Tips for White and Metallic Ink

Roland Eco-Sol Max and Eco-Sol Max2 inks are available with the normal CMYKLcLm ink sets and also with both White and Metallic as additional Spot colours. Eco-Sol Max ink is used in the XC-540MT, VS Series and BN-20 models and the new Eco-Sol Max2 inks are used in the XR-640.

The White and Metallic inks are supported as Spot colours and Roland VersaWorks is supplied with Swatch Libraries for a number of popular design packages. If your design package is not supported but is able to output Spot colours, you can simply create your own Spot colours using Roland's Naming convention. For pure White or Metallic use RDG_WHITE or RDG_MetallicSilver, however, there are a lot more Metallic colours available in Roland's own colour libraries and you can also use these in your own design package if you extract the names from one of the supported packages (CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator).

When you use these Spot colours, it is very rare that you will ever print them at a 100% tint. For example, if you are using the White as a flood coat behind colour on a clear film, you are unlikely to need to go above 65-70% tint to achieve a good result. The same applies to the Metallic ink if you are using RDG_MetallicSilver, a value as low as 25% will show very good results. Having said this, please be aware that the media profile you are using may have already set a very low ink limit for these Spot colours in which case you may need to use higher tint values than discussed here. You can find out what values have been set in Media Explorer just by selecting the profile your are using and looking at the individual ink limits which have been set.

When you use the White ink as a flood coat, it does not matter if you place the colour in front or behind your graphic in the design package as you can select the colour order within VersaWorks at print time.

When you print Metallic colours you have a choice within VersaWorks to print the colours normally or Layered. Layered will give a very much better visual effect but does take longer to print.

If you would like to discuss the use of the Metallic and White inks in more detail please call 01380 871962