Golden Nugget #7…Ink Jet Proofing Dry Time Prior to Measurement

*** User’s Group Conference News ***

Even though the date to receive our guaranteed pricing on rooms at the Mirage has passed it is not too late to attend the 2005 user’s group conference. If you are still interested in attending, we may be able to assist attendees in getting our hotel rates ($129/night for Sun, Mon, Tue, and only $199 for Sat. night!) Complete conference information can be found at (http://www.colormetrix.com/cmug05/). Before calling the hotel for a room, please give us a call to see if we can assist you with a room at the guaranteed conference rates.

*** Jim Raffel’s Week 7 Golden Nugget…How long do I have to let my ink jet proof dry before I measure it? ***

While there is not single correct answer to the question above, we have some basic guidelines from the field. Obviously, before following our suggestions it is very important to check with the manufacturer of the paper and ink that you are utilizing to print your proofs. They should know how long a dwell time is necessary before the proof is sufficiently dry that no more color shifting is occurring.

So, our general rule of thumb when we go in the field and assist our customers in setting a baseline or gold standard is to wait 30 minutes after the proof has finished printing before measuring it. We vary this a bit depending on the ink technology, pigment vs dye, but it seems to be a pretty good rule of thumb.

Now, we recognize that waiting 30 minutes to measure every proof may not be practical, but we are talking about the baseline or gold standard proofs right now. Once you have that down, it’s time to make another proof, to test for the optimum dry time for measurement of production proofs. Starting five minutes after the proof has finished printing measure the control strip every 5 minutes for half an hour.

Using the software you utilized to measure the proof take a look at the trend line analysis of the Delta E shift over the 30 minutes. You should be able to see a clear place where the shift levels off. Again, depending upon your environment (temperature and humidity), and proof type (pigment vs. dye) this could be at 10 minutes or 20 minutes.

That’s it! You now know how long to wait in order to get accurate proof verification measurements. If by any chance you are having trouble getting the trend line analysis I mentioned above out of your software….I know a great little software company called ColorMetrix that will be able to assist you in fixing that problem!