Open Source Ink Project

[thorn]

What kind of setup do interested ink-makers need?

 

A scale is nice to have for weighting dyes and other solids. A graduated cylinder, beakers, test fountain pens, sample jars or vials for mixing small amounts of ink are also needed. Also, a nice place to work next to a sink. I use a counter top in my mechanical room so I don't mess up the kitchen Dyes can stain really bad.

 

I would like to get a magnetic stirrer.

 

http://kd3su.us/images/DSC_0327.JPG

Edited August 26, 2012 by thorn

[itayxd]

Hey, just made this with PS, maybe you can use them as logo, wasn't sure about the ink drop so I made to version, also I'm not sure about the blood red color, if you want to use it tell me what colors would you like.

Credits for some amazing works I used:

1) The first font is Porcelain by Misprinted Type.

2) The second font is Volutes by imagex.

3) Ink drop image from sxc.hu by sachyn.

PS: This ink has some seriously amazing shading =P.

[crazystan]

Wow, this is an incredible project! Great to see that the site is up. I cannot wait to get a little extra cash to try some of this out myself.

 

Suggestion though: As a ink-making newbie, I have no idea as to here on earth to purchase supplies. I think it might be prudent to add reliable supplier resources in the links section of the website.

[ElaineB]

Yes, I'll be working on supplier listings soon. (I just started a new job this week, so things have been a bit chaotic. But I should have time over the next week.)

 

You won't need an extravagant setup for this. The most important piece of equipment will be a reliable digital scale, but there are very reasonably priced models available from online vendors. Making ink won't be a very expensive hobby. We'll leave that to the pen collectors.

[josiah]

Making ink won't be a very expensive hobby. We'll leave that to the pen collectors.

 

 

On the other hand, given my track record, it'll probably be at least a little messy...

[crazystan]

Yes, I'll be working on supplier listings soon. (I just started a new job this week, so things have been a bit chaotic. But I should have time over the next week.)

 

You won't need an extravagant setup for this. The most important piece of equipment will be a reliable digital scale, but there are very reasonably priced models available from online vendors. Making ink won't be a very expensive hobby. We'll leave that to the pen collectors.

 

Thanks! That's great to know. I am seriously excited to get started.

 

And good luck at your new job!

Edited August 27, 2012 by crazystan

[dvorak]

Brent said a few messages back that he's a lab assistant at a textile dyeing company, so I'm very interested in his take on all this.

 

I'm a technical manager at one of the largest textile mills in the United States. I have access to a full lab, which has considerable resources in handleing and using dyes - in my case these are primarily acid dyes used for synthetic amine based fibers (like nylon) and some disperse (used more broadly, but primarily for dyeing of polyester).

 

Good thing is I can "suddenly" decide to take a look at the dyes typically used for cellulosic fibers (cotton, linen, flax, jute...). The dye manufacturers that sell acid dyes also tend to have direct and fiber reactive dyes for use in cotton, and potentially in pen ink. I've got industry contacts that I can call and get 6oz samples of powdered dye in just about any color. Blending these is straightforward, if the desired color is not a "one dye combination".

 

What I can bring to the table: ink making capacity, access to raw materils, and some limited formulation experience (I say limited, because I understand formulation for making stable dyebaths that exhaust onto cotton - but I've not done any formulation of inks per se). I also have access to (and can safely handle) industrial chemicals, like strong acids/bases.

What I lack: formulation experience

 

I've go my lab gloves on and my safety glasses ready - who wants to make ink?

 

Brent

[thorn]

Yes, I'll be working on supplier listings soon. (I just started a new job this week, so things have been a bit chaotic. But I should have time over the next week.)

