Extending Wilflex Epic Super Spot Colors

[ZooCity]

What are you all using? 

I've assembled all the Epic "Super" spot colors that are currently available (can't wait till they finish this transition) and my end goal is to have these opaques as our "standard" set of plastisol colors and then charge for custom mixes and pantone matches. 

In the past, with the QCM system I would either add the WOW Clear Base, Softee Base or a combo of both to the XOLB colors to get an extended ink for economical printing on light garments or for a softer hand. 

With Wilflex Epic I've got the Extender Base which seems like a soft hand clear to me and then the Fashion Base which is straight up watery and does indeed act like wb except it fibrilates like all get out.  We're starting out today by extending the Super Opaque spot colors by adding 10% Extender and 10% Fashion.  Likely more for non color-critical jobs and softer hand. 

Then there's a Finesse Additive (which appears to be a base actually?), a Soft Hand Additive, as well as a Soft Hand Clear (again a base?).  Tech sheet shows n/a for pigment loading on the Extender Base and describes it as an additive but then mentions you can load it with PCs for translucent colors.   

I'm looking to extend the opaques without excessive tonal shifts and soften the hand as much as possible.  I'm sure there's some cocktail that will make that happen but it's a lot of options and the tech sheets aren't overly informative.  Presumably, Wilflex will be culling a few of these during this transition or maybe they all have a unique purpose.  I do have a call into my Wilflex guy to try and help me sort it all out a little better.   

Curious where others are at with this in the field. 

[ErinAllenLamb]

Hello!! I am not sure if our Wilflex Rep has been back in contact with your or if your distributor rep has had a chance to get back to you, but I will do my best to give you some recommendations.

Our general recommendations for extending your colors are to use Epic Extender Base, Epic Soft Hand Clear or Epic Finesse.  All of these products are optially clear bases that can be used to extend a finished ink and will actually cure on their own.  They can be added at a ratio of 10% by weight.  They will not effect the tone of the color as all of these products are optically clear, but they will start to reduce the opacity of the ink when you pass 10% by weight.  All of the extenders will give a softer hand, especially Epic Soft Hand Clear. 

These products are all great in their own right and I suggest testing them to see which one will help both for cost effeciency and for printability. 

I believe Peter Walsh has some tips he plans to post as well!

As always, please feel free to contact our Tech Services with any questions by emailing techserviceswilflex@polyone.com or you can always email me directly at erin.lamb@polyone.com.

Have a wonderful long weekend!

Erin

[pwalsh]

The Epic Opaque standard printing colors are manufactured by PolyOne utilizing the Wilflex Pigment Concentrates and the Epic 15000FB Mixing Base.  These inks are formulated with a fairly heavy pigment load to achieve high opacity with one pass printing on light and pastel colors, or over a white under-base using medium to higher mesh count screens.  People who are printing these inks strictly on white shirts, through lower mesh counts or in a print-flash-print application can absolutely stretch their dollars a little further by adding some of the Epic Finesse Base or Epic Soft Hand Clear. 
 
The choice of color combined with differences in press set-up, squeegee hardness, number of passes, stroke speed & pressure, screen mesh selection, and stencil profile make it difficult to provide a specific recommendation on the percentage of base that you can add to an ink before you start seeing any visible color shift or loss of opacity.  The best advice that I can provide is that the savings available through extended mileage from each gallon, combined with a softer hand and improved printability make it absolutely worth the time for a screen-printer to conduct testing to identify what the optimum level of base they can add to each color under their specific printing conditions. 

[ZooCity]

Thanks for the replies Peter and Erin.  I do always call our rep with questions like this and they're always answered, but I like to post up here as well to put good content on the forum and see other perspectives. 

I spoke with Jerry Hall last week and made some sense of all the additives/bases.  The reason they're so prolific in the Wilflex system is because many are "legacy" inks that Wilflex is still producing for those on older systems.   

Some questions for you Peter and Erin-

• are the Epic Super Opaque's simply mixed with the same PCs and bases on my shelf or is there something else going into the mix there?
• Peter you said the Opaque's are made with 15000PFB so that would make the Mixing Base an opaque base given a certain pigment load is achieved?
• And are the formulas for these spot colors available?
  

My main reason for using spot colors out of the bucket is to decrease ink mixing labor in my shop but I'm just curious about the above. 

We settled on a combination of both Extender Base (which does not modify the rheology of the ink but simply extends) and Fashion Soft (which does modify the rheology and softens the hand of the ink considerably).  Both, of course, will defeat opacity of the original spot color at a certain level of addition. 

