Digital BW, The Print

> 
> This even though the viscosity was OK?  That must be a very effective 
> surfactant.  
> 
To my understanding, viscosity and surface tension are correlated. You
need to make both right. For example, water has very low viscosity but
very high surface tension. Therefore, it would not drip from the
printer head. However, is unsuitable as base because the viscosity is
wrong.

> The Dow product I used seems to be used in lots of cleaning products.
> 
Yes. The question is if it is available in small (retail) quantities
to us.


> >...
> > May be you are willing to take over those tests and complete
> > your very nice work by also trying a couple of formulae including
> > Simple Green as surfactant?
> 
> I'll keep it in mind.  Simple Green is definitely easier for most to 
> obtain.

Thanks.

> 
> Frankly, my incentives to do this work vary with my views as to 
> whether MIS is going to make what I want.  Regardless of MIS's 
> actions, I do think there should be an open source approach.  On the 
> other hand, I don't want to discourage MIS and others in the business 
> of making these products from doing so and successfully competing 
> with the big guys. 

Fully agree regarding inks. Not for the base, that you can  homebrew
as most people did until not so long ago in their darkrooms with some
developers and/or fixers. MIS and other producers charge way too much
for their bases, taking into account what it contains (as you mention,
mostly glycerine or glycols and water).
In our case, our studio is looking for the most archival, low reacting
  ink and we like to keep under control what's in the base (hoping
that Eboni is mostly carbon and glycerols/glycol). Therefore, we are
experimenting with simple components, with low reactivity, for the base.

Cheers,

  Daniela