Digital BW, The Print

OK' this one is REALLY informal, and lousy science, but interesting 
nonetheless_

I put up two prints, one w/ Museum K (BO)on EEM, and another w/ 
Ultratones (VM 4.3) on Hannemuhle William Turner. Location was the 
BACK WALL of my Florida room. I emphasize that because at the back 
they get NO direct sunlight, just moderately strong ambient. Heat 
fluctuates between 80 and 95 deg.F. depending on wether the ac is 
on, and the humidity is probably never under 75%, so it's still a 
torture test.

One month later: the Museum K shows a slight but noticeable magenta 
color shift that becomes very obvious when i lift the covered 
section to compare. Much more disturbing: the BORDER areas that have 
neither ink or base liquid on them have turned yellow. So much for 
EEM being enhanced.

The VM 4.3 on Willie Turner OTOH shows no visible change. Not only 
did it it not fade or color shift, but I think (don't have a 
densitometer to verify) the exposed areas have actually GAINED a bit 
in DMAX. Paul Roark reported a similar result for the Epson matte K, 
does this mean the two inks are actually one and the same? 

Steve K

Steve,

Pardon my delayed response to your post.  I'm just back from a spring trip
to D.C.  (The Remington night paintings in the East Wing of the National
Gallery are worth the trip.)

>... w/ Museum K (BO)on EEM, and
>another w/ Ultratones (VM 4.3) on Hannemuhle William Turner.

>Location was the
>BACK WALL of my Florida room. I emphasize that because at the back
>they get NO direct sunlight, just moderately strong ambient. Heat
>fluctuates between 80 and 95 deg.F. depending on wether the ac is
>on, and the humidity is probably never under 75%, so it's still a
>torture test.

>One month later: the Museum K shows a slight but noticeable magenta
>color shift that becomes very obvious when i lift the covered
>section to compare. Much more disturbing: the BORDER areas that have
>neither ink or base liquid on them have turned yellow. So much for
>EEM being enhanced.

The EEM yellowing doesn't surprise me.  I wonder if it is just the optical
brighteners burning out or if your relatively high humidity is causing the
acids to attack the paper quicker than usual.

I've never seen a magenta shift with these carbon black inks.  I'm
suspicious that the humidity and a paper reaction are part of what is going
on.  The higher the humidity (and temperature) the faster most of these
reactions will go.  This could especially be true with the acid reactions.
My reading suggests that the acidic H+ ion uses water molecules to transport
it to the cellulose and other things that it attacks.

>The VM 4.3 on Willie Turner OTOH shows no visible change. Not only
>did it it not fade or color shift, but I think (don't have a
>densitometer to verify) the exposed areas have actually GAINED a bit
>in DMAX. Paul Roark reported a similar result for the Epson matte K,
>does this mean the two inks are actually one and the same?

I've seen this increase in dmax with Eboni also.  I don't think the inks are
the same, however.  The Epson Matte Black is considerably warmer.  Also, the
Epson Matte Black is not a carbon ink, whereas MIS claims that Eboni is
carbon.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com

Hi Paul, welcome back;

you wrote;>>The EEM yellowing doesn't surprise me. I wonder if it is 
just the optical
brighteners burning out or if your relatively high humidity is 
causing the
acids to attack the paper quicker than usual.<<

I suspect you're right; I think the extreme conditions are showing 
the EEM's weak spot. The real suprise is that the Eboni on W turner 
is STILL showing no change at all and it's now almost 2 months under 
those conditions.

I do however have another curious development to report regarding the
VM 4.3 inks. My 7500 has been sitting unused for about 3 weeks now, 
until yesterday. When I turned it on it ran a cleaning cycle, I did 
a nozzle test...it was flawless. Nice suprise. However, the test 
print I did on EEM came out greenish. Distinctly greenish. It looked 
like the light M toner was weak, but there was no nozzle skipping, 
even with a loupe. 
I decided to procceed on the assumption that somehow some of the 
pigment has settled, either in the lines or the damper, so I took 
the dampers off and pulled about 30ml of ink through them. The ink 
in the LM damper was initially very transparent, like dye ink. As I 
pulled fresh ink into it, it darkened up and became more opaque.

Subsequent test prints are better-but not quite as neutral as they 
were new, so I'm going to pull a bit more ink through the system to 
see if that helps.

Any theories or guesses as to what caused this?

