Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
No kidding. Who's making it? Last I checked Dow-Corning had nearly abandoned there sil ink project.
Just a tidbit about silicone inks that very few people know about.Any silicone ink you mix/buy will need to have an activator added for it to crosslink/cure. This is just like what you need to do currently for jackets. Also it is similar to adding ZFS to waterbase inks to get the discharge effect. Once it is catalized you will have a 6-8 hour window to print your ink. Once you are done, you will need to dispose of the ink as it waill harden up just like jacket inks will.Otherwise, everything I have heard and seen about the silicone inks for the last several years has been very promising.
Quote from: Colin on August 31, 2011, 08:05:35 PMJust a tidbit about silicone inks that very few people know about.Any silicone ink you mix/buy will need to have an activator added for it to crosslink/cure. This is just like what you need to do currently for jackets. Also it is similar to adding ZFS to waterbase inks to get the discharge effect. Once it is catalized you will have a 6-8 hour window to print your ink. Once you are done, you will need to dispose of the ink as it waill harden up just like jacket inks will.Otherwise, everything I have heard and seen about the silicone inks for the last several years has been very promising.Colin: Thanks for chiming in with this important information about the activator, and you’re absolutely correct about the 8 hour pot-life for the catalyzed ink. On a very long (extending over multiple shifts) run it’s entirely possible that you will need to mix multiple batches of ink to complete the job which is why having an accurate and repeatable color matching system is so important. I hope that you are doing well and that you get hired on with someone real soon.
Oh and this stuff is low-temp cure right?
Thanks for the update Peter! And the input Colin! I got that impression from a rep from D-C a year or maybe more back. They seemed to be having trouble with the on-press performance generally speaking at that time. I can't remember which project I was into at the time that I was hunting it down for. My shop would be interested in a silicone ink as somewhat rarely used (assuming the price point is high as Frog mentioned) ink for both garments when called for but also those weird items like this butyl rubber I need to print on that obviously needs an ink with a lot of adhesion. The bike innertubes in this case are sewn into wallets so it would seem a good fit there to have a durable, slightly HD looking logo. The attraction is having an ink that has the durability and adhesion of a solvent system without the solvents. Price would be less of an issue for us if you could buy it as a base that could be pigmented with PCs for example. I don't predict many applications where you'd be printing large areas of the sil ink. Thick/tall perhaps.