 

Here's a list of suppliers, books etc that you may want to add :

 

Spectrum

https://www.spectrumchemical.com/

 

PRO Chemical & Dye

http://www.prochemicalanddye.com/home.php

 

Abbey Color

http://www.abbeycolor.com/cgi/dyes.product.cgi

 

Classic Dyes

http://www.classicdye.com/products.asp

 

Dyes for Writing Instruments

http://www.spectracolors.com/products/writing-dyes/

 

First Source Worldwide, LLC

http://www.fsw.cc/index.htm

 

GS Dyes

http://www.gsdye.com/Canada/product_info_list.html

 

Clariant

http://www.paper.clariant.com/C12576770048B6BB/vwWebPagesByID/48FEF07BBEC0FB4CC12576DA00363631

 

Chemistry Store

http://www.chemistrystore.com/

 

Pylam

http://www.pylamdyes.com/ink.html

 

Some papers and books:

 

Ink chemistry

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2003/March/inkchemistry.asp

 

Essays in ink chemistry

http://www.worldcat.org/title/essays-in-ink-chemistry-for-paints-and-coatings-too/oclc/49674947&referer=brief_results

 

Ink bottles

http://www.foresta.net/show.asp?categoria=5

 

The Chemistry of Fabric Reactive Dyes

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed072p724

 

The chemistry of writing inks

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed021p413

 

Ullmann's encyclopedia of industrial chemistry

http://www.worldcat.org/title/ullmanns-encyclopedia-of-industrial-chemistry/oclc/11469727&referer=brief_results

 

Industrial Dyes:

Chemistry, Properties, Applications

http://books.google.com/books?id=yUf5nsuyaQYC&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq=Anthraquinone+dyes&source=bl&ots=o0IF-gl2Hr&sig=FTUW8ocxU7wozYxisL5351xmHio&hl=en&ei=cJy4TcbiC4-DtgeEqdHeBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=39&ved=0CLoCEOgBMCY#v=onepage&q=Anthraquinone%20dyes&f=false

Edited August 27, 2012 by thorn

[andru]

Thanks thorn! For the list, and also for the photo of your ink lab space earlier. I'll add these. Also I might mention Tomas (sirach, who set up the wiki) has been busy with an urgent family matter, but is just getting back, in case anyone wondered what became of him over the last days.

 

...and, done!

Edited August 28, 2012 by andru

[crazystan]

Thanks thorn!

[LucasT]

I've been thinking the last two days about what you need to make ink.

My "basics" list:

A balance/scale that will weight +/- 1 gram. (you can make a one gram pile, then divide it into halves to get +/1 .25 grams if need be, or make a stock solution of 1 g in 20 g water or something like that for fractions)

10 mL syringes (go to your local Tractor Supply company, they come in boxes of like 6 or something)

Jars for mixing (old jelly jars, etc, etc)

small spoons, spatula's etc.

 

My advanced list:

Balance that will weight +/-0.1 or 0.01 grams

Syringes of various sizes

pipettes

2 oz wide mouth jars for mixing

beakers

stirplate and stirbars

lab spatulas

reverse osmosis water system (don't need milli-Q water)

various dyes, reagents, etc, etc, etc

 

We all need to decide what surfactant, dye class, humectant, etc we want to use.

 

I would say that we pick things that are easy to access, that are relatively pure and unlikely to change too soon.

 

Propylene glycol (available at Tractor Supply/most feed stores, online)

Glycerine (available online, pharmacy, etc.)

 

Germall plus (available online)

 

Surfactant, we can just use propylene glycol, or other something else, we could use a well known laundry detergent like All free and clear?

 

Dye class gets fun, the most readily available is procion MX type dyes, we can intentionally react them with water to get a stable ink, or we can use vinyl sulfone dyes, or cheap industrial direct dyes.

 

What do you all think?

[ElaineB]

Whew, I have some free time. Lucas, are you saying that you were able to get Procion dyes to react with the cellulose in the paper and become water resistant? I was under the impression that once you added the alkaline reagent to a dye solution, the chemical reaction started, whether or not there was any cellulose to react to. And within a half hour, you would have an inert solution that was basically useless for dyeing. (Might make a fine non-waterproof ink, but it wouldn't work as a textile dye.) If I'm wrong about that... I'm thrilled! Because it would be pretty straightfoward to make water-resistant dyes then.

