Introduction Printing ink is so much more than just the black stuff that you put on a page. It has been around for thousands of years, and it's been used in everything from newspaper presses to digital printers. As you can see, we're not talking about offset printing ink which is oil based. I want to have a little fun and talk about how you can make your own ink for your printer. At home! Ready? Ingredients You will need the following ingredients: Soot (5 tbsp) : This is as purest as it gest. You can make the soot yourself by holding a glass up to a flame. This will allow you to slowly accumulate the soot. Water (2 tbsp): For the base of your ink, use distilled water so that you don't introduce any impurities into the mix. Distilled water is also easier to clean up than tap water because there are no minerals or residue left behind from tap water. Alcohol (2 tbsp) (grain alcohol): This ingredient works as a preservative for your ink and allows it to last for several mo
For us it was really quite simple. A small filter from a company called Greenflow Environmental Services . Consumption Of course the rate of consumption will vary between printers, but I will relate our findings. We calculated that we used an average of 150 ml of developer per offset printing plate that we processed. We use it mainly for a double-wide press so that is a large factor too when considering consumption rates. After installation, we found that we used 75 ml per plate. We essentially cut our consumption in half. But it wasn't just our consumption that was halved, we also reduced our waste which we pay to get rid of, once again, by half. Savings on either end. The filters are the new consumption, but they are cheap. This led to the next question. How Fast Does it Pay For Itself? Ok, here goes the math. At $130 per 20 litre jug of developer and with a consumption of about 800 plates per month, savings worked out to a payback of about 6 months