Dye stability?

I had a print made with the Cone Ink Thrift Dye sitting on an easel in the backyard over 3 days. There was a painter’s pallet covering half of it as I was trying to match a color in the print to some antique thing for a color match.

When I took the pallet off the print, the blue exposed to the sun had faded a lot, almost a cyan. The covered part looked the same dark blue.

Would making the print again and maybe covering it with the Gloss Optimizer out of the K7 printer help with the fading? Three days seems a bit short as the sun only shines about 3 hours a day in the area the setup was located. Would some other coating help in this fading matter with the dye ink?

Tia.

Mack

Not with InkThrift PRO. The GO does have some UV absorption in it. But InkThrift PRO is NOT designed to withstand the amount of LUX you just blasted it with. It is a short term graphics ink.

InkThirft DB could spend months outside.
InkThrift CL could spend somewhere between the two!

But - under no circumstance use InkThrift PRO if your real intention is to provide fade resistance. It’s cheap and printer friendly - but no amount of over-coating is going to put it into the classification of ink (pigment) so that it can withstand direct sunlight!

The ink can only absorb so much LUX. Direct Sunlight one hour can be 100,000. Just outdoor light (not direct) can be in the 15000 - 25000+

Indoor lighting expecting 250lux
Three hours direct for three days is 1200 times the amount of the sample being indoors. But the additional light from outdoors would be considerable as well. It just is not designed for being out doors. Indoors - short term - and even then 1200 lux would shorten the life to be 10% of 120 lux display…

LUX is accumulative based upon intensity!

We are selling a lot of the CL into large format printing where they are using special RIPs to turn off the LK, LLK.
Some are using the DB in a double CMYK somehow…
The RIPs may be European in origin. But they are getting outstanding fade resistance coupled with lower costs.

Got it. I’ll switch back to pigment for a time.

Question: What should I cover the exit hole in the dye ink carts with? (3880). I was thinking tape, but then got to wondering if the gummy tape might mix with the ink resulting in a nozzle clog down the road when I reload them?

Tia.

Mack

The 3880 uses a two way valve. Make sure the cart is not pressurized and just keep them sitting upright as they would be placed in the printer. You should not need to tape them. Dana may have a different idea - but you do want to avoid gumminess at the valve.

If you’re going to store carts containing ink, out of a printer for a while, I suggest putting the carts in a large sealed zip lock bag, and store them out of direct sunlight, not too hot or cold. Always shake carts before re-installing into a printer.

Happy printing~ Dana :slight_smile: