VanSon Rubber Base Plus drying time.

Hi,

I did some printing using and old can of VanSon Rubber Base Plus (Dutch Fireball).

The prints came out fine, and I was well impressed with the way the ink covered, although the cleanup was a nightmare!

A week later though, they’re still tacky.

I wondered if anyone knows what sort of drying times I can expect for this ink?

Thanks.

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G’day Chinwag;

I hesitate to try and help you as I don’t know too much about inks and all. However, the first question that comes to my mind is what paper did you print on? My understanding is that the rubber based inks dry primarily by way of absorption and are best used on uncoated paper stock, although in time they will dry. Another thing that comes to mind is my experience of having different colours of ink (not necessarily rubber based) taking varying times to dry…..good luck…..db

I would have said 24 hours should do it, although I leave mine alone for as long as possible (days sometimes) to absolutely avoid any chance of sticky fingerprints.
Possibilities are over-inking, or, as the ink dries mainly by absorption into the paper, less-than-ideal-absorbency of the paper.
Interesting question though as I find different colours dry variably anyway even on the same paper, and I’ve always blamed it on the various ages of my tins of ink.
Anyone else?

This is why I use oil-based inks. They dry overnight almost without fail. I printed business cards with rubber-based inks once. Two weeks later I had them cut down and they still offset onto the backs of the adjacent cards. That was the last straw for me.

Most of the students here at Cooper Union use rubber base inks for their work because it allows for stacking prints right off the press — dry to the touch — whereas oil based inks will tend to smudge when stacked. That difference has to do with how the inks absorb into the paper.

Strange to hear of this issue with the rubber based not drying completely. Have always found that it will cure, even while stacked, well within 24 hours on uncoated and even coated papers. Only thing I can think of is that you might have printed with a excess of ink on a coated paper?

Worth remembering that VanSon is professional grade ink, made for people with no time to waste, so it most likely is a tad of over inking, or the paper.

Prop them up in the toast rack and put them somewhere warm (but not too warm) and they should get there.

if you use offset inks or oil based as you say you can cut them the same day i print 4 colors both sides and put 2000 kg of pressure when cutting without problem coated matte paper takes very long time to dry so i try to avoid it on large runs drying time also depends on the color for example magenta dries faster than the other process colors also depending on the brand you will notice slight different pigmentation i use hostman and steinberg inks with very good results and antioffset powder medium grain if you have it avaiable

Wow!

Thanks so much for all your replies, I did wonder if the paper might be part of the problem. I was printing onto some brown cards that I got online, so I can’t really provide any technical details but I would suspect it’s not the best quality.

They do seem to be slowly drying now, well over a week later though!

The ones with less ink seem to be almost there, the ones with more ink are still a tiny bit tacky and will transfer a little smudged ink if I rub a sheet of paper over the print, so I think you’re right with the over inking being at least part of the problem, for some of the I did cake it on a bit.

Very frustrating as I liked the nice solid colour the VanSon gave me, but I might have to try the oil based inks and see how I go with those.

Thanks again for all the great information, very helpful.

Brown craft card often has a waxy surface which might be the prob.
In the early days I gave up on oil based inks because they took an age to dry and moved to rubber base.
Afterwards, I realised I had over-inked AND used the wrong paper.
These are the core challenges - getting the right amount of ink on the right sort of paper. The ink itself -either sort - is probably the least of our worries, but oil mostly dries by evaporation and, per above, rubber mostly by absorption.

Thanks etinink, I’m going to pick up some oil based ink tomorrow, and a few different papers to mess around with.

Much as I’m keen to just get printing, I think it’s probably worth doing some test peices to see how everything behaves on the different papers.

It’s definitely sounding like I over inked, and used a bad choice of paper!

excessive inking and waxy paper agreed.

I use rubber 98% of the time, printing onto standard popular papers like Savoy, Lettra, French Construction. I can stack them high. Usually cut them down the next day and never have any offsetting.