 

As for choice of dye families, I'm pretty neutral, as long as whatever we pick is safe to use at home (with common-sense handling protocols like... don't stick your nose into the dust and breathe in) and is easy to purchase in small quantities. Procion dyes are available in a very large palette of premixed shades (http://www.prochemicalanddye.com/home.php?cat=388) which could make it easier for people who aren't yet experienced with a lot of color mixing. The only drawback to Procion and other fiber reactive dyes is that the powders have a shelf-life of only about a year, so people would need to refresh their supply periodically. I would also lean toward getting dyes from ProChemical because they've got terrrific tech support for their customers, even if they're not big buyers. I got to know some of their techs personally, and they're extremely responsive. So if we were having problems such as congealed red ink as noted in another thread, we could ask ProChem for help.

 

As for the other additives, there are dozens and dozens of surfactants, humectants, preservatives, and viscocity agents available through cosmetic formulation suppliers. With such wide choices, I think decisions will need to be made, in part, by the chemical and physical properties each ingredient brings, especially as it relates to viscocity and flow. Just off the top of my head, I know that glycerine is more viscous than Prop Glycol. This could mean that for "dry" inks, you might select Prop Glycol because it's more free-flowing, and for runny, feathery inks, you might go with glycerine. (Just a guess, mind you. Don't hold me at my word for that.) Surfactants come with different electrostatic charges (anionic, nonionic, etc.) and I have seen recipes specifying one or the other, although I'm not sure why just yet.

 

There's a lot to play with, which sounds like fun to me. I love this stuff!

 

Lucas, could you possibly post a bare-bones ink recipe as a starting point for us? I have honestly looked everywhere and it appears to be a tightly held "trade secret". I don't fully understand why. (Nathan Tardiff's fervor for secrecy seems to have spread). I highly doubt that we would ever stop buying ink, even if we could make our own. I make my own watercolor paints, for instance, but I still buy commercial ones because some of the colors and textures go beyond what I can produce at home.

[LucasT]

You are absolutely correct Elaine, I was saying that by pre-"ruining" the procion MX dyes give us an ink that won't change once it's made, but will still give us good sources of color. It won't be waterproof by any means, but will give a stable ink (water resistance will be related to Vanderwals forces, not covalent bonds).

 

Most of the shelf life issues with Procion dyes relate to hydrolysis of the reactive group if I recall correctly, if we hydrolyze that anyway, shelf life shouldn't be much of an issue.

 

Ok, here comes a big ink "secret"....... it is about a balance of surface tension and viscosity.... Surface tension is the key, you can find charts for how the surface tension of a water solution varies based on concentrations of glycerine and water or propylene glycol.

 

As far as bare bones recipe goes....

 

1 g Glycerine

30 g RO/distilled water

2 g any red Procion MX dye

.05% Germall Plus or equivalent (aka 1 drop-ish) (I am fond of Thymol, but you have to deal with it differently)

 

This should produce a fairly dry writing ink (high surface tension), to make it flow better/dry faster add surfactant, there are several options.

First you can increase the flow by adding propylene glycol, which will also change your viscosity, lets not do this.

 

You can add a surfactant which will change your surface tension without changing the viscosity. (dilute All free and clear, 1g detergent to 100 grams water, add 1 drop of this to your mixture at a time, mix well, test flow, repeat as needed)

 

Ok, so here comes the interesting bit, we are targeting a surface tension of between 35-45 dynes, the above mixture of glycerine and water without dye is around 60-70 dynes (glycerine is 63, water is 72ish, but they don't always behave linearly....)

 

Here's the rub...what dye you choose imparts a surfactant effect as well, I choose red in this generic recipe because reds tend to impart less of a surfactant effect.

