Is this bad ink?

[jsheridan]

That's good news for me as we use Wilflex. Gonna have to get a bucket or 5 and check this stuff out.

[Maff]

We just switched over from Legacy and have gone through a couple gallons of the Lava Lo bleed now.
Printing manually, Lava is creamier and easier to print and I think is slightly nicer finished print. The opacity may be just a hair less then Legacy, but we can probably fine tune our process a bit more to help that. 
We did see a bit of bleeding recently on a Navy AA 50/50 blend shirt. But other than that it's been fine on blends

[Rockers]

The plasticisers are being swallowed up by the resins.

Think of a desert.  The resins are thirsty when it gets hot and they drink the plasticisers.

When this occurs.  There is no GOOD way to fix the ink.  You can add a lot of curable reducer and maybe some plasticiser.... but you will loose opacity - you will loose flash parameters - you will only gain SOME printability.

Truthfully, your best step is to set the ink aside and wait for a replacement bucket.

Can this happen during transport or storage at the  warehouse of the likes of FedEx and UPS? And are whites more prone to this then any other color? I noticed this happening mainly with white inks.

[Colin]

Rockers:

YES.

You will find it happening in all fast flash products, to one degree or another.

But the fast flash whites are most susceptible.

[Rob Coleman]

^^^^  What Colin said.

The reason whites are more susceptible is primarily twofold:  One, reduction of flash (gel) temperature using hot plasticizers.  Two:  Much higher solids content (TIO2 and fillers in addition to the PVC resin content).

Once the product starts to increase in viscosity due to the resins swelling and absorbing plasticizer, it is an irreversible process. 

[Shanarchy]

To avoid this, is there a better time in the year to order our white ink? Like try to stock up and avoid ordering in June-July-Aug?

[Prince Art]

So, what temperature is the "danger zone" for ink? This thread has me wondering about our own ink storage... in Florida, no a/c in the shop. At what point does ambient heat start altering the desired ink chemistry?

[Rob Coleman]

To avoid this, is there a better time in the year to order our white ink? Like try to stock up and avoid ordering in June-July-Aug?

Really all depends upon where you are located and shipping times/transit from your supplier.  I know a few years ago, there was a rather significant heat wave in Texas.  Every ink manufacturer had issues with inks (whites in particular) turning into boat anchors.  The back of the little brown trucks were probably 130F+.  So if you are in one of these areas, may not be a bad idea.  Just store your inks in a climate controlled environment.

So, what temperature is the "danger zone" for ink? This thread has me wondering about our own ink storage... in Florida, no a/c in the shop. At what point does ambient heat start altering the desired ink chemistry?

Great question with no easy absolute answer.  Here's the deal, the lower the gel point, the lower the resins begin to absorb the plasticizer and swell.  So a 180F gel point may begin the process at 110F (just spit balling here.).  I did a test a few years back when I worked at Wilflex:  Took a gallon of white ink on a hot summer day; put in in my trunk in the morning.  At 1pm, the ambient temp was 95F.  The AIR temp in my trunk was like 120.  The bucket temp was 140ish.  Ink was bad.......  That quick.

[RICK STEFANICK]

FYI, we tried Legacy and thought is was garbage.  Turns out it's either inconsistently produced or like others mentioned it doesn't store well.   After seeing that half of the printers in another thread on here were seeing "good" characteristics and half were seeing "bad" we had our distro send another bucket and it was fantastic.  The first sample we got had all the terrible characteristics you are describing.   Were it not for this consistency problem we would probably run this ink in our shop much more often.

Chris, have Mark send you a gallon of the low bleed lava. We helped tweak on this formula for a couple months prior to them finalizing it. We used to run quick white, then switched to legacy as most of the time it performed really well until we had batch issues. But the low bleed lava I feel is a better version of the best batches of legacy with the consistency that wilflex is known for. We've gone through about 40 gallons of low bleed in the last few weeks and its been working really good here. We can run the stroke speed from 8-10(full speed) and the ink drops through the mesh nicely. If you like the good batches of legacy and have had good luck with quick white then the low bleed lava should be a great option for you. I have been getting lots of emails/texts from shops that are really digging it.

Danny who makes the low bleed lava?

[jsheridan]

looks like a wilflex brand with ryonet packaging..

[Colin]

Its a special Formula Wilfex is making just for Ryonet.

I am looking forward to giving its final form a try.

[RICK STEFANICK]

looks like a wilflex brand with ryonet packaging..

  thanks

[sqslabs]

So, what temperature is the "danger zone" for ink? This thread has me wondering about our own ink storage... in Florida, no a/c in the shop. At what point does ambient heat start altering the desired ink chemistry?

We're in South Florida and routinely have white ink harden up on us during the summer.  This year it was a few One Stroke varieties as well as Synergy white.  Took us a bit to figure out what was going on, but starting next year we'll be storing our pricey white ink in the air conditioned part of the shop throughout the summer months.  A good rule of thumb heat-wise is when it starts getting pretty uncomfortable for you, its probably getting uncomfortable for the ink as well.

[Prince Art]

So, what temperature is the "danger zone" for ink? This thread has me wondering about our own ink storage... in Florida, no a/c in the shop. At what point does ambient heat start altering the desired ink chemistry?

We're in South Florida and routinely have white ink harden up on us during the summer.  This year it was a few One Stroke varieties as well as Synergy white.  Took us a bit to figure out what was going on, but starting next year we'll be storing our pricey white ink in the air conditioned part of the shop throughout the summer months.  A good rule of thumb heat-wise is when it starts getting pretty uncomfortable for you, its probably getting uncomfortable for the ink as well.

Thanks! We haven't had an obvious problem yet. But we've just been getting into low temp & fast flash inks recently, and this was our worst summer so far. After surface temp of everything in the shop was hitting 108 degrees, we moved to working nights just to avoid heat stroke! We'll probably have to change storage for our specialty ink, too... if we don't add a/c to the shop.