Surface Prep for inkjet printing

This has been very recently discussed in the excellent Yahoo group "DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint" ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint/). In particular, check the messages with subject "Prepping a surface for inkjet" (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint/message/25270) . There were at least three or four different treatments and methods that were mentioned.

Good luck. :)

This has been very recently discussed in the excellent Yahoo group "DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint" ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint/). In particular, check the messages with subject "Prepping a surface for inkjet" (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint/message/25270) . There were at least three or four different treatments and methods that were mentioned.

No kidding, Jon - that was MY thread!! I'm the one who started it. And so far I've had the same problem there as on Photo.net - no one seems to have much information.

But I'm not just looking for things I can buy, I'm looking to UNDERSTAND this medium. I want to know the physical and chemical characteristics of inks and surfaces so I can better understand how they interact and what the characteristics are of surfaces that best receive inkjet ink. That way I can choose surfaces that have the degree of spreading, absorbtion, or other characteristics that I want. I also need to understand more about how the print head interacts with the surface so I can minimize the risk of print head damage.

I'm new to inkjet printing but I'm not new to art. In other arts - painting, drawing, sculpting, etc - serious artists spend a great deal of time learning as much as they can about their media and tools because the more they understand the more control they have over their results. In painting classes I've studied different vehicles and pigments and thinners and the characteristics of different surfaces - linen, canvas, panel, etc, and how to prepare them, depending on the intended results, and how to mix paints or layer them, to get the best results and the longest lasting paintings. Oil painters know that there are different kinds of oil - linseed, walnut, poppy, etc, with different characteristics. Likewise acrylic painters choose carefully the type of acrylic medium to use. And just as knowledge can help me not damag my printhead, in the case of painting, knowldege can protect ME - many pigments are highly toxic, oil-paint thinners are, too, etc.

So, bottom line is that a key to success and mastery in any art is knowledge of the media itself, not just knowing what products to buy.

Peter,

Let me respond to this:

"I recently bought an Epson 2200, which has a manual feed slot and can accept fairly thick media. I want to try printing on various media including cloth, plastic, sheet metal, oddball papers like brown paper bags, etc."

Any sort of plastic or sheet metel would void the warranty. I am fairly certain your printing heads would be at serious risk! As for cloth, there would be an enormous jamming potential with the rollers. However, oddball papers, although presenting some risk, would probably work. Your instruction manual tells you the maximum thickness. Canvas PAPER would also probably work.

Inks and dyes require a mating surface - which is paramont to their success. Years are spent developing suitable papers. As an illustration, try printing on the BACK of an Ilford Smooth Pearl paper and notice the runny mess you get! This sort of experimentation is very costly in time, materials, and equipment. You are operating beyound the design parameters of your equipment!!! Sort of like taking underwater pictures with a Nikon N90s - and no housing. I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but the question is almost unanswerable.

If you like "different", go to www.dustylens.com.

Peter, you may be able to get some of the answers you are looking for from inkjetart.com. Royce Bair is very knowledgeable and worth calling or emailing. Another source not to be overlooked is Epson itself.

Any sort of plastic or sheet metel would void the warranty.

I know this isn't completely true because you can buy plastics for transparency printing on inkjets at any business supply store, and they're made by HP, Epson, etc. The plastics I have in mind to print on are artist's acetate, which are not very different and well under the 48mil thickness max of my printer. But what I need to know is what the characteristics of the surface have to be to accept the ink well.

I am fairly certain your printing heads would be at serious risk!

Based on what? You may be right but I want to base that on specific knowledge not emotional fears. By way of comparison, I've had conversations about darkroom chemical safety with laymen who were concerned about having a darkroom in their house or apartment. Now it's true that some darkroom chemicals are dangerous - some are caustic, some can cause cancer if ingested, etc. But the laymen invariably focussed on the risk of fire hazard and explosion, which are NOT significant hazards for the chemicals I use. So my point is that by understanding these things we can assess risks rationally.

As for cloth, there would be an enormous jamming potential with the rollers.

Plenty of companies sell canvas and linen with special coatings for inkjet printers, and these are almost all less than the maximum thickness the 2200 accepts, so again, I don't think what you say is entirely true. There may be "some" jamming risk but "enormous"?. Keep in mind that the manual-feed on the 2200 is a straight-line path - this is not a Xerox machine or laser printer with a convoluted paper path.

Inks and dyes require a mating surface - which is paramont to their success. Years are spent developing suitable papers. As an illustration, try printing on the BACK of an Ilford Smooth Pearl paper and notice the runny mess you get! This sort of experimentation is very costly in time, materials, and equipment. You are operating beyound the design parameters of your equipment!!!

That's not at all clear. As I already said, I've gotten good results printing on gesso'ed canvas and brown paper bags. Furthermore, "giclee" printers have been inkjet printing on novel materials for 10 years now.

Sort of like taking underwater pictures with a Nikon N90s - and no housing. I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but the question is almost unanswerable.

