3rd Party dye ink fade Test...!

[The Hat]

What is the lamination process? It seems, to me, that it is affecting the inks.

I just used a standard laminating pouch from United Office, it’s an 80-micron plastic coating, you put your paper into the plastic pouch and pass it through a heated laminator, its suppose to protect the paper from moisture, dirt and humidity, it doesn’t say anything about UV or ozone...

I'm still unclear about the combined effects of UV and ozone, how to separate them to judge their effects individually

If anybody wishes to know..
while I’m at it, here’s the way I went about creating the test sheets, I printed 8 sheets of paper, first glossy, photo matte, Premium coper and cheap copier, I did change the media setting for both photo and plain paper samples.

Then I cut all the sheets into four and pasted one piece of each sheet onto a single A4 sheet, this gave me two identical sheets with the four different printed samples of each and the rest of the cut pieces I discarded.

I laminated just one of the print sample sheets, and then stuck both sample sheet in my window...

 

[apetitphoto]

I'm new at this, but, in no particular order, these questions come to mind:

Putting prints in the window automatically gets some UV protection but at the same time increases the thermal load.

Pasting prints may affect them. Particularly in hotter environments.

Heat laminating may also affect the inks.

Just my thoughts. This is good work that someone needs to do and I'll be following.

 

[stratman]

I must admit I expected more fade protection by the lamination of the prints

I was also. May be additive effects of heat from the process of laminating and outgassing from the laminate itself.

 

[The Hat]

These tests are not for real, nobody would put their prints in a south facing window, this is a speed test just shows what will happen if they do, sort of Time lapse..

Maybe I should have waited several days for the prints to settle down before laminating, instead of several hours, now I’m starting to show my outgassing...

 

[stratman]

I’m starting to show my outgassing...

I thought it was from the egg salad I just made.

 

[apetitphoto]

These tests are not for real, nobody would put their prints in a south facing window, this is a speed test just shows what will happen if they do, sort of Time lapse..

Maybe I should have waited several days for the prints to settle down before laminating, instead of several hours, now I’m starting to show my outgassing...

Having been a software developer, test engineer, QA engineer, project lead, etc., for a number of years, the phrase "nobody would do that" points out just the things people actually do. Things labeled "Don't do this" are what people do. But perhaps I'm just a bit cynical...

 

[stratman]

Things labeled "Don't do this" are what people do.

Which is precisely why there are the Darwin Awards every year.

 

[apetitphoto]

Which is precisely why there are the Darwin Awards every year.

Yes, but those are rightly reserved for the spectacularly stupid, not the run of the mill common place stupidity...

 

[Celso]

Very interesting thread. However, in relation to lamination I am getting different results. Four months ago I hang on a wall two pictures. Both printed on Canon photo paper glossy II with non-OEM ink. I put on one of them PVC film (kitchen type). The other is "naked". The naked shows now clear evidence of fading. The one with PVC film looks good and, so far, not evident signs of fading. I am wondering why the lamination sample in this thread faded so much quicker than the "naked" one. Is it the type of lamination? Does anyone have experience with PVC film?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the typical lamination process works with a glue between the paper and the film, and hot lamination works with heat to activate the glue, it could be that the glue reacts with the ink dyes, or the heat accelerates the process. I assume that your kitchen type film just adheres electrostatically to the paper and you can pull it off easily. There are several effects to consider, does the film filter and block the UV radiation and/or does it provide a barrier against ozone and other chemical agents or both ? And in which ratio ? So there are several variables in the game which may lead to different results depending on the circumstances.