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
I recently discovered a small tip for ink level control. Please take a look at the ink leveller bar above. It controls the level of ink in our yellow ink fountain. The bar across the fountain supplies the ink, but please notice the the tips just underneath it. Each tip has a small valve. We put them on recently for two reasons: The leveller did not supply ink evenly to the entire fountain. It's a natural that it loses pressure as it passes each valve on the way to the end of the fountain. Notice that the tip closest to you in the picture is wide open. As you go to the other end, the valve is almost closed. Why? To account for the drop in pressure. Now our fountain fills evenly when it turns on. The result is ink that is fresh all the way across the fountain. The leveller does not leak when not used. Sometimes we pull it out to change ink or clean the fountain. We now simply turn off all the tips and nothing leaks out. The valves themselves were n