Steve K

Steve,

You wrote:

>... another curious development to report regarding the
>VM 4.3 inks. My 7500 has been sitting unused for about 3 weeks now,
>until yesterday. When I turned it on it ran a cleaning cycle, I did
>a nozzle test...it was flawless. Nice suprise.

I find that also.  I've gotten so lazy and confident that I often don't even
bother with the nozzle checks.

> However, the test print I did on EEM came out greenish.

The only time I've seen color in the new VM 4.3/Ultra Tone inks is when the
damper allows some residual old ink to mix in.  This usually disappears
after the first few days of printing, however.  I'm not sure if some
hardened old pigment in the dampers could slowly "dissolve" (or get
re-suspended?) such that after a long time sitting it could affect the
color.

>It looked like the light M toner was weak, but there was
>no nozzle skipping, even with a loupe.
>I decided to procceed on the assumption that somehow some of the
>pigment has settled, either in the lines or the damper, so I took
>the dampers off and pulled about 30ml of ink through them. The ink
>in the LM damper was initially very transparent, like dye ink. As I
>pulled fresh ink into it, it darkened up and became more opaque.

>Subsequent test prints are better-but not quite as neutral as they
>were new, so I'm going to pull a bit more ink through the system to
>see if that helps.

>Any theories or guesses as to what caused this?

Not really.

The light toner is really dilute.  However, it still uses the same
RC-compatible, high-load compatible base.  As such, I would think that it
would be very unlikely to settle.  I do wonder what is different about this
new base, however.  I'll run the issue by MIS and see if Zeiss has any
ideas.

My 7500 with the VM 4.3/Ultra Tone inks has been idle for nearly 10 days
now, so the next time I use it I'll print a purge pattern to see if I can
detect any color changes.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com

Paul, you wrote:

> > However, the test print I did on EEM came out greenish.
>
> The only time I've seen color in the new VM 4.3/Ultra Tone inks
is when the
> damper allows some residual old ink to mix in.  This usually
disappears
> after the first few days of printing, however.  I'm not sure if
some
> hardened old pigment in the dampers could slowly "dissolve" (or
get
> re-suspended?) such that after a long time sitting it could
affect the
> color.


To avoid any contamination by Epson dyes or a cleaning fluid when
I loaded the 9000 with Ultratone I've used a vacuumpump at the
airtight wastebottle/tubes that I had already installed a year
ago. First emptied the CIS bottles of dye ink and then loaded
them with water + Windex, pulled through the system with the
vacuum pump, added clean water in the bottles and pulled that
through too, then emptied the bottles of the last water and
pumped out all the water from the tubes. Taken out the dampers
and cleaned them by reverse spooling with a syringe, replaced one
as it had too little flow, assembled it all again. Put the
Ultratones in the bottles and pulled the inks in the system with
the vacuum pump again, that took 20 seconds till the grey inks
dripped in the waste bottles. All the time no need for initial
fills or any head activity etc. Printed an A1 purge file with
CcMmYK fields. One cleaning and it was all working. There's a
small white line in the blacks but that was there before the ink
change so I have to change the dark head soon.

With this in mind I'm a bit surprised that there should be any
ink left in the dampers, there was little colour left in the
water when I checked the dampers. The CIS tubes of black and
yellow show staining but that will never have an influence on the
hexatone. Hardened pigment is unlikely too and doesn't fit
Steve's story, I wonder whether Steve has done much printing
after the first installation of the inks and before the 3 weeks
rest. Just contamination with some leftover older ink or cleaning
fluid not totally taken out of the tubes. Otherwise it has to be
separation of the ink and that is strange as the tubes at that
point don't drop more than 10 cm and one would expect the pigment
to be heavier. If the medium is heavier you get the reversed
effect like Steve describes. With Generations 4 there never would
be a separation in the inklines in such a short period and the
effect would be: pigments at the bottom.

The VM curves are good in tone, no crossover effects, no
metamerism but is it an optical illusion that the cold print
looks lighter than the warmest print ? MIS did send me
replacement pint bottles for the cyan, lite cyan and yellow
positions when they were not sure about the contents of the first
package that I received. I can easily make the cold print darker
but I would like to get some feedback on that observation.
Could also be my printer of course.

