Wax Free Permanent Inks

[chknlegs]

Good afternoon,

Anyone out there using Wax free permanent inks for color fastness reasons? We are having issues with the high tack and we are running a Speedmaster Heidelberg without any third party dampening system like Delta. We constantly have to stop to fix the hickey/picking issues.

I have one provider telling me that a sheet cleaner may fix the problem but my press department already uses the first printing unit to clean the sheet before ink is applied in the next units. I have someone telling me that the Delta dampening system will fix this problem but it is a hefty price to pay.

If anyone has been confronted with this in the past, I'd like to hear some feedback with some ideas.

Thanks

 

[jlind]

Hey Legs:
I'm not sure what this has to do with wax free permanent inks. Sounds like the ink set you have is not optimized for the surface strength of the paper or board that you are printing. The tack could still be reduced by the ink company and they would still be light fast and wax free inks. What ARE you printing on?
John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-776-4718

 

[chknlegs]

Re: Wax Free Permanent Inks

Hi Jlind,

Thanks for taking interest in my problem. We are using Hostmann Steinberg inks with a high tack. Our press dept. uses ink reducer to reduce the tack everytime they get new ink. We print on Asia Rivera 200m Gloss stock and we print on 18-24pt board. In my pressman's opinion along with a "sheet cleaner" vendor's opinion, the problem is our paper. It is dirty and that is why these problems are happening. It doesn't help that we have a high tack ink.

I have heard that these so called "sheet cleaners" don't work too well. I hear that they need to be cleaned often and may put paper dust into your press. Do you have any opinion on these setups?

Any ideas to this problem would be greatly appreciated. Take care

 

[jlind]

Legs:
No opinion on the sheet cleaners. Sounds like they are for loose spray powder or sheet slitter dust. The paper companies or converters already vacuum the slitter dust. Your picking issue will not be fixed with sheet cleaners. If you have a picking problem with the board, try some tape pulls and look for weak surface coating bonding. You can get more elaborate with an IGT Surface Strength test at a GATF or RIT laboratory, or even the Plowman tests. NPA has done a lot of work with board surface strength.

John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-776-4718

 

[RGPW17100]

Check your form roller pressure to plate. Good stripes on the plates will help pull hickeys off of the plates. We had issue with many stocks being dirty and finally ended up with a stock that ran clean. We are sheet fed and not running board but we are tacked about 15 on black and around 11 on the yellow. Try running a few thousand sheets through the press with all units on impression and your sprayer turned off. Maybe do this twice then try printing on it as you normally would. If the sheets print cleaner the stock is dirty. If still printing dirty your tack is pulling the surface off the sheet (picking). Could still be bad paper. We saw this happen with Carolina when they did their last shade change.