Hi. I have noticed that my prints seem to be getting slightly warmer. I use W/N K7 and have noticed a slight difference in warmth/tone between the same files printed some twelve months apart.
Anybody any ideas.
Thanks
Same ink in the printer or different?
If different ink, can you list the batch #s?
Same paper batch?
There are many variables . . . .
best,
Walker
Hi Walker.
Thanks for the reply.
Inks are 980416 except Shade 2 which is 140916. Paper is 1C2304195 Type 5.
Although most of the inks are, like myself, past their sell by date, the QTR Calibration printouts look ok.
Is there any particular shade(s) that will warm up due to age?
Regards.
Michael
Hi Walker.
Thanks for the reply.
Inks are 980416 except Shade 2 which is 140916. Paper is 1C2304195 Type 5.
Although most of the inks are, like myself, past their sell by date, the QTR Calibration printouts look ok.
Is there any particular shade(s) that will warm up due to age?
Regards.
Michael
Humidity? I’ve gotten in the habit of making notes on each print of:
File name/number
Printer profile used
Paper used
Relative Humidity in room when printed
Temperature in room when printed
Inkset
As Walter said, there are many, many variables.
Good luck,
John
All this raises another factor I hadn’t thought of until now, and that is the stability of the solvent itself. How stable is the ink solvent upon exposure to oxygen? The chemist in me also asks if, as carbon dioxide dissolves into the solvent, the pH will drop slightly.
If any of the solvent begins to oxidize, will that have any effect on the encapsulation?
I’d assume that the pigment is well protected from oxidation by encapsulation.
Would oxidized solvent not evaporate and perhaps change colour?
I do assume that oxidation would be insignificant as long as the ink is used before the expiration date, but other environmental factors such as storage temperature, pollution, exposure to light etc. may speed up any oxidation or other degradation.
That said, would it be a good or bad idea to store bulk ink in a small bar fridge?
Larry
There is no solvent in there. It’s an aqueous ink! But there is indeed VERY complex chemistry in both the ink and paper receptor that combine to make the print.
Humidity plays a huge roll in hue with all aqueous inks. For example with color Epson OEM, really humid paper will make everything much yellower.
Also dry-down time. You will see a slight hue-change (warming or cooling based on the paper type) over about a 4 days period but DeltaE is visually stable after about 48hrs (for all good archival aqueous inks not just ours).
But most often it’s emulsion of paper or a combo of that and ink and ink-age (aka pigment settling). For example, Canson re-engineered their entire paper line a few years ago to keep it from yellowing under high-acid pollution. This effected color and hue for all ink brands as well as dMax.
best,
Walker
I live in Ireland and we do not seem to have huge swings in humidity levels. We do have a lot of rain and therefore damp can be a problem but as a precaution I run a dehumidifier in my office 24 hrs a day throughout the year. All carts are shaken every week and stored ink is shaken every two weeks. I assume that with this level of ongoing agitation that pigment settling should not be the issue. This brings me back to age of ink. Does a chemical degradation take place over a period of time and, if so, does it affect some shades more than others?
Regards
Michael
I live in Ireland and we do not seem to have huge swings in humidity levels. We do have a lot of rain and therefore damp can be a problem but as a precaution I run a dehumidifier in my office 24 hrs a day throughout the year. All carts are shaken every week and stored ink is shaken every two weeks. I assume that with this level of ongoing agitation that pigment settling should not be the issue. This brings me back to age of ink. Does a chemical degradation take place over a period of time and, if so, does it affect some shades more than others?
Regards
Michael
These inks are incredible stable chemically. However, the pigment and carbon in the ink does settle more quickly in older inks that are near or past expiration and this could increase variability of the ink hue-wise. Not a particular shade over others to my knowledge but I will check our LOT #s when I’m back at work. I’m out sick at the moment.
That said, we use all of these inks every day in a humidity controlled environment at Cone Editions and do not have hue changes.
Big caveat:
The world of inkjet printing is just as physical and variable as the world of darkroom printing. I like to remind people of that. Case in point is personal . . . long ago I started an editions printing company that sold itself as being able to create single-prints of an edition from start to finish over ten years. But paper companies came and went, printer versions upgraded, coatings changed, mills changed their water, ink manufacturing and carbon grading changed (often for the better but still), shipping changed, pollution changed, my lab changed locations a few times, I upgraded my lights! There are so many small factors that can contribute to a small shift in hue between one print and another that I frankly had no control over that and I finally had to re-educate my clients to either have them print an entire edition in one go or be ok with small natural changes from print to print. Often they would actually like these small changes. It’s the old taoist idea of the “uncarved block” and is true of all art forms.
We test LaB values for every piezography ink before we manufacture and sell it. Our tolerances are way way tighter than even epson OEM because the nozzle frequencies needed to print Piezography are so much higher than Epson. A small shift in a light ink’s hue will be immediately noticeable with Piezography because there is three times as many nozzles firing that light ink.
Long story short, inks are old. Possible printer is old. This can all add up to a change.
ps: Need to keep humidity between 35 and 50%.
