Dr. Nicholas HellmuthNovember 2010
Latex inkWhat are the true Pros & Cons
compared with Resin & UV inks?
With Sepiax resin & HP latex inksnow available, is it viable to continue with
full-solvent, eco-solvent, mild-solvent?
Latex / Solvent / SEPIAX / UV Inks pros & Cons
Please Note
Copyright 2010
This report has not been licensed to any printer manufacturer, distributor, dealer, sales rep, RIP company, media or ink company to distribute. So if you obtained this from any company, you have a pirated copy.
Also, since this report is frequently updated, if you got your version from somewhere else, it may be an obsolete edition. FLAAR reports are being updated all year long, and our comment on that product may have been revised positively or negatively as we learned more about the product form end users.
To obtain a legitimate copy, which you know is the complete report with nothing erased or changed, and hence a report with all the original description of pros and cons, please obtain your original and full report straight from www.large-format-printers.org.
Your only assurance that you have a complete and authentic evaluation which describes all aspects of the product under consideration, benefits as well as deficiencies, is to obtain these reports directly from FLAAR, via www.wide-format-printers.NET.
Front cover photographs (left to right): Virtu RR50 in WP Digital facilities (this page), HP latex ink cartridges close up, B&P Sepiax CADET SP750 at ISA 2010 trade show, and DGI PolaJet 3204D at ISA trade show.
Contents
Introduction 1
How many printers does this FLAAR Report Discuss? 2
How many kinds of inks are involved in this comparison? 2
Solvent printers compared with UV printers: Hybrid class 3
Preparing the substrate to receive the ink 7
Do substrates require coating? 8
Cleanliness of the material in order to receive the ink 9
Printing on Cheap materials such as paper 11
Abrasion 11
Solvent Resistance 11
Lamination and other surface protection 12
Adhesion 13
Potential adhesion problems when re-heated long after printing 13
Chipping at the edge, when the edge is cut 14
Ink 15
Color Gamut 17
Metallic inks 18
White ink 20
Applications in general 21
Applications: Heat Transfer 21
Thermo-forming (on a wooden mold) 22
After-market ink 22
Occasional changes of ink chemistry 23
Ink odor: Solvent compared with UV 23
Ink: Replacing old ink containers 24
Ink Costs 25
Ink cost impacted by the amount of ink required due to the solvent base 25
What percent of the ink is really solvent, and what percent is really water 26
Ink Drying Times 26
What printheads work with which ink? 28
Latex / Solvent / SEPIAX / UV Inks pros & Cons
UV ink, if cured by LED lamps, has more issues than admitted 28
Issues with static charge 28
Dust, a problem or not? 28
Image Quality; banding 29
Banding or other imperfections on solid black 29
Glossy finish 29
Gloss Differential 29
Overall appearance of the image 30
Cracking if flexed 32
Material needs to be flat 32
Electricity costs 33
Need for training 33
RIP software 34
Heaters 34
Vehicle wrap 35
Spitting 35
Other aspects of maintenance 36
Corrosive inks 36
Ink longevity 36
Operating unattended 37
VOCs 37
Carcinogenic nature of Solvent inks 39
Improvements in Technology are applied more often
to UV printers than to solvent machines 39
Productivity 40
Productivity because of intelligent handling of flat materials 40
Roll-to-roll market share: UV vs. Latex vs. Solvent 40
Misleading nature of advertisements 40
Index of disillusionment 41
A comment on cationic UV ink 42
Should you wait to buy latex ink? Should you wait to buy Sepiax ink? 43
Summary 43
Predictions 44
Acknowledgements 45
Bibliography 45
Whe have moved these downloads to another part of our immense reference archive. After an initial period based on factory inspection, to update these reports we prefer to have a site-visit case study of an actual end-us-er usung this model of Sepiax Resin Inks.
Comparing HP latex ink with UV-cured inksComparing with all solvent inks
and pros & cons of Sepiax Resin Inks
VUTEk PressVu 180 EC at SGIA 2002. Those were the early days of UV technology. The predecessor of this UV printer was a solvent printer.
