Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: UV Curable ink longevity  (Read 4201 times)

deanwork

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2400
UV Curable ink longevity
« on: August 22, 2019, 10:03:07 am »

I was looking into the Swiss Q high resolution flatbed printer that uses uv curable inks.
Does anyone know if any reliable longevity ratings have been published? I know some of these dyes are really fugitive, like one year ratings etc, but there are many of them out there now. Seems like still in the experimental stage....? Wilhelm published text that he was working tests a couple of years ago but I never found any data.

John
Logged

MHMG

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1285
Re: UV Curable ink longevity
« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2019, 10:32:41 am »

I was looking into the Swiss Q high resolution flatbed printer that uses uv curable inks.
Does anyone know if any reliable longevity ratings have been published? I know some of these dyes are really fugitive, like one year ratings etc, but there are many of them out there now. Seems like still in the experimental stage....? Wilhelm published text that he was working tests a couple of years ago but I never found any data.

John

An Aardenburg member contacted me recently and offered to have some samples made using one of the newer Swiss Q UV curable printing systems. In the past I readily accepted such an offer, but in more recent times, I tend to prepare the samples here in my lab. It's much easier for me that way, but with the expense of the Swiss Q machines, that's not possible.  So, I have agreed to test some member-submitted samples of this technology. I don't know whether he will follow through or not because it's a lot of work no matter who makes the product. We shall see. The other issue is that funding this type of research here at Aardenburg has become more and more difficult even as membership continues to rise, but I will cross that bridge with these UV curable samples when/if the time comes. There are big questions as to what samples should actually be tested.

Substrate independence is one of the claims for UV curable technology, but I'm skeptical, particularly about adhesion issues and yellowing issues.  And there appear to be different ink sets and varied use of opaque white ink layers/subbing layers. So, it's a question of figuring out what substrates should be printed and included in testing and how they should be printed, eg. a traditional (sized but uncoated) fine art paper, an image on glass, dibond, acrylic, etc, plus white inks or not, plus back lit or reflective? Anyway, the combinations/permutations are many, and thus questions on UV curable longevity are a deep subject, IMHO. Moreover, it only matters to a very few buyers, e.g., fine artists and museums and galleries which may be the ultimate users and/or recipients of this printing process. The customary target market for UV curable printing is signage, both indoor and ouddoor, where longevity measured in weeks to perhaps a couple of years at best is acceptable and the fading/discoloration outcome can be run as a real world test :)

I suspect (but could be wrong) that the manufacturers know at this point in time the fade and discoloration resistance of UV curable inks isn't all that high which is why the warranties I've read tend to be for one year or less. Their main claim is how fast the inks "dry" and the variety of substrates that can be used.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
« Last Edit: August 22, 2019, 10:46:43 am by MHMG »
Logged

deanwork

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2400
Re: UV Curable ink longevity
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2019, 11:43:58 am »

I wrote Laumont last night since they are only one of two labs in the US that I’ve heard about using the SwissQ. The print contact person wrote me back this am and said they are “in test”  with Henry, which seems like has been going on for quite a while. And that could mean anything, like they are still working on the inks or don’t like the results or whatever. Then I wrote back that I wanted to know what they tell their clients in regard to longevity issues compared to dye sub image transfer and she said SwisQ said their inks were rated at 5 years outdoors which is way better than dye sub. Then she suggested I contact Swiss Q. It’s all very iffy. I’ll write them but it seems to me if they had anything reliable it would have been posted long ago Before famous artists are having amazingly big things done on metal and glass. I haven’t seen these flatbed SQ prints but all reports are they are optically way beyond the low res coarse HP flatbed dye prints people have done in the past.

I’m far less interested in the metal prints my client is asking about which are so prevalent in the interior design decor market that it’s become a cliche ( like face mounting to plexi was before it ) than I would be prints on uncoated unique  fabrics ( not polymer silk).

But yea, sorting out which substrate under what conditions is reliable could take years, even if someone had the resources to put into it. Substrate independence doesn’t sound logical to me either considering what has been learned by Aardenburg media tests over the years.  There are so many factors involved, including environmental issues when work is not shown and sealed behind glass or plexi.

