magna retardant gel and printgen retardant

[nobrainsd]

I've been having a some issues with my dc inks drying in the screen. I purchased some Magna Retardant Gel to try out with my Magna ULF DC inks. I would like to use Matsui 301 black along with my Magna DC inks for the test print I'm doing. My local Matsui supplier does not stock Printgen. Would rather not wait to get the Printgen shipped. There is a little more humidity now so maybe I can do that without a retardant, but I am wondering if my Magna retardant will play nice with the Matsui ink? I read that a lot of printers mix printgen into other brands of waterbase ink. Maybe the Magna retardant is fine for that too?

I'll probably give it a go without a retarder at all, but it would be nice to know if anyone has experience or knowledge that pertains. Thank you.

[noortrd]

Try use polyethylene glycol  anti freezing agent or use silicone softener.

[ebscreen]

While the poster above is correct in that the retarder for most waterbased inks is a glycol, dumping antifreeze
in inks to be worn seems a bit on the scary side. Vegetable glycerine will serve the same purpose without the
yuck factor.

We used to use a lot of retarder, Matsui's in both Rutland and CCI's bases. Worked fine. We don't use as much
any more, and stick to water for the most part, but on those super hot dry days it can mean the difference between success
and pulling ink to add water every ten prints.

[nobrainsd]

I'm sure part of my problem was not doing a heavier skim flood on the screens. Have to acquire that habit. Printing 8 colors DC on a manual in low humidity on a warm day makes me jealous of everyone with an auto. I'm obviously slow. Seemed like adding water just thinned out my ink and reduced the opacity a bit. So I'm trying the retardant.

Going to pull up MSDS for the Magna Gel and Matsui Printgen. Haven't seen Printgen but the Gel sure looks like a similar product from the description. Winter is sort of here in So Cal, so I have time to figure it out or order Printgen to go with the 301 Black.

[mimosatexas]

We use 5% retardant when the humidity is low, and we typically add water to our white.  I find that it helps to have a spray bottle of water on hand and to spritz the ink before every stroke as you're doing test pulls/registration until you get the ink to the right viscosity.  You can definitely over water the ink and have issues with blurred prints and low vibrancy, but after a few turns of the press and light spritzes you should only have to respritz every 20-30 prints on those long runs with multiple colors.