Digital BW, The Print

Matt,

>... MIS FS inks ...

>Question:

>there is a solvent smell from the prints for a bit after printing.
>I didn't think these were solvent based inks.

The black ink has been described to me as a "co-solvent" ink.  It has a
strong smell.  There is a volatile solvent in there, probably in addition to
water.  As I understand it, the co-solvent is one reason this ink does so
well in terms of blackness and longevity compared to many other black
pigmented inks.

I do, however, think that the more volatile co-solvent could lead to more
problems with clogging and evaporation through CIS lines if the printer is
used infrequently.  For that reason, when I designed the variable-tone/mix
inkset that MIS now sells, I made sure it would also work with the older,
non-co-solvent MIS archival black.  It is less black, but prints well with
the vm curves, especially if you put a "94" in the "95" box of the Epson
driver "Transfer Function."

The MIS VM and FS blacks are the same.  This ink is also essentially the
same as the original PiezoBW black ink.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com