John





An Aardenburg member contacted me recently and offered to have some samples made using one of the newer Swiss Q UV curable printing systems. In the past I readily accepted such an offer, but in more recent times, I tend to prepare the samples here in my lab. It's much easier for me that way, but with the expense of the Swiss Q machines, that's not possible.  So, I have agreed to test some member-submitted samples of this technology. I don't know whether he will follow through or not because it's a lot of work no matter who makes the product. We shall see. The other issue is that funding this type of research here at Aardenburg has become more and more difficult even as membership continues to rise, but I will cross that bridge with these UV curable samples when/if the time comes. There are big questions as to what samples should actually be tested.

Substrate independence is one of the claims for UV curable technology, but I'm skeptical, particularly about adhesion issues and yellowing issues.  And there appear to be different ink sets and varied use of opaque white ink layers/subbing layers. So, it's a question of figuring out what substrates should be printed and included in testing and how they should be printed, eg. a traditional (sized but uncoated) fine art paper, an image on glass, dibond, acrylic, etc, plus white inks or not, plus back lit or reflective? Anyway, the combinations/permutations are many, and thus questions on UV curable longevity are a deep subject, IMHO. Moreover, it only matters to a very few buyers, e.g., fine artists and museums and galleries which may be the ultimate users and/or recipients of this printing process. The customary target market for UV curable printing is signage, both indoor and ouddoor, where longevity measured in weeks to perhaps a couple of years at best is acceptable and the fading/discoloration outcome can be run as a real world test :)

I suspect (but could be wrong) that the manufacturers know at this point in time the fade and discoloration resistance of UV curable inks isn't all that high which is why the warranties I've read tend to be for one year or less. Their main claim is how fast the inks "dry" and the variety of substrates that can be used.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
« Last Edit: August 22, 2019, 11:52:53 am by deanwork »
Logged

MHMG

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1285
Re: UV Curable ink longevity
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2019, 01:01:14 pm »

I wrote Laumont last night since they are only one of two labs in the US that I’ve heard about using the SwissQ. The print contact person wrote me back this am and said they are “in test”  with Henry, which seems like has been going on for quite a while. And that could mean anything, like they are still working on the inks or don’t like the results or whatever. Then I wrote back that I wanted to know what they tell their clients in regard to longevity issues compared to dye sub image transfer and she said SwisQ said their inks were rated at 5 years outdoors which is way better than dye sub. Then she suggested I contact Swiss Q. It’s all very iffy. ...

I've seen a couple of nice brochures on Swiss Q's equipment and OEM inks. No mention whatsoever about fade resistance. Can't find the "five year claim" for sure.  Maybe someone here can find it.

Additionally, there are nine customer configurable channels in some of the SwissQ printer models, so one print lab may be using a conventional CMYK setup while another might add spot colors like white ink or "clear varnish" while another might add alternate colors like green, orange. As such, even when considering just one substrate, there are multiple possible outcomes for fade resistance and other durability factors. Thus, any forthcoming manufacturer-contracted testing on UV curable technology is likely to have significant limitations given all the variables, ie., not likely to be safely extrapolated to other ink/substrate configurations.  It may fall to each print lab offering this technology or even a big name artist producing a work or perhaps a major museum commissioning or acquiring a work to test some specific ink and substrate configuration in a meaningful way. This seems rather unlikely, but you never know. :)  One cool thing about the I* metric is that an I* color and tonal accuracy evaluation can be custom tailored to a specific image printed with a specific print process. Thus, for an important (well, maybe expensive and important) work of art utilizing a modern and complex printing technology, part of the acquisition budget could be set aside for case-specific print longevity information.


cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
« Last Edit: August 22, 2019, 04:15:13 pm by MHMG »
Logged

enduser

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 610
Re: UV Curable ink longevity
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2019, 09:59:30 pm »

I've often thought that flatbed might be an improvement over what is common in current printers. With flatbed the media sits flat and static whilst the inks dance across it. No more struggling to load paper, the ink moving in a controlled factory configuration above.
Logged

Ernst Dinkla

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4005
Re: UV Curable ink longevity
« Reply #5 on: August 23, 2019, 07:27:26 am »

I was looking into the Swiss Q high resolution flatbed printer that uses uv curable inks.
Does anyone know if any reliable longevity ratings have been published? I know some of these dyes are really fugitive, like one year ratings etc, but there are many of them out there now. Seems like still in the experimental stage....? Wilhelm published text that he was working tests a couple of years ago but I never found any data.

John

I doubt they use dye inks. UV curable is usually a mix of short polymers/monomers + pigments + a photo sensitizer = initiator added. The last aiming at the curing lamps spectral output, used to be metalhalogen and now LED is more common.
 
