Marabu Pad Printing Inks

System Tampacolor

Colour is an important tool for the product designer and decorator. System Tampacolor was introduced to offer an economical and optimal combination of brilliant shades whilst maintaining opacity required to decorate non white substrates.

The Pantone colour mixing system is so firmly entrenched in the printing industry that when your clients refer to colour more often than not they will refer to a Pantone shade (PMS ......). This provides us with a good colour reference but it has problems for the average Pad Printer.

Let me explain. The Pantone colour matching system was created for offset printing where the substrate is always white. Pantone Prime shades which are used to mix the 1000+ colour shades are transparent . It is this transparent nature of offset inks that allows the passage of light through the ink film and the reflectance back from the white substrate that provides the cleanness of the colours and the balance of shade, hue, reflectance etc. that the eye perceives.

However unlike offset inks Pad Printing inks are characterised by high opacity so that the thin ink film that is laid down in Pad Printing can cover non white substrates without the substrate bleeding through the ink film and giving the appearance of a different shade. The exception are Process colours, Yellow, Magenta, Cyan and Black which are transparent. These inks are used for printing multi-colour images which have been computer separated into four standard components yellow red blue and black. This is commonly called four colour process printing. Please note that four colour process printing needs a white substrate or background.

With opaque inks the eye sees these colours as light reflected back from the ink itself verses being reflected back from a white substrate. This can and does effect the cleanness and brilliance of the colour as seen by the eye. This in turn can result in a client who is not happy with the finished job.

The challenge for Pad Printing ink manufacturers has been to come up with a range of out of the tin ink shades that gave brilliant looking colours with high opacity when printed and also when mixed would give a good match to the 1000+ Pantone shades.

Marabu of Germany did this by supplementing its 14 opaque TP colours with 9 transparent Pantone Prime shades to come up with a mixing system of 25 shades. This meant there was some choice when it came to mixing ink to a Pantone shade.

Marabu felt this could be improved on and released System Tampacolor which has only 17 shades yet is able to mix the 1000+ Pantone shades with a high gegree of accuracy. Tampacolor combines optimally and economically the requirements of high opacity with high brilliance. Initially this has been released in Australia in Tampastar TPR and TPU. Tampacolor ranges from 920 (light yellow) through to 980 (black). A shade comparison chart is supplied for your convenience as well as a new colour chart. The Golds and Silver and the four Process colours remain unchanged.

Please be aware though that within any colour system that matches Pantone shades accurately there must be a number of "clean" colours i.e. Colours that allow light to pass through them. Those colours by definition can not be opaque. In Tampacolor these are 922 light yellow, 936 Magenta, 950 Violet, 952 Ultramarine Blue and 956 Brilliant Blue. Test these shades prior to printing over non white substrates or consider the use of OP170 Opaquing Paste..