Ernst

Ernst, you wrote;
>>I wonder whether Steve has done much printing
after the first installation of the inks and before the 3 weeks
rest. Just contamination with some leftover older ink or cleaning
fluid not totally taken out of the tubes. Otherwise it has to be
separation of the ink and that is strange as the tubes at that
point don't drop more than 10 cm and one would expect the pigment
to be heavier.  <<<

I had gone through approx. 30-50% of a four ounce set of bottles 
(the toners seem to be going faster) before letting the machine sit 
for 3 weeks. My change-over procedure wasn't even remotely as 
thourough as yours, but I was changing from one grayscale set to 
another, not color to grayscale. I'm sure there was some residual 
contamination, but it wasn't visible, and my tone had been very 
consistent. But to update: I pulled another 2-3 syringes of LM 
through the system, at this point I'm sure that all of the remaining 
LM has been cycled through the dampers. The density of the ink in 
the damper is now quite dark, you can barely see color when it is 
back-lit. And, guess what: My printing tone is now back to normal. 
Whatever is going on, it seems to affect the thinned out LM more 
than anything else. Since I'm using the 4.3 and Paul changed the 
toners a little for the final formula, I wonder if the problem 
hasn't already been taken care of? Paul?

Steve K

Steve,

You wrote;
>...to update: I pulled another 2-3 syringes of LM
>through the system, at this point I'm sure that all of the remaining
>LM has been cycled through the dampers. The density of the ink in
>the damper is now quite dark, you can barely see color when it is
>back-lit. And, guess what: My printing tone is now back to normal.
>Whatever is going on, it seems to affect the thinned out LM more
>than anything else. Since I'm using the 4.3 and Paul changed the
>toners a little for the final formula, I wonder if the problem
>hasn't already been taken care of?

The formula change was just a minor change in ratio of cyan and magenta to
get a better average tone over a number of different papers.  The basic
formula remained the same.  So, I don't think the version of UT you are
using would make any difference (assuming it was mixed correctly).

The LM is very dilute.  That could be one of the factors involved.  I'm just
not sure what could be causing the trouble, however.  MIS has some
accelerated separation tests they can run.  I'll see if they have subjected
the full inkset to those tests.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com

----- Original Message -----

From: "Ernst Dinkla" <E.Dinkla@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2003 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Yet another fade test-VM 4.3 vs. Museum
Black


> The VM curves are good in tone, no crossover effects, no
> metamerism but is it an optical illusion that the cold print
> looks lighter than the warmest print ? MIS did send me
> replacement pint bottles for the cyan, lite cyan and yellow
> positions when they were not sure about the contents of the
first
> package that I received. I can easily make the cold print
darker
> but I would like to get some feedback on that observation.
> Could also be my printer of course.

Just a stupid thing I did. Used a cheap paper to start with that
is full of OBA and then the bluer tone will not block much light
that brightens the paper beneath it. The warmest print blocks it
though. Should use the papers that are compatible with the
curves.

Ernst

Steve,

>... My printing tone is now back to normal.
>Whatever is going on, it seems to affect the thinned out LM more
>than anything else. Since I'm using the 4.3 and Paul changed the
>toners a little for the final formula, I wonder if the problem
>hasn't already been taken care of?

I just ran my 7500 with the VM 4.3 inks after it had been sitting for more
than 10 days.  The nozzle checks were perfect and the tones & densities in a
purge pattern and 21-step test strips seem normal.  So, at least a 10 day
sit did not produce the effects you've seen with your setup.  (I'd send a
scan of the purge pattern but my brain-dead [Norton-damaged] system can't
find the scanner.)

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com

Paul, you wrote;
> 
> I just ran my 7500 with the VM 4.3 inks after it had been sitting 
for more
> than 10 days.  The nozzle checks were perfect and the tones & 
densities in a
> purge pattern and 21-step test strips seem normal.  So, at least a 
10 day
> sit did not produce the effects you've seen with your setup.  (I'd 
send a
> scan of the purge pattern but my brain-dead [Norton-damaged] 
system can't
> find the scanner.)
> 
> Paul
> http://www.PaulRoark.com

Thanks for checking... whatever the problem was, I just used up 
enough of the 4.3 inks that I now need more, so I don't expect to 
see it again. Oh yes, Norton; a mixed blessing. I tried their anti-
crash thing a couple years back on W98 made the crashes much worse. 
OTOH, I'm now trying their Int. Security-last night it prevented 
some kind of back-door Trojan from getting in my system...

Steve