Wilflex Equalizer System - solely?

[Admiral]

Anyone using this system?  We are awaiting prices on different ink mixes of gallons to see if it is worth it for all stock ink as well.  Currently we use QCM WOW ink for our stock inks.  Wilflex quick white for stock white. 

I'm wondering how feasible it is to replace all inks with it? Would those gallons for our 'stock' ink work just as well as our QCM WOW inks?  Amazing base is what we would likely use...

We print on a couple autos, need high performance wow printing, with nice opacity still...hopefully pricewise it comes out a bit less expensive too.  We currently don't have a mixing system in house.

Sidenote, is there a pantone color correlation with the QCM stock inks? nothing on the color card or in the software...

[Colin]

There is almost no Pantone matches with any of the QCM stock colors.  They were deliberately made to be very bright and as clean as possible.  As a result, you will notice (for example) that the Brite Red is MUCH richer than the richest pantone red.  Same with the yellow/oranges/blues/etc...

To mach your stock inks opacity and color with another mixing system, you will need to go to a very high pigment load.  I recommend doing a side by side test of your new mixes and the stock color so you are happy.

This means bringing a mixing system in house....

[ZooCity]

We use the Epic PC system.  Amazing Base for WOW printing.  We mix nearly everything in house with the PC system, including our own standard spot colors.  Still, I would prefer to just order "bright red" by the 5 gal than mix it.  It's just that in the case of WFX, the spot colors they sell are sold at a higher price than our cost to mix.  However we are buying gallons of PC and 5s of base.  Quarts of PC and single gallons of base are very expensive (and hard to come by in the case of PC quarts) by comparison but with two autos you shouldn't worry about that.  You will have a lot more inventory value on the shelf with the PC systems, some of the PC gallons are well over $300 per. 

If your crew can follow directions and use the IMS the PC system is the way to go.  If you have a concern that someone might ignore the flashing red hand and warning symbol in the IMS when a mix is off and stick that ink on press then go with Equalizers.  With the PCs you have the greatest control and you can tint Performance and Top Score bases which cannot be done with Equalizers.  If you do enough performance wear printing that alone could make it worth your while. I recommend Nazdar or TechSupport SPS for vendors.

So if you were currently purchasing stock spot colors from Wilflex then yes, the PC system would save you money for the same ink. (with the exception of Wilfex super opaque fluoros which are dry flake mixed and not repeatable from any of their mix systems)  I believe QCM is more affordable than WFX for stock colors....heck anybody is prob more affordable than WFX for stock inks.  In that case maybe pull the WFX mix system in to mix your pantone matches and customs and keep running with the QCM spots. The QCM WOW inks were always awesome when we used them back in the day, if they still are, and the price is good I wouldn't see a need to change those.  Like Colin said, it could be very difficult to match them as well. 

[dirkdiggler]

equalizers here, it was just the best fit for our shop.  I like it.

[JBLUE]

I went away from Wilflex a couple of years ago when the transparency issues sucked and there was no fix. I have the Equalizer system back in the shop and have been using it for about two weeks now. It works a lot better than it used to. The nice thing is a person can't overload it like a PC and have a curing issue. Since the pigment will cure itself it takes that worry out of the equation.

[ZooCity]

I went away from Wilflex a couple of years ago when the transparency issues sucked and there was no fix. I have the Equalizer system back in the shop and have been using it for about two weeks now. It works a lot better than it used to. The nice thing is a person can't overload it like a PC and have a curing issue. Since the pigment will cure itself it takes that worry out of the equation.

The HO base and now the Amazing Base fixed that.  It was absolutely a problem at higher speed production and we would have ditched it too but the Amazing Base is comparatively, well, amazing and holds it's viscosity over long, fast runs.

[JBLUE]

I went away from Wilflex a couple of years ago when the transparency issues sucked and there was no fix. I have the Equalizer system back in the shop and have been using it for about two weeks now. It works a lot better than it used to. The nice thing is a person can't overload it like a PC and have a curing issue. Since the pigment will cure itself it takes that worry out of the equation.

The HO base and now the Amazing Base fixed that.  It was absolutely a problem at higher speed production and we would have ditched it too but the Amazing Base is comparatively, well, amazing and holds it's viscosity over long, fast runs.

Even the HO would break down for us. We had a Wilflex rep out and showed them it in action. less than 100 pieces in and the color shifted badly. When there was no answer we moved on. Several printers we work with are running Amazing base and it did fix it for sure. Thats why I am switching back. It prints wet on wet better too.

[Admiral]

Sounds good..will most likely go with it soon.  The big decision is using it to replace all of our inks or just for PMS mixes.  We currently use stock inks 90-95% of the time.  Perhaps then just doing it small scale to start out and if we like it and can figure it out (and it's cost effective) for our stock inks we can move to a larger scale system.

Running out of space though in this building.