Navy puff

[siestasol]

I'm doing a job that require Navy puff. I mix Union Light Navy with the puff additive. The print has puffed but the color is off. Any Suggestions? Mix ratio1/6

[Frog]

It's been years since I puffed, but I remember it always lightened the color of the wet ink. Not unlike my experience with the hybrid plastisol discharge inks, actual color matching is really tough if not impossible, but with some fiddling and experimenting, one can learn how much it will lighten, and mix the root color accordingly to get something useable (depending on how close you need to be)

Hey, Union's regular navy had such a reputation of being uber dark, they eventually came up with the Light Navy variant.

Do you have a mixing system?

[Colin]

If you are trying to match a color in puff;  You HAVE to start with a darker color at the very least.

Puff ink is created when tiny spheres in the ink expand under heat, creating tiny bubbles.  Those bubbles appear milky and make the ink lighter.  The only way to color match is to mix the ink and take into account how much white the puff will add to the color. 

This Really only works if you have a matching system.  Otherwise, you need to pick a much darker color to begin with and hope it lightens to where you want it to be.

OPTION 2:  Print a puff underlay/base (this is usually a white puff finished ink) - gently flash - print your navy ink on top.  Your 2 screen navy puff will be much closer to what you are looking for.

[siestasol]

Like Frog said, the regular navy from Union is too dark, but I will try in this case instead mixing Light navy... probably the color will be much closer.

[screenxpress]

Call me silly, but could you start mixing in slight amounts of black to bring the color back darker to compensate?

[Frog]

Call me silly, but could you start mixing in slight amounts of black to bring the color back darker to compensate?

Maybe not that silly, but some of these formulas are strange.
Coincidentally, I recently had Union (now Rutland QCM) locate the non-published formula for their Light Navy, never included in my old hard copy or their newer mixing formula software.
Both of their navys use the same three core components: Blue (green shade), Violet, and Black.
The really, really dark regular navy, uses a 20/60/20 proportion while the light navy is 47.67/30.66/21.67. Surpriisingly, black is almost the same on these two very different shades, but blue to violet changes greatly.

Now, of course, this may all be a moot point with siesta's particular target color, but nonetheless, I found it interesting.

btw, years ago, when I used Union pretty much exclusively, their only navy was so dark that it almost looked black except when laid next to actual black.
I had a custom mix of 50-50 Navy and Royal which most customers signed off on seeing it as what they considered navy.

[screenxpress]

two things -

1-am I so out of touch that I didn't know Union was bought?

2-I've used Union Navy blue and like you, found that it's so dark it's almost black.

[Frog]

two things -

1-am I so out of touch that I didn't know Union was bought?

2-I've used Union Navy blue and like you, found that it's so dark it's almost black.

You, me, and probably a few hundred or thousand other users, hence their addition of the newer "light Navy"

Of course, for me, it was a little too late as I had already adopted International Coatings Navy as my standard while a little bit of former ryl/nvy mix sits forlorn on my custom mix shelf seeing little use nowadays.