This blog post starts the first of a series of three relating to successful color matching for screen printing. The author of this very informative article is Mike Ukena, and he is a part of the Union Ink Company.

The various ink companies generally formulate screen printing inks in a series of standard colors. There is no effort by the ink companies to match their colors to each other. In fact, most colors are intentionally slightly different from company to company and any match is purely coincidental.

This lack of consistency from ink line to ink line does not help the printer to meet the demands of their customer. The customers, for the most part, do not care what the standard colors are. They know what they want and they specify it on every order.

Traditionally, screen printers have had to take standard colors and blend them together by eye, to try and match specific Pantone colors. The process can be very frustrating and the results disappointing.

Most finished screen inks contain several different pigment colors. These different pigments are necessary to manage the color and make sure it is the same from batch to batch. The ink company is, however, always trying to minimize the number of pigments in a particular color for several reasons. First, the more pigments required, the more time necessary to weigh them out each time a batch is made. Second, the more pigments that are present, the more difficult it is to minutely adjust one pigment and get the desired color.

For instance, the easiest way to make a bright red ink would be to use a single pigment that is that color. However, in practice that is not practical. Either the pigment does not exist in that shade or there is enough variation from batch to batch of the pigment that at least one other complimentary color is necessary to match the shade to the standard. The more various the pigments that are required, the more difficult the practice of matching becomes. When the printer then tries to make an ink color from several different colors of finished ink, the problem is compounded by the many pigment colors in the various inks they are blending.

The problem is even more acute when mixing opaque inks together. Opaque inks contain additional ingredients called opacifiers. These opacifiers help to make ink opaque while decreasing the amount of pigment that is required. The ink companies use these opacifiers to decrease their cost and be more competitive. The opacifiers can play havoc when attempting to match colors. Different inks contain different amounts of opacifiers, and combined with the multitude of pigments it can make matching almost impossible.

The results of many efforts to match colors with standard inks are that the printer ends up with more ink than he/she planned on. In practice, it is not unusual to begin mixing for a quart of a product and end up closer to a gallon before hitting the shade.

Another problem with using standard inks for color matching is the great deal of variation in white inks. White is a major part of many color matches and most white inks are intended to be printed alone and may have brighteners and other ingredients to enhance their coverage. These extra ingredients can play havoc in a color match, throwing it off completely.

The white inks that are a part of ink matching systems are formulated without extra brighteners and are generally referred to as "mixing whites". They have the advantage of not unduly shifting a color match and negatively affecting the other pigments.

Stay tuned for part two!