UV light

Kate K

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Hello all!
To start with, I am an artist (a photographer to be exact), and so I print my work all the time. When it comes to printing however, I have always just worried about print size and paper/canvas type, not the technical aspect of it. I guess I've always just thought of it as a mysterious and wishy washy phenomenon. To put my situation frankly, I know absolutely nothing about printers and printing.
This puts me in a bit of a bind for I have a project in mind. In order to do the project, I need to have my printer, an Epson Expression, print in such a way that the ink is not dry when the photo comes out. I need the ink to be wet. I have been doing some research into how I could achieve this, and so far I have been left utterly confused. All of the technical jargon is far beyond my comprehension. As I understand it right now, many inkjet printers have a UV light in them that forces the ink to dry and dry quickly. Am I correct in that? If that is the case, then do you guys think I could get the effect I want by disassembling my printer and removing the UV light? What does the UV light even look like? I know this is a bit of an odd question, but any help you guys could give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you SO much!
 

PeterBJ

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UV curable inks do exist, but they are only for use in specialized industrial printers, not for use in normal home use printers. You can find more info about these inks by Googling "uv curable inks". Here is some info from HP.
 

Kate K

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Oh...well that's a bit of a bust. Do you guys have any suggestions for how I could get this effect with my home printer? Thanks!
 

Kate K

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So my home printer has no uv light at all?
 

PeterBJ

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The Epson Expression is a normal inkjet printer for home use, and contains no UV light source. The inks are water based and dry by evaporation of water.
 
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pharmacist

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The way the TS formulated its question, looks like there is a light insidiously made by Epson to force you to replace cartridges much more often than usual. I didn't made the connection with UV curable printers.
 

turbguy

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Oh...well that's a bit of a bust. Do you guys have any suggestions for how I could get this effect with my home printer? Thanks!
Print on non-absorbable substrate, like parchment, or wax paper, or foils. But you might ruin the print head if it builds up puddles of ink and the head "skates" through them...
 

Grandad35

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Oh...well that's a bit of a bust. Do you guys have any suggestions for how I could get this effect with my home printer? Thanks!
If the ink isn't absorbed into the substrate, you can run into several major technical problems. Can you give more information on exactly what you are trying to do to see if there might be a simpler way of achieving the same final goal?

Does your printer use pigment or dye inks? The finished color with dye inks is VERY dependent on the composition of the substrate and if the ink doesn't penetrate the substrate (as in this case) the resulting colors might be very strange.
 
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PeterBJ

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According to the Epson website the ink set used in the Epson Expression Home XP-310 is "4-color DURABrite® Ultra pigment ink".
 
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