Sorry, but that IS a smart ass answer. There are plenty of 3rd parties that make paper and other media for inkjet printing so this can't be some sort of deep dark trade secret. Plenty of photographers develop outside the bounds of their darkroom chemicals, print through water or other media, apply emulsions to non-standard surfaces, use weird things for filters, hand-color or paint prints, use their own tinting chemistry, et cetera, et cetera. No one says THEY are doing the equivalent of underwater photography with an un-housed N90. But in order for them to be successful they need some knowledge of the underlying properties of developers, emulsion, etc.

Peter, you may be able to get some of the answers you are looking for from inkjetart.com. Royce Bair is very knowledgeable and worth calling or emailing. Another source not to be overlooked is Epson itself.

I thought about that but since he's in the business of selling the very things that I'm trying to do myself, he might see me as a competitor or at least someone who's trying to avoid actually buying the stuff he sells for a living. And I suppose in a sense I am because I have rolls and rolls of artist's canvas and linen, and gallons of acrylic gesso so I'm sure I can make a 13"x19" canvas for pennies, versus the many dollars he charges, assuming I'm not going to wreck my print heads or have other problems with that approach. Besides saving money, the other benefits of rolling (unrolling?) my own is that I can tint my gesso, I can use different numbers of coats, I can make oddball dimensions, etc.

What I'm trying to do is hook up with other inkjet artists who have a deep understanding of their medium and tools so we can compare notes and exchange ideas. For instance, tonight I want to try printing on a colored (say brown or red) "toothed" paper used for pastels. Then I would use actual pastels to add on the highlights by hand. I've never seen this done before but I'll bet it would look neat if I do it well. I think the possibilities of combining traditional (ink, graphite, paint, pastel, etc) art techniques with inkjet are very exciting.

Peter, I still suggest that you open up a dialogue with Royce - I have found him to be helpful even when there is no obvious commercial angle. What you are doing sounds very interesting and you are definitely redefining boundaries. Epson too may be helpful and will potentially be interested in any ideas which have the potential to increase their market. Even if you are angling to replace their papers you are still using the ink which gets them the highest margin of all.

Peter:

run Google searches on "Inkjet dye solvents" and/or "Inkjet paper coatings" (or similar word combos) and you'll pick up a lot of basic info. The detailed chemical stuff is often proprietary (i.e. private) but I found a lot of useful stuff that might interest you..

..as in a BASF .pdf file listing dye-ink components (Water, glycol, a dash of alcohol, and dyes)

- as well as general technical things about dyes, pigments, bubble vs. piezo heads, etc. The 'physical and chemical' properties you're looking for.

From experience I can say that Epson dye inks don't like 'wet-media' acetate, gelatin-coated silver photo papers or (in the past) Kodak inkjet papers (although Kodak may have changed their coating over the years).

Seems like the papers designed for inkjets have very specific high-tech coatings tuned for inkjet use (and not available as spray coatings or the like - yet!) I'm pretty sure Epson's 2200 pigment inks are also water/glycol/alcohol mixes, although there are hydrocarbon (oil) based inks available for some of the large-format printers.

I'd guess you'll just have to coat some sample sheets (4-6 patches of different coatings on one piece of material) and run them through the printer to see what 'takes' well, and then see what 'lasts' over time.

I'd guess you'll just have to coat some sample sheets (4-6 patches of different coatings on one piece of material) and run them through the printer to see what 'takes' well, and then see what 'lasts' over time.

That's what I've been doing, with pretty good results, as i indicated above. Last night I printed directly onto a "toothed" paper used for pastels and it looks very nice. Today I'll apply some pastels over it.

But several people here have hinted darkly that all this may damage my print heads. I did all kinds of Google searchs on "print head damage", "damage your print heads", etc, but the ONLY hits I got were related to using 3rd-party inks. How much clearance is there between the print head and the media? How do print heads deal with textured media (i.e., that have ridges and valleys) such as the coated canvasses, etc, that are widely sold? What are the business-end of the print heads that might touch the paper made of? What form would this damage take and how would I recognize it in its early stages?

That's why I said that even if we don't have people on THIS forum with specific knowledge about topics like this, maybe there's a forum "out there somewhere" for "fine art" inkjet printers who like to discuss stuff like this and have been playing around with it long enough to have experience with it.

Sorry about missing your name on that thread, Peter. As you find out more information about this sort of stuff, could you pass it along somehow? A simple web page or emails to the list -- that sort of thing? I'd hate to have all that cool knowledge unavailable to the rest of us ink jet monkey-ers. :)

Peter,

I was only trying to help. Not sure why you felt it necessary to rip me. In any case, my experience is with the Epson 7600, the wide format big brother to your 2200. When I responded to "plastic and sheet metal" I took this literally. When I responded to "cloth" I was responding to "cloth", not paper cloth. When I responded to "canvas" I was referring to canvas, not canvas coated paper which I used just yesterday.

As for using various papers, fire away. I have. With mixed results. Some work great, some suck. There are more than a dozen fine art watercolor type papers out there for use with the 2200. I suppose you could make your own paper. I have, but have NOT had the guts to try it in a $3,000 machine.

Lastly, YOU were the one who said he "wanted to minimize the risk of print head damage". It is my opinion that material that is thick and also varies in thickness could do just that. Have I tested the theory? No. Am I a layman? No. I taught at the high school and university level for 30 years. I been using digital editing technology since 1991 (Ulead PhotoStyler 1.1 - the first image editing software for the PC).