 

This is why a stock recipe doesn't work for all dye colors, it varies based on which dye you have. The base can be the same but the surface tension adjustment bit is the hard part.

 

Blue dyes are jerks, at least the ones I've worked with. This recipe should work with blue dye as well, but you wont need to add any surfactant, and it still may gush out of your pens.

 

This dye will slowly become less reactive over time, will still give a similar color, but the flow may change a bit and the waterproof-ness will get worse over time

 

So, to neutralize the reactive group in the dye, to make sure everything is stable you would follow this procedure, basically it starts you out with a non-reactive dye

2 g procion MX dye

30 g water

0.5 g household ammonia

heat gently for 1 hour

 

You can now adjust pH back to neutral (pH 6-8) with white vinegar (acetic acid) (er, haven't done the calculations yet, feeling lazy)...oh, by the way, this would be an ammonium acetate buffered neutral ink.

 

Now add:

1 g glycerine

1 drop Germall Plus or equivalent

 

then adjust your flow one drop of 1:100 diluted surfactant until you are happy.

 

a more feathery ink (lower surface tension) will tend to flow faster and dry faster (by absorption).

 

A little comment on Noodler's inks and reactive dyes....his water resistance isn't a result of his use of reactive dyes...an instant reacting dye that reacts with paper, will also react with water very quickly and will be useless in less than a day in water... Reactive dyes DO tend to give better bleach resistance and wash resistance....I leave you to ponder what he does with his inks to make them water proof.... (search inkjet patents, and consider that his inks smudge, but don't wash off with water, a reactive dye by itself wouldn't rub off if it is reacting with paper). This is by no means meant to put down Noodler's inks. I personally think they are great and as soon as I figure out exactly how he does it, believe me, I'll add "super-awesome-resistant-mega-inks" to my lineup .

 

Enough of me rambling for now, back to work with me.

[DavidHandmade]

Approximately this time last year, there was quite a clamor on FPN over "Binder Burgundy" - a 50/50 mix of Shaeffer Skrip Red and Waterman Purple.

 

- is that what you mean by "open source" recipies? It seems possible that "Binder Burgundy" could be a copyrighted formula, just the same as that for Coke or Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee mix...

 

I am not a "chemist" by any stretch, and after reading some of the discussion here, so far, I'd be hesitant to pull up an "open source" ink recipe and end up with nitroglycerin or something that will peel the paint from my tabletop...!

 

This is a great idea, though... and alot of work has gone into your project so far - Congrats on that!

[LucasT]

Good point David, same as you wouldn't just download any old program on your computer. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 versions of each color will have documented testing performed on each one, at least if it goes according to plan.

[DavidHandmade]

Good point David, same as you wouldn't just download any old program on your computer. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 versions of each color will have documented testing performed on each one, at least if it goes according to plan.

 

- aw jeez, man - I forgot about the reverse-osmosis-reduction-space-modulation-gizzywiz...!

[inkdesigner]

This is a great project and I am glad to see it seems to be gaining momentum. I'm willing to provide whatever help I can, although my time is somewhat limited right now by working 2 jobs.

 

By way of introduction, I currently work as an Applications Development Specialist for a company that supplies pigment colorants for inkjet inks. In other words, I help customers make stable inks using our products. My former job was as a Staff Scientist at a company that develops, manufactures, and sells aftermarket inkjet inks based on both dyes and pigments.

[andru]

inkdesigner, allow me to be the first to say, Welcome!!

 

And LucasT and ElaineB, thanks so much, those last posts were extremely interesting. Lucas, I'm putting your recipe up on the site, okay? Tomas suggests calling it "LucasT Basic Red". Here goes...

 

Now if anyone would care to mix some and review it? I am not really set up, I'd have to place some orders, but then I suppose I'll want to start ordering a few little supplies sooner or later.

