[Lucky7Graphix]

When you are using a curable reducer to thin your inks out and give a softer feel. What ratio is a good one to keep in mind with mixing them. Do you do it by weight? Eyeball? What is the best consistency to go with? Any help will be much appreciated.

 

[chard]

i mix it to plastisol by 5-10% by weight..maximum of 15%..i never go beyond that since ink looses to much opacity beyond that..i say try 5% then mix it thoroughly and if still not satisfied go with 10%..

 

[Lucky7Graphix]

Cool so I need to invest in a scale huh?

 

[chard]

yup..its pretty a good investment as along the way you are going to use different kinds of additives aside from curable reducer..^_^

 

[tpitman]

Curable reducer is really made to make inks easier to print, not so much so to achieve a soft hand. There are other additives that are actually bases that are made to soften the print and can be added in as large a proportion as you like, bearing in mind that opacity goes down as additives go up.

 

[wwpro]

once you mix the reducer, what is the shelf life of the mix ? does it need to be re-activated with more reducer if you want to print later ?

Basically, is better to mix what you plan on using or you can go ahead and mix a whole quart (that's what I use) and use as needed?


Thanks

 

[CNClark]

You can do it either way. Curable reducer doesn't give the ink a certain shelf-life. It is simply an additive to make the ink easier to print. There are some inks that get reduced as soon as they get off the truck. There are some inks that we add a little to to make it more printable. But we always keep a gallon of reducer for the "oh ****, we don't have enough ink to run this job"

 

[wwpro]

You can do it either way. Curable reducer doesn't give the ink a certain shelf-life. It is simply an additive to make the ink easier to print. There are some inks that get reduced as soon as they get off the truck. There are some inks that we add a little to to make it more printable. But we always keep a gallon of reducer for the "oh ****, we don't have enough ink to run this job"

Thanks for the advice, it's new for me but that's not what I wanted to ask. I made a mistake because I ordered curable reducer AND foil resist from Ryonet.

I wanted to now about the shelf life once the foil resist was added, but I learned something new anyway.

Take care

 

[tpitman]

One thing about curable reducer, at least the stuff sold by Union ink, is that, even though it's a "balanced" reducer, you're not supposed to just pour the stuff in there willy nilly, but to add it up to a certain percentage by weight. I don't know why, but that's what they say. There are base ink extenders, and soft-hand extenders, that you can add at any percentage, with the only downside of loss of opacity. I use Mixopake extender to cut thicker inks that are dark and can handle the reduction in opacity if they're too thick to work well out of the bucket.

 

[doskalata]

So then no shelf life alteration comes from adding either of these two extenders?