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
What time of day do mistakes most often occur? That was a question we put to ourselves recently in an effort to see if we could find a pattern. Everyone makes mistakes. But what I would like to offer here is some research we did into finding the time, frequency and cause of mistakes in our press room. True, they are not avoidable. But as Bram Stoker said in Dracula, "We learn from failure, not from success!" So I would like to share with you something insightful and practical that you can learn from and apply in your press room. I don't present the solution, but a way of learning from it. First of all, I would like to draw your attention to the chart below. It shows the frequency of mistakes and press downtime associated with all mistakes made on our presses and auxiliary equipment. We record and make a log of every mistake that takes place and this is the result of all the data compiled for two years. I must add that we have a unique culture in our press