Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: dgberg on February 08, 2022, 03:06:47 pm
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On the Roland forum A person was talking about converting her small format ink to eco solvent water based ink. Never heard of it. With a Google search I found several companies selling it. No explanation about what is in the bottle. It cannot be solvent water based, it has to be one or the other. So is it a true solvent ink, dye, pigment or dye sub. My take on it is that it is a play on words. They turned eco friendly into eco solvent. This person on the forum insisted this was a new special formula water based solvent. I don’t know what is in the bottle but I would like to know.
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I'm most certainly not an ink guru, but I seem to recall that
Water is a solvent...
From what I've read in various place, most solvent inks would have the interior components of an aqueous printer for breakfast. Sounds like you might get a better result loading your printer with dilute snake oil. I suspect that what is in the bottle will be, if you're lucky, flushable from the system.
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This started when a gal on another forum was spouting off about her new Epson converted printer with new eco-solvent water based ink. I wanted to reply but was not confident in my knowledge of what she really has. She is printing on vinyl and doing the cutting on A separate machine. She thinks it is a special solvent Ink that will last outside. I think the ink is either dye or pigment but don’t really know.
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I print on vinyl all the time on my 8400, laminate the work and out on frames in the bright London sunsine. Prints last half a dozen years, before the Dyrtac laminate fails.
Over to someone more sensible (Ernst, or Paul). I've got interior vinyl from 8400, cut on a little Graphtec 6000, that looks good a couple of years in, but no direct sunshine.
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See screenshot attached…
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See screenshot attached…
Simon,
There are about 3 ink resellers marketing their ink as Eco Solvent water based. Pretty much determined it is a water based dye or pigment ink.
Problem is the folks buying this think they are converting their printers with solvent inks for outdoor applications.
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On the Roland forum A person was talking about converting her small format ink to eco solvent water based ink. Never heard of it. With a Google search I found several companies selling it. No explanation about what is in the bottle. It cannot be solvent water based, it has to be one or the other. So is it a true solvent ink, dye, pigment or dye sub. My take on it is that it is a play on words. They turned eco friendly into eco solvent. This person on the forum insisted this was a new special formula water based solvent. I don’t know what is in the bottle but I would like to know.
Dispersion inks, some solvents like alcohols, glycols, still in the mix but over time in R&D the water part has been increased. Colorant can be an encapsulated pigment or a plain dye. Remaining resin in the dried layer will be acrylic based but in total a more complex copolymer. In essence the HP Latex inks are in that category too. HP uses thermal heads. Later on manufacturers like Mimaki used piëzo heads.
https://www.fujifilmprecisionink.com/en/pigment-dispersions
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2011/HPLatexSummit/LatexTechnology.pdf
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Ethyl Alcohol (Ethanol), and Methyl Alcohol, (Methanol) and many others are solvents. They are organic carbon-based substances capable of dissolving or dispersing one or more other substances. Most are organic and miscible (will dissolve) in water. Seems like a useful ink component.
Ethanol is a very common solvent and is unlikely to damage metal or plastic components in a printer.