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i am currently looking at getting a screen press for our sign shop. mostly the real estate and smaller coro signs.
im curious as to how you mix the inks to get the pms colors? is there equipment out there that does this for you, similar to the home depot paint center paint mixer, or do you have to do this by hand? any suggestions or equipment recommendations is appreciated!
Thanks
While Mark is certainly correct and contacting Naz-Dar (or Sericol, Coates, etc) about the new abilities of mechanically mixing pms colors that the big ink manufacturers are providing (for a considerable startup fee, as you would imagine), You will probable just need to ask for a copy of your ink maker's "pms color matching formula guide" and hope that your company is big enough to warrent them "giving" it to you instead of "selling" it to you.
Any of the major manufacturers have compiled a list of formulas that will produce the PMS (Pantone Matching System) color range using their particular ink lines color pallette.
A basic knowledge about color (yellow and blue make green......) will start you on your way to the Wonderful World of Color Matching.
Get yourself a "gram scale", either manual or digital that can measure down to a 10th of a gram so that you can blend your ink colors (by weight) in smaller batches. Expect to blunder around a little at first, but with only a few dozen base colors for any given ink line there's only so many combinations and pretty soon your anticipating formulas and cutting back your matching times considerably.
Keep a file of color drawdowns with the formulas written on the back. In no time your "color file" willl contain a wide variety with many combinations of base colors and will allow a critical shortcut when starting new matches.
Good Luck
Rocky
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