Exploring the matching technology of printing ink and paper

Keywords: Printer ink paper

Editor's Note: Through years of practical experience and continuous exploration, I have summarized some details and in-depth knowledge about ink, printing paper, etc. I hope to help everyone understand ink, ink and various types of paper! At the same time because we are not specialized in ink and paper research.

Through years of practical experience and continuous exploration, I have summarized some details and in-depth knowledge about ink, printing paper, etc. I hope to help everyone understand ink, ink, and all types of paper! At the same time because we are not specialized in ink and paper research. What we can dedicate to us is only the experience we have accumulated in these many years and some of the details disclosed by professionals. Therefore, there are inadequacies in the hope that all of you will come together to discuss and jointly improve common progress is our goal!

Printing ink

The ink color is provided by two types of materials, one is a dye and the other is a pigment.

Dyes are characterized by being transparent, which changes the color of the transmitted light by selectively absorbing certain spectral components of the incident light. Therefore, dye ink can be used not only to print color photos, but also to print transparent light box pieces. Traditional color photographs, transparent positive films are dyed to color.

The original materials of many kinds of dyes are insoluble in water, so some special solvents are required to dissolve them first and then add water. These dissolved dye solvents are somewhat detrimental to the materials used to make the ink head. I commissioned a company to develop yellow ink five years ago. As a result, the ink supplied to the ink was quickly damaged. After analysis by the company's experts, it should be dissolved solvent of yellow dye to destroy the ink head.

The durability of the ink is basically determined by the original material of the dye. It is not known which dye is more durable. In addition, we have no way of knowing which dye it used to formulate the ink we bought. I think the basic principle is definitely that more expensive inks are generally more durable. Because the raw material of the dye is so cheap, it must have certain defects. Inevitability is definitely one of the major defects. The reason for your price is basically more durable, and the color may be special. There are fewer people. Magenta in EPSON dye inks is a less durable color. We used it to print color cards on matt paper. We found that if exposed to the air, we don't need to see the light. As long as one month, the color will fade and the grayscale will become green. The EPSON ink imitation of some manufacturers is even more frightening. After printing this evening, if it is not coated, it will fade the next morning.

Ink is used in different printers and other things are added to change its viscosity, surface tension, and possibly its coefficient of thermal expansion or boiling point, to allow different printers to be ejected smoothly. These additives should also be safe for the ink head. . Solvents and additives used on different printers make different printers have different options for paper. As we all know, the EPSON dye ink printer picks up paper, but if its ink is replaced, it can be used just like an HP printer.

In formulating compatible inks from different manufacturers, we discovered that most inks are not formulated with one dye. The phenomenon is that the color saturation of most inks sold in the market is higher than that of the original ink. We usually use two or three inks in combination to match the color of the original ink.

Pigment inks were formerly made by grinding mineral pigments. Today's pigments may also have non-mineral materials. In general, it is made of solid pigment and then emulsified to make ink. Its main feature is that it is more durable and the more granular the more durable it is. It is less transparent. It can also be seen from the bottle of ink, it is a bit like milk. Therefore it cannot be used to print transparent films. Because it is opaque, its composite color: red, green, and blue are also less saturated.

No oily ink is used in small printers. Only large outdoor sprayers use oily ink. The ink is similar to printing ink, but the printing ink is usually used in transparent dyes, while the outdoor sprayer uses the ink formulated with the pigment, the outdoor spray nozzles are very large, not easy to plug. This ink uses organic solvents and film formers like paint. The surface of the material is very low. Not only is it resistant to water and light, it is not very good quality.

Ink color matching problem

Since most of the software is designed based on the original ink, the color should be closer to the original ink when using the alternative ink unless you can modify the software yourself. According to our observation, the so-called method of using ICC Profie correction, even if the use of expensive colorimeter, the effect is very amateurish.

The similarity of ink color is also mainly three parameters: hue, color saturation and concentration. We usually use several inks to formulate its parameters in line with the original ink.

It is more difficult to deal with other factors

Since the human eye also gives an illusion to human observation, the matching of the yellow, magenta, and cyan 3 primary colors does not mean that the colors mixed with these inks are consistent with the original ink. The reason is that it looks the same color, and its absorption spectrum may not be the same. Therefore, the absorption spectra produced after the mixing of the two types of dyes are definitely not the same, and the resulting colors may not be the same. Mainly in the red, green and blue colors are not the same. Therefore, when selecting the original ink, we must also take care of the matching of the three mixed colors. If the six colors match well, the rest of the problem is not great. Because in the printing software, the color is mainly based on these six colors by adding color to construct other colors. (to be continued)