So that would be straight from the bucket for opaque printing - p/f/p or one hits on dark/medium colors - and situations where a full-bodied ink is needed.   Extender Base/Fashion Soft Base combo @ around 20-50% in a secondary container.  I feel that each job is unique enough that it might be best to simply modify the sister bucket as needed it and record it on there.  We did this a lot with the QCM system, adding clear base and softee willy nilly.  I'm simply going to make sure we control it this time around. 

The soft hand base and additive sound interesting but I'd really like to keep it down to a smaller selection of additives/bases for simplicity and so my crew doesn't get thrown off too much.  They seem to have a rough time with all the various inks but that's an organizational problem. 

[Colin]

Chris,

I can't remember, which system did you pick up from Wilflex?

With what you do, the broad variety of printing you do, you really want the pigment system Wilflex offers.  They have the formulas for the super opaques in their software, and with all the different bases you would want, this will give you the best of all worlds.  Ah, the amazing flexibility a pigment system gives you....

The one thing I would have you ask, and ask direct to Wilflex, is what the max pigment load you can put into each base you use so you can make those custom formulations you want and use in your shop.  It's something I would do myself in a new shop.

[ZooCity]

We have the Epic PCs, so yep, I'm right there with you on that. I might have chosen equalizers but we need to mix small batches of spot colors from the Performance series and PCs are the only way to do that as the only spots available in a quart are black and white currently.  I'm glad that we were forced into the PCs though, the pigment system is awesome indeed and I'm very much looking forward to running the IMS integrated with our sartorious scale and a label printer.   

The only mild downsides I've found is the price (about double, but worth it), not being able to get ink via Westar, my favorite supplier, and that I miss the opacity ratings for formulas. Also, some of these inks like the stretch base and performance base smell really bad and retain the odor after the cure.  The QCM inks always had a mostly pleasant odor to me and while I know that the smell doesn't make the ink more/less 'healthy' my custy's probably don't see it that way and scent has a powerful association in people. 

Speaking with Jerry, it seems that the max pigment load is actually around 10-20% but this is where the IMS really helps as each pigment is unique of course and additionally different bases can take different loads while still maintaining their characteristics.  Overloading fashion soft at 20%, for example, would nix the soft hand which is the whole point of using that base.   Being ingrained with the software is, I think, a must due to this. 

It's definitely a change of pace as I used to mix many colors on the balanced QMX system by eye using my accumulated on-press knowledge to guide the process, a practice I still use with our WB flatstock inks and from an artistic standpoint prefer personally.  But we've changed a lot since my one-man days and that's not going to fly anymore if we want repeatability and less prep time at the ink station.  Another change is that we would mix our own spot colors from the QMX system as I had heard through the grapevine that the QMX pigments were of higher quality than those used in the spot buckets.  Not sure if that's true for QCM or anyone else for that matter but it's part of why I asked the previous questions. 

[ErinAllenLamb]

Hello!

1. Epic Super Opaque inks are mixed using Epic Mixing base and Epic PCs.  Epic Super Fluorescents are made from the ground up and cannot be replicated outside of our manufacturing process.
2. Super Opaque colors are made by using a higher pigment to Base ratio.   
3. We will support custom formulations through TS requests- IMS; all non-standard pre-mix colors are subject to minimum order quantity.

Each pigment has a different level of plastisicizer so they all have a different max loading into bases. Of course the same goes for bases.  The best way to figure out the max loading is to use our IMS software. You can enter a formula and if it is out of balance it will tell you to stop, etc.

I can walk you through using IMS if you would like.

Thanks,

Erin

[ZooCity]

Thanks Erin!

I would expect I'll need a little help once we have IMS installed and running.  From what I've read it's quite powerful. 

Quick ? for ya:  Can I hook up our Sartorious PMA 7500 to a netbook running IMS via a RS-232 to USB or is that going to be problematic on the windows netbook o/s?  I'd hate to hook up some big desktop to the scale.

[ErinAllenLamb]

Hey Hey!! You sure can use the cable to connect to a netbook!

Erin

[ZooCity]

Hey Hey!! You sure can use the cable to connect to a netbook!

Erin

Awesome.  Thx Erin.

[DM4Guy]

When hooking up the IMS to your net book use the Sartorious Serial to USB cable.  After market serial to usb has proven to be dodgy at best.

[ZooCity]

When hooking up the IMS to your net book use the Sartorious Serial to USB cable.  After market serial to usb has proven to be dodgy at best.

Thank you for that!  I had a gut feeling that the aftermarket stuff wouldn't be up to par.  Where did you find yours?

[ErinAllenLamb]

You can order it from your distributor.  The part info is: Sartorius YC012-USB-SBI Transfer Cable.

Let me know if you have any trouble getting one and I will help!