characteristics that come from various components such as resins, solvents, humectants and surfactants. With an understanding of these components and how OEMs use them to differentiate their inks, you’ll be better informed next time you have a conversation with your supplier.

Mark Bale provides a deep dive into the differences in the approach to colorant carrier in the main categories of inkjet ink: aqueous, oil, hot-melt and UV curable. Ink chemistry matters and different approaches are better suited to specific applications.

First in a new series by Mark Bale discussing the topic of inks. This post explains the chemistry and colorant options available in the production print market. Our aim is to give a non-exhaustive insight in to material differences and how they impact print quality and color.

In this installment of “Let Data Drive your Print Quality Comparisons” Mary Schilling discusses the importance of chroma, how it’s defined within the context of print quality analysis and differences between inkjet and offset.

Ricoh today announces the development of a new ink technology. This new ink will soon be brought to market as an additional option to current and future clients on the Ricoh Pro™ VC60000 continuous feed inkjet printing platform.

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