Ink pick up after flash

[inkman996]

I have a job to print today five colors, white-grey-lemon yellow-athletic yellow-red

Question I have which i been struggling with is which color is best on the flashed whit,e, will be directly following the flash so I am worried about tackiness. I am thinking lemon yellow following the flash, it is smooth and runny and no where near the solids of athletic yellow. Red i find sucks after the flash so thats last. The grey is before the flash so its just a case of which yellow is better by your guys experience.

BTW all the colors are generally the same coverage in size.

[mk162]

i find yellow pigments to be the tackiest.  red orange and yellow are all terrible.

[inkman996]

i find yellow pigments to be the tackiest.  red orange and yellow are all terrible.

Yep which is why i am trying to figure out the lesser of three evils.

[Homer]

what inks / mesh are you using? we have difficulty with basing reds and yellows with pick up if it's a high coverage area. I assume your talking low tension panel frames

one thing we do is slow the flood way down to give the flashed ink some cool down time before it prints, if we have to run a following color.

305's will help, I think. . ditch the panelframes too. IF you have to or can / print white, flash, two colors, then send the table around again to flash. been there, done that.

[inkman996]

Definitely not using panels those are strictly for one or two color jobs usually on whites only. All our statics are tensioned nicely, we get them done custom for us. Screens are already burned, white on 200 all the rest are 260's. Ditching the lemon yellow and going to try straight process yellow which will be more like the color the want anyways. But process yellow will pick up just as bad as the lemon yellow.

All standard epic inks from wilflex no high opacity inks except for the white of course.

Hope like hell to do all wet on wet after flash this is not a small job 1300 or so front and back same colors.

[alan802]

I wouldn't think the process yellow would pick up at all?  Ours usually don't.  Like Brad, I have found yellows to be very tacky for whatever reason.  This is, like you said, trying to find the lesser of 3 evils and lot's of times when I'm faced with that scenario, you have to just try it each way then reset the job.  Without having direct experience with those exact inks, I don't think I could confidently point you in the right direction.

The lemon yellow may be runny but if it has a ton of plastisizer, aka curable reducer, it's going to add to the tackiness and buildup on the next screens.  I've picked out some inks that I thought would perform wet on wet by the way they looked only to have them act the opposite of what I expected.

I think instead of trying to figure this out before you print, you might have to figure it out the hard way, then put them in the order that worked best duing the test print phase.  I hope I'm wrong on that and you get the print order right the first time.

[JBLUE]

It all depends on the size of the area but I would throw the gray right after the flash. The olor right after the flash will gel a bit before the next screen.  Whats the art look like?

[tonypep]

Just an FYI yellow inks are considered as "long bodied" inks which contributes to their stringy nature as well as tack properties. Marine or red shade blues are generally considered to have the shortest body.
It's all about the pigment(s)
tp

[inkman996]

Hey Tony you have me thinking since you are by far the most ink tech knowledgable slash user here.

Sonny called me and we discussed a few things and he is recommending soft handing the yellow.

What I am thinking would be cool is to know what makes all these ink additives different, not a general will make ink softer but more like what its ingredients are and how they are different from the next additive.

For instance I know soft hand takes the body away from some inks but under the hood is it because it has less resin, or more plasticizer etc. Does it make the ink more or less tacky etc.

Same goes with curable reducer, fashion base and all the other additives.

 

[Gilligan]

Curable Reducer is just plasticizer according to one industry consultant.

[tonypep]

All of those products mentioned can more or less be lumped together under the category of "extenders" and have varying amounts and ratios of plasticizers, resins, and other additives that can reduce viscosity and minimize hand. Not without trade offs however. Too much "curable reducer" while, as it's name implies won't impede the cure; can actually increase the amount of after flash tack in some cases. Just as we can extend oil paints with products like linseed oil, they will in turn, take longer to fully dry.
That does not any where near answer the question but it it's a rather broad one .

[alan802]

Hey Tony you have me thinking since you are by far the most ink tech knowledgable slash user here.

Sonny called me and we discussed a few things and he is recommending soft handing the yellow.

What I am thinking would be cool is to know what makes all these ink additives different, not a general will make ink softer but more like what its ingredients are and how they are different from the next additive.

For instance I know soft hand takes the body away from some inks but under the hood is it because it has less resin, or more plasticizer etc. Does it make the ink more or less tacky etc.

Same goes with curable reducer, fashion base and all the other additives.

I'm not sure what is all in the other bases, but like I said earlier and Tony said, the curable reducer will make your tackiness issue worse because of the plastisizer.  I'm assuming the soft hand has plastisizers in it???  If so then you'll be going the wrong direction.

I can attest to the fact that the fashion soft base is a terrible additive to add to an ink if you are wanting it to be better at wow printing.  I made a fashion black ink a while back and it built up on the next screens worse than it did before I added the fashion, and it was already terrible at wow printing.  Just to test that it wasn't just the ink that was the problem, I added fashion base to some qcm xolb royal blue and it was just as bad at building up as it was before adding the fashion.  I'm assuming the fashion base is heavily plastisized due to how it built up on screen or it could have something similar that makes it perform poorly at wow printing.

[inkman996]

UPDATE

I actual have a pic to post if verizon can unclog itself so my cell can push it through.

Anyways this actually went with zero grief I was amazed.

I printed the white then the grey then a flash. Next head was process yellow with no additives this is where I thought I was going to have some issues. Not one issue it printed smooth, then GY then Red. I stroked the white and grey twice since it was also part of the finish print as well as under base. This actually was a big benefit because while the the white and grey was second stroking it gave the flashed a few extra seconds to cool off.

On royal i had no problem getting the white and grey opaque enough to pass muster. I did have to speed up the grey and lighten up its pressure so it would not pick up the wet white.

The gang just finished them sio it took about 2.5 hours to do the backs of 1300 not bad, I was seriously dreading having to go around twice.

I will post the pic when it comes.

[ScreenFoo]

Nice, I was just about to agree with Alan and post that you won't have any problems with process yellow--but you beat me to it.   

Curable Reducer is just plasticizer according to one industry consultant.

I was always under the impression (someone please correct me if I'm off here,) that curable reducer is plasticizer and resin in a 'balanced' ratio (hence the sometimes used term 'Balanced Reducer')
Old-school unbalanced reducer was just plasticizer, and adding too much could make the ink film impossible to cure.  At the same time, it would lower viscosity with a much smaller addition compared to balanced reducer.
I think the key in modifying inks would be not going too far either way--too much resin or too much plasticizer will result in a poor quality ink film.

From my (limited) experience, if an ink doesn't print well WOW out of the bucket, anything you add will only marginally decrease it's crappiness...

[inkman996]

Here it is.