Swiss Q printers were originally developed by Zund the XY flatbed cutting/milling machine factory but the company went back to its core business.

Whatever manufacturer ink source the Swiss Q company has for its OEM inks I do not know but Nazdar and other companies supply third party ink for the printers. There is some information there: https://www.nazdar.com/en-us/P/4373/730-Series-UV-Inkjet-Ink 
BTW Nazdar bought the Lyson company years ago, I think their first step into inkjet printing supplies. Nazdar supplied silkscreen inks before that time.

UV curable inks these days have good bonding properties to a wide range of media. Issues before that were related to flexibility on flexibel media, not always directly occurring but in outdoor exposure the ink polymers may harden further and then crack. Today even plastics that will be thermoformed can be printed and withstand that process. Not to mention vinyl marking films  that are stretched on car bodies. Primers for difficult materials (PE/PP etc) exist too.

I doubt you will get the wide gamut of the 8-12 ink photo printers we usually discuss here. Nor the easy matte/gloss ink changes for matte/gloss media, inks are more solid an behave different on matte papers than the water based inks we use.  In general I expect less transparency in the inks than possible with water based inkjet inks and by that reduced subtractive color mixing. Dmax will be of another order too. There are some machines that print an opaque black for illuminated signs but that is for transmitted light. White ink can be either opaque or milky on the print depending on its use, layer thickness and pigmentation (there are some odd ways to make a white ink in that industry).

Onyx model; 9-42 Picoliter droplet size, 2 to 3 times bigger than what we are used to. Half the addressable resolution of what we are used to. Maximum of 9 ink channels. CMYK  LcLmGrey  White Red Green Violet

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
March 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots

Logged

noisegeek

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6
Re: UV Curable ink longevity
« Reply #6 on: August 23, 2019, 01:29:41 pm »

Hello, long time wide-format printer here...

To the best of my knowledge, none of the widely available UV inkjets use inksets that are designed for long term lightfastness. For pretty much all of them you can expect a 5-7 year lifespan, after which fading/color-shift will be quite noticeable. Depending on the inkset, it may even be shorter than that if there is a high proportion of yellow ink used in the image (yellow is always the worst).
One thing to note about these ratings though is that I've never heard of the prints being tested under "archival" conditions. That's just not the target market. These printers are designed to produce prints that will live under retail lighting or outdoors in all weather conditions, so maybe under less trying conditions they would last longer. I wouldn't want to bet on it though. The chemistry of these inks is pretty nasty, and they are after all specifically designed to be reactive to UV.
Logged

Waker

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 55
Re: UV Curable ink longevity
« Reply #7 on: August 23, 2019, 04:11:36 pm »

I had some test prints done on a Swiss Q, but stopped when it turned out they had added noise (imitation film grain) to my images to mask any head misalignment, drop size errors, etc. They were very sharp high end images - low ISO MF digital, stitched, so this was disappointing.

If they can't simply output straight sharp images, then what's the point?
Logged

aaronchan

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 617
Re: UV Curable ink longevity
« Reply #8 on: August 23, 2019, 11:16:53 pm »

I had some test prints done on a Swiss Q, but stopped when it turned out they had added noise (imitation film grain) to my images to mask any head misalignment, drop size errors, etc. They were very sharp high end images - low ISO MF digital, stitched, so this was disappointing.

If they can't simply output straight sharp images, then what's the point?

I'm not sure what kind of image you were trying to print.
But I did print an image on it and the result was brilliant!
Did your service provider shows your a 1pt font sample print on dibond print the swissQ? Mind did! Razer Sharp!

MfAlab

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 162
  • Modern Fine Art printing laboratory
    • HSU fine print
Re: UV Curable ink longevity
« Reply #9 on: October 23, 2019, 04:50:48 am »

I had tested UV ink light resistance at 2010(un-rigorous way). An old UV printer (OCE as I remembered) printed on Di-Bond, glass and acrylic sheets. All samples be placed outside at direct sunlight (facing south). After 4 months of summer sunlight and raining, glass sample shows 3.25 average ΔE. Acrylic sample is 2.92, and 4.12 on Di-Bond. It's not a archival condition, but more like outdoor commercial condition. Considering I live in Latitude 25N and annual rainfall over 2000 mm city, I will say it is quite good for outdoor advertising. But still not sure for indoor long-term usage.
Logged
Kang-Wei Hsu
digital printing & color management
fixative tests preview: https://reurl.cc/OVGDmr
Pages: [1]   Go Up