Surface Prep for inkjet printing

peter nelson , Jan 20, 2003; 08:41 a.m.

Last week I posted a question like this to the Non Archived forum but didn't get much information. I understand that this is an arcane topic but, after all, this IS our chosen medium so hopefully we can try to understand it better. If this is not the right forum to be asking this, could someone please suggest a forum that is?

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.

To do this I need to understand the physical and chemical properties of inks and coatings and what makes a receptive surface for inkjet ink. I also want to minimize the risk of print head damage. I've experimentally tried printing on artist's linen with a single application of Liquitex Acryrlic Gesso with good results but I have no idea whether this will be stable or if I might be damaging the heads.

Responses

1 | 2 Next Last

Jon Dubovsky , Jan 20, 2003; 10:07 a.m.

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. :)

peter nelson , Jan 20, 2003; 11:37 a.m.

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.

Steve Bingham , Jan 20, 2003; 12:22 p.m.

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.

P. Neil Ralley , Jan 20, 2003; 01:28 p.m.

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.

peter nelson , Jan 20, 2003; 01:56 p.m.

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.

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 nelson , Jan 20, 2003; 02:12 p.m.

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.

P. Neil Ralley , Jan 20, 2003; 07:22 p.m.

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.

Andy Piper , Jan 21, 2003; 02:32 a.m.

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.

peter nelson , Jan 21, 2003; 08:08 a.m.

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.

1 | 2 Next Last

Notify me of Responses