Ink Mixing Services - UK

Can anyone recommend a company or person that will custom mix two pantone colours for me? I would give it a go myself, but this particular job needs to be perfect, hence the colours need to be exact.

Thanks in advance.

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Ahem. Numbers please ?

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Ahoy Curling Fans

why
does something as dirt simple
as mixing ink
strike so many with fear

in many job shops
its a helper / apprentice job

if you can use a scale
you can mix ink

last job shop worked in
one of the one of the bosses
liked to pick colors
that were not in the pantone book

might take two or three small batch try’s
to get it right

may just be me
find mixing ink to be easy

now if i could only set type

mac

I’ve attached pictures of the colours I’m after. I find it difficult to work out the ratios etc for the ink when mixing as I only need the tiniest amount, to be honest, whenever I do give it a try, my colours never come out exactly anyway! I’m too nervous to try anymore as I don’t want a whole load of wasted ink :(

image: yellow.JPG

yellow.JPG

image: blue.JPG

blue.JPG

don’t forget to check it actually on the stock……..

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oy is that you Mrs Nusbaum

key to getting it right

not make batches too small

i would never go smaller than
one oz per part
some times would go
lb per part
then you almost can’t fail

yea im not much help
if you only need one or two oz

to be honest have never tried
to mix a batch smaller than
about one half lb

if its more than you need
save the excess
use it on another job

during my PP&AU apprenticeship
start of shift
would mix about ten to twenty lbs of ink

helm down
grab your beer

mac

One of the things all of us letterpress printers need to keep in mind about the Pantone Matching System is that, although an excellent system, it is designed for offset printing rather than letterpress, and offset presses normally will lay down a much thinner ink film than the letterpress process. Since most inks are more-or-less transparent (or at least translucent), the paper color underneath the ink affects the appearance of the ink, as does the thicker layer of ink put on the paper by our letterpress equipment. This has been covered in other Briar Press threads, but generally it seems that mixing/buying ink a shade or two lighter, or mixing with opaque white rather than transparent white, will usually look about right when printed letterpress — but the stock, design, press, and pressman are all other variables that can change the “color” of a job printed with correctly mixed ink. Personally I’d never expect different printing processes to be able to match color exactly, and I’d be sure the client understands that before taking on a job.

I have always shown people to mix to the guide and reduce with a mixing white to allow the cross over to letterpress you may not have to mix a lot but the guide gives you a guide, the papers will change the colour ,you can be close or a million miles out Good graphic designers that know their stuff know this ,the remainder we educate !
Its european measure but if you use the non parts figures in the guide you make a batch that is 100 grams that is one tenth of a kilo , all the numbers in the mix weigh 100 of whatever you want to call it when added together so if you get a balance that has triple beam and weighs in tenth of a gram increments you can mix simply and relatively economically .

I agree with Peter! You may have to reduce the color intensity with a fair amount of mixing white — if you wanted to mix PMS 122, for instance, to have it print close to 123, you’d mix 123 with an equal amount of white.
And whether you use the “parts” or percentage figures of the Formula Guide, a unit can be whatever you want. I usually mix just a bit more than Peter, about 5 oz. (to fill a tube), but it seems to work well for me.

It may also be of use to add on this thread that there is another block of colour shades that come out of mixing from the cyan ,magenta,full colour process yellow and full colour process black , these colours produce mixes that are more subtle than an ordinary pms mix . If you are located near a big print company these can usually be scrounged for a small contribution to the tea break fund .
I have noted in my time that when a company changes supplier or ink type from the cmyk range they often wont mix the last few cans of old supplier with the new and the old stuff rots behind a press for years and usually gets thrown out , the only real warning you need is that you ask if its duct stable , that is it dries on the job and not the machine .

Pressing the adana ,
I have an adana ,small, annoying , but its very quick to clean up , it prints , it tests colour !!!!!! much easier than inking up the beast !