 

Edit: Lucas, I've simply quoted your post in full, with a link back here for context. If you'd prefer some elisions, or reformatting, I'll leave it to you as I know you're registered on the wiki already.

Edited August 28, 2012 by andru

[LucasT]

Welcome to the insanity Inkdesigner!

 

Andru, I'll look at the post, quoting directly works for now, I'll edit my typos and rambling when I get time, lol.

[ElaineB]

Oh, this is exciting. Thank you, Lucas, for posting the recipe and revealing the arcane mysteries of writing ink formulation. And I am also really excited to have Brent and Inkdesigner here with all their professional experience. This is going to be so much fun!

 

I've got a lot of questions, Lucas, but I think my biggest one is about your ratio of dye to water (2g dye to 30g water). That's a roughly 6% solution, and that is much more concentrated than the dye liquids I'm used to working with. The reason I bring it up is because I have solubility issue with my dyes if I go above 1% or so. I'll occasionally push it to 2% if I'm doing some high volume work and will be using the dye solutions within a week or so. But any stronger than that, and the solutions get very finicky. The dyes start to particulate and settle on the bottom of the bottle in a sedimentary layer, and dyes that are prone to gloppiness (yes, that's my official word for it) get really viscous and slimy. Simply reheating the bottles gently and giving them a good shake is enough to remix the dyes back into the solutions. But I wouldn't want to have that happen with finished ink products.

 

Now, I'm using different families of dyes (Nylomine and Lanaset for protein fibers) and I don't have as much experience with Procion and the fiber reactives. Your 6% concentration is probably really stable and easy to handle. But still, I think one thing we'll need to figure out along the way is the maximum solubility for each dye we decide to play around with. Some dyes are just going to stay mixed in water better than others. If we have this information, it'll make formulation a lot easier in the future.

 

And purely as an aesthetic consideration, we may not want to make inks at the max concentration of dyes, in any case. In my experience, you rarely see the true beauty of a dye until you've explored it across a range of concentrations. It's called "breaking" -- a dye can appear to shift hues as it grows less concentrated. In fact, I always run a systematic set of samples whenever I get a new dye color. I make 6-8 samples, testing the dye at a 1% concentration (the darkest), 0.7% concentration, 0.5%, 0.2%, 0.1%, 0.01%, etc. (And yes, even at those tiny concentrations, the tints are perceived as colors by the eye, and not as "off-white".) I could put a set of finished samples down in front of you, and with some dyes, you might have trouble believing that they all came from the same dye.

 

Btw, before anyone runs out to buy supplies, I just want to point out that we still have a lot of choices for dyes, even if we decide to stay within the fiber-reactive family. Prochemical sells liquid dye concentrates. They come in a small range of very good mixing colors (http://www.prochemicalanddye.com/home.php?cat=400). Advantages would be that the solutions are premixed to industrial standards of accuracy, and would take away one rather annoying aspect of working with dyes. (Dissolving dye powders in water is a tedious process. After 25 years, I still hate the days I have to make stock solutions.) It would also lessen most safety concerns, since the biggest health risk when using dyes comes from powder inhalation. The disadvantages of dye solutions is that the limited color palette would mean a greater reliance on manual color mixing. Personally, I have no problems when it comes to measuring out small bits of color and mixing them up to see what I get. But that's just me.

 

Perhaps we could try both approaches in a tentative set of trial formulas. One mixed from a dye powder, one mixed from a standardized concentrate.

 

Lucas, is there any reason you selected ammonia as the alkaline reagent beyond ready availability? I was thinking we might also try a weak Potassium Carbonate solution (http://www.prochemicalanddye.com/home.php?cat=400) or Prochem's liquid fixatives (for example, http://www.prochemicalanddye.com/product.php?productid=16775&cat=249&page=1) which would react quickly without need for heat. I imagine there's chemistry involved in this sort of decision, though. So I definitely hope Brent could chime in with thoughts on which alkali might work.