And I repeat, what you ask is basically unanswerable. The Epson 2200 is VERY new and almost impossible to get!!!!! Very few, if any, would be willing to take their new printer to the limits. With various textured papers? Sure. With various coated papers? Sure. With "plastic and sheet metal"? Probably not. With plain linen? Probably not. With linen paper? Sure. With gesso? You're a brave man. Not for the timid. Especially if some amateur didn't let the gesso set up properly or mix it correctly.

I will follow this thread to see your results! Art is discovery. I wish you good luck and please keep us informed. I am sure you will be the FIRST to arrive in many areas. I am also sure you are probably an excellent artist. Only a good artist dares to make discoveries.

Steve Bingham www.dustylens.com

For line work of engineering drawings; some people us regular bond paper. With no coating; the inkjet ink soaks into the paper; and makes the lines wider. Small text may close up; and a print takes along time to dry.

For photos; a NON coated paper will soak up so much ink as to block up all the mid to dark areas. The paper will take many days to dry; and will be wrinkled. You can backoff the ink coverage to say 15 to 30% using a print "transfer function"; and get less blocked up dark tones/areas. The uncoated image will have low contrast.

Coated papers allow greater ink density; which broadens the tonal range of the paper. Paper for line work is available with several coating types. Photo paper has alot of coating; the ink is all on the surface on many types. This makes a sharper image with good tonal range.

Sign makers use vinyl material; and use pigmented inks; to make outdoor UV resistant signs..

Many papers are made at the same coating plant; and boxed up for different Brands. ALOT of the cost is in cutting; slitting; and packaging. In large bulk; paper is sold by the pound. Large users get inkjet paper by the pallet.

I'm still unclear on the risk of print head damage.

How much clearance do print heads have from the media (paper, etc)? Do they touch the media? What are print heads made out of? What form would any damage take and how would I recognize it? Granted the 2200 has only been out a short time but other inkjet printers with similar technology have been out for years.

I did a Google search on "print head damage", "damage to print heads" and similar phrases and I got NO hits that weren't related to the use of third-party inks, i.e., lots of warnings about print head damage from using the wrong ink, but I couldn't find any references to damage from using the wrong media. Not for the 2200 or any other printer. This is despite the fact that artists have been printing on oddball media for a decade. I also got email from someone who prints on 1mm thick brass plates.

None of this is to say I'm not risking my print heads by printing on canvas, pastel paper, etc, only that I'd like to get some actual facts, or at least informed speculation based on a hard knowledge of the technology.

Also, it's apparent that most people on this forum don't do the kind of printing I'm talking about, but you can't walk into an art gallery today without seeing "giclee" prints done on every kind of media imaginable, and printed on everything from $30K++ Iris machines to Epson 1200's. So I know that there must be lots of other artists doing this stuff - is there a forum on the Internet somewhere where people discuss these topics?

Peter, I'm a new inkjeter also and though currently confining my prints to Epson Enhanced Matte photos I have a head clearance tip I got from a personal visit to Inkjetart. My first 2200 13x19 print came out with a small blob of black ink toward the trailing edge. The second try resulted in another small black blob and a dime size area of white (no ink) rake marks. I thought I might have a clogged head but the guys at Inkjetart said the paper must not be feeding uniformly because the head was dragging on the media. They said to use the straight feed slot (Can't with OSX 10.2.1) and put the media lever in the "envelope" position....this raises the head slightly. I've printed several more 13X19's without incident following their advice. Perhaps you're already doing this. I'm sure your aware of all but the US version of the printer printing directly on printable CDs. Also there were some disscusions about Epson's unique polyomerized pigment inks over on the dpreview.com, Epson talk, forum. Denny

A co-worker, (a fellow engineer and photographer) here made an interesting point about this to me yesterday. He noted that when the ink goes on the paper it's wet and takes a few moments to dry. So if the head was dragging across the media it would smear a little and I should be able to see this on close examination. I've studied all the prints I've made on gesso'ed canvas, watercolor paper, brown paper bags, pastel paper, etc, and I've found no evidence of smearing, so this makes me feel less worried about head damage.

All this junk about print head damage and such is just that. As long as your media does not drag on the headsd you are ok. It is overconservative people such as some above that would have us still using dot matrix printers because it is imposible to make a picoliter droplet adhere to a page so we might as well not try. I have been preping my own canvas for years. I use acrylic gesso (light coat) and let it dry thouroughly. The only exception I find is that I prefer HP printers for experimenting. HP's ink cartriges usually act as their printheads so if I damage it all I need to do is replace the cartridge on the epsons its a little more involved. I have a 1220CSE, DJ320, and a newly acquired CP1700. I used to have an Epson 7600 but I sold it. The HP's do great for me.

The way to know if you are damaging the heads!!! Is there any streaking on your output? Remove the head, does it have any Gesso on it? If either one of these situations exist, change to a lighter canvas.

Not sure how to answer this, but make sure you have plenty of klenexes, you're in for a mess ;)