Silver and Gold ink

[Kyle Blue]

Has anyone used the silver and gold inks on a Mimaki JV33 printer. We are looking at adding these but I thought I should ask around just to see if they are worth it.

 

[J Hill Designs]

gold?

 

[SightLine]

I know about the silver (never tried it) but have never heard of gold ink.

 

[Kyle Blue]

gold?

Maybe I was misinformed about the gold.

 

[artbot]

there's no need for "gold" ink. just print dark yellow on top of silver. all golds and other colors/metallic in manufacturing are silver with transparent color applied over the silver.

 

[MixMaker]

Has anyone used the silver and gold inks on a Mimaki JV33 printer. We are looking at adding these but I thought I should ask around just to see if they are worth it.

You're not misinformed, Mimaki offers both silver and gold inks. At the vegas show the techs had people fooled into thinking it was real gold and silver leaf. If you're using SS21 ink you will have to flush, wash, and change over to the ES3 inkset. This can be problematic and you may have to replace some lines, dampers, and possibly heads if you can't flush all the SS21 ink out. The ES3 inks aren't as vibrant but hardly noticeable by anyone not in the printing industry. The good thing is there is hardly any odor with ES3 vs other solvent ink. The gold and silver inks will have more of a tendency to settle and clog heads even more than the white ink does, so if you're not going to be using it often you will be doing alot of maintenance to keep everything going smoothly.

I do not use silver or gold, but have done alot of research and decided against it because it seems like more of a hassle than what I could justify. I'm sure really cool things could be done with it, but for signage it seems like alot. If you were doing Giclee art prints...your cost might be able to justify it for you.

 

[randya]

If memory serves me correctly, Epson originally offered Silver, Gold and Copper.
I think I received those 3 colors.

 

[MixMaker]

yes randya,

you are correct, aaaaaand a little birdie told me that Mimaki's cartridges are the exact same ones and in fact produced by Epson......just don't tell anyone.

 

[seattlesignguy]

I'm pretty sure that it is just a silver ink cartridge that is only availble in 220 cartridges and that other metallic colors are formed when you print the silver with other colors overlayed onto the silver so it gives you the look of gold, bronze, copper etc. Kind of the way you can print green out of CMYK without having a green cartridge. With the metallic and white inks it really is all about maintence... "a printing printer is a happy printer"

 

[MixMaker]

I'm pretty sure that it is just a silver ink cartridge that is only availble in 220 cartridges and that other metallic colors are formed when you print the silver with other colors overlayed onto the silver so it gives you the look of gold, bronze, copper etc. Kind of the way you can print green out of CMYK without having a green cartridge. With the metallic and white inks it really is all about maintence... "a printing printer is a happy printer"

Doh! You're right! I don't know why I was thinking otherwise.

"Metallic effects, such as gold or bronze as well as other color shades, can be achieved by combining Mimaki’s new silver ink with full color ES3 ink, thus realizing astounding and eye-catching effects on print products. Silver inks enable print service providers to offer higher value to their customer’s creative projects."

 

[sha]

I have tried ES3 with silver on JV33. There is a lot of maintenance for the silver but the effect is awesome. There is also a special procedure in preparing a file since you have to import special Mimaki color pallete in Corel and prepare file with those color pallets. Also silver ink is too expensive but if you can charge a lot for metallic printout than it is ok.

 

[Rooster]

If you have a printer that can print white, you can just print on a cast metallic vinyl. I've done it in the past and it works great. Just knock the white out where you want the silver effect.