-Walker
[QUOTE=walkerblackwell;10608]There is no solvent in there. It’s an aqueous ink! But there is indeed VERY complex chemistry in both the ink and paper receptor that combine to make the print.
…
best,
Walker[/QUOTE]
That Cone inks are 100% aqueous solvent would surprise me. As far as I knew, most pigment inks have at least a little glycerol. Perhaps it’s just to adjust the viscosity, perhaps it’s to help maintain the ink in suspension, I’m not sure.
I do agree that there are many other variables as well.
However, a relevant question for this thread might be what is the ideal temperature for storage of your pigment ink? Would 5-10°C be an ideal temperature? Or could the lower temperature cause the pigment to come out of suspension faster?
Or am I severely overanalysing as I so often do?
Larry
Larry,
Here’s Dana’s response to a similar question:
http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1260-Piezography-Inks-in-below-zero-temperatures&p=6554#post6554
Sorry for the late reply. 5-10C would have no effect on the ink. It can withstand significantly more variable temperatures than that!
Re the word SOLVENT. In the digital ink world SOLVENT means industrial mineral-oil based inks, not WATER.
There is complex chemistry in our inks but they are not at all solvent by the standards of the ink-world although indeed water is a solvent in every other world.
So your wording tripped me up.
I think you may simply be over-analyzing but as we all do the same thing at inkjetmall every single day I can certainly empathize!
If you have access to a spectrophotometer feel free to send me the LaB value readings from new and old prints.
regards,
Walker
What printer are you using? If it is one with ink lines, and you don’t do a lot of printing, you are probably seeing sedimentation in the lines affecting your output.
Hi Jeff.
Thanks for the response. I am using a 3880. Although I print every week, there will be many occasions when the output will not clear the lines. This said, the fact that printing is on a regular basis should keep ink flowing through the lines. If this is not the case, perhaps it is time to consider a Dye based all black ink set (Jon?). Print longevity is really only an issue to anybody selling prints. The rest of us, if we are honest with ourselves, do not need prints to last decades. I am certain that most printers, A2 and below in size, are used by hobbyists (myself included). In the final analysis, if I live long enough, I can always print another one.
Regards
Michael
Hi Michael,
You don’t need to go to dye inks. You can use Cone inks in the right printer and avoid all the dramas of ink lines. I’m now using an R2000 with P2 which gives me predictable prints with no black swaps. Here’s a piece that I wrote about it: http://jeffgrant.photium.com/progress-along-the-path-to
If you wish, you can see the drama that i went through here: http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1962-Swapping-inks-and-dealing-with-the-residual-in-the-lines
I bought a new 3880 for Piezography and ended up with a 2000. I think that it is a pity that the issues of low volume usage on ink line printers is not more widely advertised but I guess that the target market is high volume usage. One thing that I know for certain is that you need an i1 Pro if repeatability is what you want.
If you are wondering, I now have a 3880 with flush carts that I can’t sell. It has been an expensive exercise to say the least.
Hi Jeff.
Thanks for the input. I have been through so many printers that I dare not add up the cost just on hardware alone. I still don’t buy into the theory that these printers are aimed at high usage customers. Very few people in this world make a living out of taking photographs. Fewer still make a living out of printing them. More make a living out of the photographic industry without taking or printing photographs. Most print shops that I know of print on large format printers. Desk top printers, IMO, are mainly purchased by enthusiasts or delusionists (I fit into both categories). It seems that we are expected to tolerate problems that we would not put up with when purchasing anything other than a printer. These problems have been around since the first ink jet printers hit the market and, will no doubt, continue to plague us in one form or another in the future.
I agree with you about the R2000 but, by the time I am ready to invest/waste more money on another printer, it will probably be unavailable.
Keep on shaking the carts and taking the tablets.
Regards.
Michael
I hear you so well Michael.
One of my favorite cartoons of all time sums my feelings up about printers (and DRM inkjet cartridges) perfectly: Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable - The Oatmeal
Jon and I are cooking up some ideas to address these issues but will be some years out. After all, this is the place where the first inkjets were R&D’d so why not invent a new one for artists? Stay tuned . . .
best,
Walker
Michael,
I think that the problems are with non-Epson inks. They are all known to have sedimentation issues. It’s not something that I have ever seen mentioned with people using Epson colour inks. I follow colour management as well as printing fora, and it would certainly come up in the CM ones. My wish was to have repeatability in my printing. I want to be able to reprint an image months or years later. I can achieve that with a non ink line setup. If I had persisted with a 3880, I would have needed to measure regularly, flush probably, and measure again.
I will now retire quietly.
Walker,
IJM seems to be very good at announcing what will happen at some time in the future and then not following through. As an example, Dana announced a while back that she had made a discovery with GO printing, and that she would post the results later. To the best of my knowledge, later has not yet arrived.
I am quite used to ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ promises as I live in Australia where our political landscape is almost as ludicrous as yours. However, it would be nice if IJM published what was in the pipeline and kept that list current.
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