Anyone use the Rutland C3 ink mixing system?

[Admiral]

Thinking of buying it if the pricing of mixing our own inks in house is less expensive than the QCM ink we buy.

$3k for gallons of the CPs, quarts of fluorescents, 10 gallon opaque base, 5 gallon SHAPE, 5 gallon chino base.

Thoughts on this system? 

Price seems too high to me but I will find out tomorrow how much it is to mix gallons of different colors of inks.

[Colin]

Ok... So I used to work for QCM and I use the Color Booster system from Rutland.

So my question is:  What inks from QCM are you using and what are your print parameters? i.e. what kind of printing are you doing?

It's not entirely apples to apples here.....

[Admiral]

All of their WOW series + a few XOLB.

We do 90% plastisol spot color printing.  All kinds of custom work and our own retail as well.  Standard stuff for the most part.  Opaque spot color printing is what we are going for, we have to print WOW a lot too.

[JBLUE]

I have had very good luck with it. I have been using it for about a year now. I was a Wilflex PC and Epic PC user prior to this. We started getting transparency problems on longer runs with the Wilflex so I tried out the C3 on our problem colors and it worked out great so. We modify it very little for WOW printing. If it is one of the stickier pigments a little shape takes out just enough of the tack.

[Colin]

Ok, so my experience with the old WOW inks versus the C3 system:

You HAVE to go to a heavier pigment load in order to achieve the same opacity.  So you will always use their HO formulas.  Also flashing a C3 formula is slower and depending, the after flash tack is a bit longer.  This is alllllll because mixing system inks are not finished inks.  With finished inks you have more room (chemically) to improve that individual color's performance, flash, opacity, etc...  You will still see yourself needing to strategically flash.

With that said, I like their system.  We use the V.O. base (Very Opaque).  It has a "grey" component to it that helps with blocking some light.  Works very well wet on wet.  High color count wet on wet printing over a white base you might see some ink "drying/flashing" issues with colors early in the sequence.  We were told to add 1% plasticiser to those colors to help with that.... hit and miss imo....

You will never be able to match the XOLB performance with a mixing system.  Each ink is specially formulated for that color and for the XOLB properties.  So you may find yourself still stocking the XOLB inks.

I do love the flexibility of a Pigment/Color Booster mixing system.  You will find yourself offering a lot more as a result of the different bases and the flexibility of the color boosters.

[Admiral]

Alright sounds good guys.

It is the system we will go with for in house PMS matching but I won't count on it replacing our stock inks at least if so it will be a slow process with testing of the mixed colors vs the QCM WOW we use now. 

I'm supposed to hear today some costs of mixing a handful of gallons of inks from the system to see if it is cost saving vs the QCM ink we use now.  Either way I will assume the inks might (probably) won't work as well as what we use right now.

[Evo]

We mostly use the M3 system but somewhere back before I joined this shop they brought in the CB system. We hate it.

The M3 colors are a closer match for most PMS colors. The CB inks are much more hit and miss. We are currently phasing it out and only mix it when we can't get an exact match on an older repeat order.

[Prosperi-Tees]

Whoa! I just looked up pricing for the c3, man that seems high but I guess it's super concentrated pigments? I thought about going with the m3 system to try and only have 1 brand in the shop but I just can't get away from the affordability of the QCM system. The Rutland stuff is 2-3 times more money. But I know there is more to it than just the cost of the individual components but I guess im just cheap like that. 

[Admiral]

We mostly use the M3 system but somewhere back before I joined this shop they brought in the CB system. We hate it.

The M3 colors are a closer match for most PMS colors. The CB inks are much more hit and miss. We are currently phasing it out and only mix it when we can't get an exact match on an older repeat order.

When you say CB system you mean Rutlands aka C3 mixing system?  The system should be more versatile though. 

Whoa! I just looked up pricing for the c3, man that seems high but I guess it's super concentrated pigments? I thought about going with the m3 system to try and only have 1 brand in the shop but I just can't get away from the affordability of the QCM system. The Rutland stuff is 2-3 times more money. But I know there is more to it than just the cost of the individual components but I guess im just cheap like that. 

QCM's QMX mixing system? cheaper ink than their stock colors with that system?  I heard a lot of those inks are too transparent though. 

[Prosperi-Tees]

You're right some are transparent but the software also has options for an opaque version as well. For me and our shop im needing to streamline a bit as we are using Rutland for white and black, International Coatings for standard colors and the QCM QMX system for matches. If I stick with QCM system I think we will phase out International Coatings and go all QCM except for black and white which will probably stay Rutland unless QCM has an acceptable and affordable black and white which i doubt compared to Rutland.