Uses for Old Pantone Ink Colors?

[merchmonster]

I have at minimum 5 gallons of PMS ink colors sitting on a shelf, probably more. We don't do a lot of matching and previously matched colors just sit around for a long time.

I was thinking about taking all of those inks and blending them together, and adding black to try and make a dark grey. Not sure if that would work though.

Has anyone successfully tried something like this with leftover inks?

[Frog]

Sure, these can be a base for mish mosh dark gray, or even black if you add some black pigment. I use some of my mismatches about 30/70 with black ink with pretty good results.
But, also, that crap gray, really based down makes some great tone on tone ink.

[Frog]

Another recycle method for unused or mismatches is to mix like colors together to make a "House Red". "House Yellow, House Orange, House Blue, etc.

[mimosatexas]

That's what I've done for the past few years. All oranges, reds, yellows, light blues, dark blues, bright greens, darker greens, purples, pinks, etc get blended into an ever changing house color. If someone isn't picky I use that ink, or use it as a starting point to make shades that aren't Pantone specific. I usually try to tell people that there may be color variance on repeat printings and most people don't care too much.

[mk162]

You, you can go either route.  House colors or gray/black ink.

We've done both.  Periodically I will take a color that we don't use and mix some black pigment into it, then I mix it with a really cheap black ink and call it a day.  We label it "trash black" and use it for spot color printing where it's the last color and there are no halftones.

I have about 2 gallons left of it, so it's probably not a bad idea to mix more up.

The reason we cut it with a cheap black ink is just to make sure there are no undertones of another color.  It might work better if your coming from gray rather than a 5 gallon bucket of the worst orange color ever and turning it into 10 gallons of black.