Printing Substrates Update

For those not familiar with the original article, I did a 4 part series on printing for my column on Renderosity.com in the winter of 2003. All these articles are in the Past Columns section of my website. This last article was a study of Inkjet Receivers. Since this project is still on going, I will keep updating it by date in this article. Right now I am experimenting with PVA (Polyvinyl Acetate) substances. I will add the results to the initial chart under updates. However, I am only testing using the Generation Enhanced Inks that I have used previously. These also are called Gen 4 inks and are pigment inks whose range of color is very similar to the Epson inks for the 1270/1280 printer.

Paper, Coating, and/or Ink 1270 1280 Comments
Epson heavy Weight Paper and Epson Ink Cyan +2 Magenta -8 Cyan +10  
Epson Heavy Weight Paper Enhanced Generations Ink (GE) Magenta -3 Yellow +5 Epson Ink same as above  
Watercolor paper and Rabbit Skin Glue GE Ink Cyan -5 Yellow +5 Epson Ink Cyan 0, Magenta 0, Yellow 0 Rabbit Skin Glue darkens any image
Watercolor paper and inkAID™ matte precoat GE Yellow +5 Epson Ink Cyan +3 Epson Ink print is Darker than GE ink print
Watercolor paper and inkAID™ Semi-Gloss Yellow +5 Same comments and settings as directly above (Cyan +3) GE inkAID™ semi-gloss print is lighter than the GE matte print
Watercolor paper and inkAID™ Gloss alone Yellow + 5 Magenta -5, Cyan +5 With one coat similar to the semi-gloss
Bristol Vellum and inkAID™ Gloss with Adhesive The prints worked better with the Epson inks than with the Enhanced Generations inks probably because of the extreme glossy surface. Magenta -3, Yellow +5  
Watercolor paper and inkAID™ Gloss with adhesive     I didn't like this combination with the watercolor paper. The roughness of this paper was not suited for a very glossy finish.
*Watercolor paper with Talas Jade 711 (a PVA product)   NA Didn't work. Contained areas of reticulation.
*Watercolor paper with Olympic Latex PVA Primer   NA Didn't work. Contained areas of reticulation.
*Watercolor paper with Gamblin PVA Size   NA Didn't work. Contained areas of reticulation.
*Watercolor paper with PVA Laminating Glue   NA Didn't work. Contained areas of reticulation.
*Watercolor paper with Elmer's Glue (a PVA product)   NA Didn't work. Contained areas of reticulation.

*None of these PVA products were meant to be used as coatings. This was an experiment because there were various discussions of using PVA instead of Rabbit Skin Glue but for other purposes, not for inkjet printing.

The results show that the inkAID™ products or the Rabbit Skin Glue are all that I can find that coat paper successfully and act as ink receivers. As of this time, I have only worked with papers.

Also, I found a few interesting articles and I want to share their URL's. They are from the website of the Ontario Specialty Coating Corporation that manufactures the inkAID™ products. http://www.imcnet.net/oscc/basestoc.htm ; http://www.imcnet.net/oscc/testing.htm ; http://www.imcnet.net/oscc/industry.htm

If I find more information on this subject or related subjects, I will update this article so, if you are interested, keep checking back to either this site or my other site of Ephemeralvisions.