PANTONE spot color ink shades feature

Before mixing PANTONE spot color inks, you must understand the basic ink mix.

Light ink preparation

Transparent white is a semi-transparent colloidal material with the properties of offset ink, made of approximately 25% to 28% of semi-transparent sodium-calcium-based caustic soda and resin oil. It has a PANTONE basic color ink. Technical characteristics, in accordance with the deployment of any ratio will not affect the printing performance, and the color light and odorless, there is a good fixation drying force and post-printing gloss. Transparent white has the following characteristics:

1. High transparency, light color, suitable for multicolor overprint;

2. Has good fluidity, elasticity and mixing;

3. Drying speed, high gloss, storage stability.

A lot of printing companies still use the traditional white ink to mix light-colored ink, but the color effect is not very good, because the white ink is produced by achromatic pigments, the content of powdery pigments is usually 60% to 70%, and the content of the connecting materials is relatively less. The light ink formulated with white ink has the disadvantages of large ink ratio, poor transfer performance, easy emulsification, low gloss, poor light resistance, easy powdering, strong achromaticity, and high hiding power. Therefore, it is recommended that printing companies use transparent white as far as possible when deploying light-colored inks, and it is better not to use white ink or use them in proportion to transparent white.

Dark ink deployment

Dark ink refers to the relatively high concentration of the ink, the transparent white content is less, mainly made of color ink deployment. In the dark ink preparation, the general printing samples can be formulated according to the formula proportion of the PANTONE Color Matching Guide, but some special colors and technical performance requirements of the product must be adjusted. For products with high color density and needing two printings, the ink on the back side of thick prints tends to be sticky. You can use solid fast drying ink, or add a little amount of red dry oil, and you can add favorable conditions to the medium. Dry desiccant and anti-sticking agent (provided by professional ink company) on the bottom layer, select good absorbing paper, reduce machine speed and increase dusting when printing. In addition, the deployment of dark blue ink containing a higher component of blue light, should pay attention to the chemical structure of the light blue contains antioxidant groups, to take the principle of pre-printing, post-production, to prevent poor print drying.

Process requirements

PANTONE spot color inks must be formulated with post-printing processes. For products requiring post-printing and water-based coatings, inks should be freed from high-tackifiers and wear-resistant additives, plus wear-resistant additives. Can make the ink film smooth and wear-resistant, but will make the surface structure of the ink layer changes, is not conducive to water-based coating and coating. If the dryness of the red oil is excessive, the ink will be quickly dried and crystallized, resulting in poor coating and gloss. In addition, when the spot color ink is dispensed, the proofing paper provided by the printing manufacturer must be consistent with the printing paper in order to prevent the color difference from being too large. The deployment of spot-color inks should also consider the application characteristics, for large-area ink printing field, the viscosity can not be too high, high viscosity and easy to pull the paper, so that the ink film surface is not smooth. In addition to considering the season, the winter viscosity is lowered and the summer season is relatively higher. From the perspective of application performance of spot inks, the accuracy of ink color is the most important. Therefore, it is best to use PANTONE basic color inks to match spot color inks. Formulas based on PANTONE basic inks are very versatile and can guarantee ink. (Text / Zhang Yuecheng)