Grand List of Emulsions, exposure times and opinions/details!

[Frog]

Actually Gilligan, even many of us seemingly helpful ones may only be giving you a small percentage of our hard earned knowledge. Who knows?
Homer is not alone. Some of these hard learned lessons are what separate the chaff from the wheat in the future, and make for the truly great printers.

Merely sharing knowledge, and truly helping, are not always the same.  Like giving you the answers from our "homework" because you went out to a movie instead of doing it yourself, as in school, that kind of help will eventually show its false value on test day, when you (or probably your low paid worker) has an exposure problem in the future.

Remember that I gave you a way of easily establishing a starting point, and told you that you are shortchanging yourself on this one by not seeing a number of under exposures and a number of over exposures to really compare under a loupe, linen tester, or magnifying glass to really get an understanding on the variables. That was real help.

[Gilligan]

Your homework example is a good one and I believe in exactly what you are saying.

But I wasn't looking for the EXACT answer... I wouldn't have just run with it anyway... even if Rich Hoffman himself would have said "USE 35", I would have used that for a middle ground for my testing.

Speaking of... you say you wanted me to see different steps.

Well, I took my 8 step test and duplicated it making it a 12 step test.  I DID want to see as many variances as I could... hence why I started at what I thought was too low (20) and went all the way to what I knew was too high (64).  I had timed out 50 light units and found it to be (from a cold start) 1 minute and 23 seconds (the last 20 light units kicking off at about 1 per second).  I know I have a 1/3 of the power at home and my distance is a tad bit greater so I figured that was on the long side.

But VISIBLY the light didn't look all that bright so I figured 20 light units was pretty low... in reality it wasn't.

I should have started at 10 and gone to 54 like I did in my second test.

Those of you quick on the math would have noticed I used increments of 4 light units past my base and by stepping from 20 to 10 I ended up hitting the in between numbers on my second test (20,24,28... on first test and 18, 22, 26,30... on my second test)... thus giving me even more data than on one test.

In the end though... 32-48 seemed like it would have all washed out well.  So I opted to err on the side of caution and use 35 (oddly enough, the number that was found in my googling).

So, did running two test really help me?  No, not at all.  One test from 10-54 would have been PLENTY and I would have arrived at the same conclusion.

[sweetts]

Anyone  use chromaline dc-521? It claims its good for both water base an plastisol and is cheap as all get out, $30.00 a gallon. Anyone?

[jasonl]

Anyone  use chromaline dc-521? It claims its good for both water base an plastisol and is cheap as all get out, $30.00 a gallon. Anyone?

where did you find a gallon for 30 bucks?

[Frog]

I couldn't find it at all at first in my Chronaline info,  and then see that it's one of their Image Mate labeled line.
At any rate, yep, it;s a dual cure good for just about any ink systrem. check out the user guide.
 http://www.ikonics.com/pdf/user-guide/image-mate/imagemate_DC521.pdf

[sweetts]

Anyone  use chromaline dc-521? It claims its good for both water base an plastisol and is cheap as all get out, $30.00 a gallon. Anyone?

where did you find a gallon for 30 bucks?

Atlas screen supply

Sent  from samsung gem(the worst smart phone ever)

[sweetts]

I couldn't find it at all at first in my Chronaline info,  and then see that it's one of their Image Mate labeled line.
At any rate, yep, it;s a dual cure good for just about any ink systrem. check out the user guide.
 http://www.ikonics.com/pdf/user-guide/image-mate/imagemate_DC521.pdf

thanks I will let You know how it is. I think with a cupon code I had I paid below $30.00 yipppy!!!

Sent  from samsung gem(the worst smart phone ever)

[Screened Gear]

My CCI rep just told me I can get a gallon of one of their emultions for $25 and that includes shipping to az. It's a dual cure and also good for waterbase and plastisol. Not sure if Iwill try it. Aquasol hv is hard to get away from.

[mk162]

I just added a couple.  1 has been done a bunch on there.  The other is a newbie to the chart. 

[Gilligan]

Awesome...  Actually repeats are really good for the chart.  Not everyone will have the same exposure unit or coating method or whatever.  EVEN if they did... it would STILL be great to see any variances between two users that did things essentially identically.

I'd love to have everything in there MANY MANY times even the same exact setups.  At some point I'd have to harvest the data and move it to a more user friendly environment for people to use but it would be super valuable to people looking to play around or just getting into things and wanting to understand what one does vs another.

Example, I have only tried ONE emulsion (chroma blue), it's what my buddy uses in his shop so I used it that way if I had issues I could ask him and go visit to see what is not working for me and how it works for him.  Obviously it's a good emulsion as well since he could use anything and chooses that and has decent results.  But I'm at a point where I want to experiment.  I have NO clue where to go from here though.  I don't know what I'll gain from one vs another, ups/downs anything.  I can look at spec sheets but lets face it Chromaline alone has like 20 different emulsions. LOL  Analysis Paralysis is my biggest enemy when given that many variables with nothing to go on but "marketing hype".  This DB gives me something a lot more concrete and takes me less time to go "This looks like a good choice to try out!"

[JCPrinting]

I just added our info to the chart.  I hope that someone can benefit from this info.

[screenxpress]

I am a little surprised that out of all the members, there's only 28 entries and I have two.