I'm looking to buy some small amounts of sharpie-ink, or plotter ink to test in my epson inkjet printer. I've hacked it apart to accept a flat-sheet of material for direct printing (instead of paper); and the water-soluable ink does not adhere to my metal surface I am trying to print to.

Does anyknow know a supplier that sells the ink in bottles; to refill pens? Because I called SHARPIE corporate office, and tried about 3 different departments and nobody at the company will sell me the fluid itself, without being in a marker (unless I agreed to buy 100 of the 55-gallon drums).

I'm looking to buy some small amounts of sharpie-ink, or plotter ink to test in my epson inkjet printer. I've hacked it apart to accept a flat-sheet of material for direct printing (instead of paper); and the water-soluable ink does not adhere to my metal surface I am trying to print to.

Does anyknow know a supplier that sells the ink in bottles; to refill pens? Because I called SHARPIE corporate office, and tried about 3 different departments and nobody at the company will sell me the fluid itself, without being in a marker (unless I agreed to buy 100 of the 55-gallon drums).


Good luck with it. Someone else tried to buy some ink to do the same or similar thing (printing on PCB for etch resist mask) but were told they needed to order a tanker full! A train car tanker that is!

I don't know of any other alternative sources for that sort of ink. The only option I can think of is to buy some big markers, pull them apart, and squeeze the ink out of the felt cores. Home depot has some really big Sharpie markers that I saw yesterday - sorry, don't recall the price. But they were the biggest darn sharpies I ever saw.

Chris

According to my research; plotter inks use the same fluid as sharpie markers; wether it's sharpie ink or not - it does the same job.

I looked for refillable plotter ink pens using google, then called a few companies to buy the fluid - and got a run-around phone conversation.

Before I waste more phone time, I figured I would post on here if anyone knew a place they bought their plotter supplies, and just bought the ink in small test amounts to refill their own pens.

I have and used to heavily use two large plotters, Hp and a Mutoh 920. Both use the same pens/pencil carosels and you could not buy the ink seperately. Only option was to buy the pen, either fiber tip or the ceramic tip disposable plotter pens. Fibre tip work like mini sharpies, Ceramic tip have an ink reservoir. Neither smell like a sharpie marker. You could buy some cpv ceramic tip pens but they're ~$25 for four and probably have an oz of ink together..

Couple of points.. IF this is to print on, say, pcb with an inkjet or a metal as a permanent marking you'll have problems with most of the plotter inks' and especially the CPV type as those inks are visibly thicker than inkjet refill inks and may be too thick for the cartridge nozzles. Of the fibre tip plotter pen types only the original HP black works as an etch resist or an indelible marker on metals. Many other brands, colours don't and wipe off metal easily. They're made for film or paper after all....

I'm gonna ask a stupid question...but that's not new for me! :) Could you use blue Dycem (sp) and thin it enough to use in the printer?

Can you share what you intend to do with the metal after using the dye? that might help with options or at least suggestions.

Mike

I'm etching copper printed circuit boards. Whats blue dyecem and where do I buy that?

You don't want to use dyecem....you really need something that is going to stop the transmission of light.....have you done a search on indelible ink....india ink comes to mind....but I don't believe it's indelible...

I dont believe light has any effect on my procedures.

I simply draw a pattern using a sharpie marker on a copper pcb, and then bathe it in etch soluition. After about 30-45 minutes, I remove the board from the bath - and wherever the sharpie didnt touch; is bare silicone board and the rest of it are copper traces (under the sharpie lines).

There are other procedures to develop a pcb using photo-sensitive materials, but the procedure I am pursueing doesnt use any of that.

------------------------------------------------
I have never heard of indelible ink, or know what it does but I will check it out - and india ink too. I'll test ANYTHING!

Back in the day I used to refill my "disposable" HP plotter pens.
Search for Rapidoplot, Koh-i-noor, Staedtler-Mars.
Small bottles are readily available.

Thats the info I was looking for. I found some ink by koh-i-noor w/ ease, and found alot of PENS by the other two. It says "waterproof, to metal, perminant" so those are the three elements I definately need!

OK, now you owe us a photo of that hacked-apart printer :cheers:

You may try a local art supply/ graphics supply type place.
Staedtler-Mars makes some very nice re-fillable technical pens used for old-school drafting and technical illustration. The ink is pretty robust.
Perhaps something like this?
http://www.utrechtart.com/dsp_view_product.cfm?classID=1716&subclassID=171613&brandname=Rotring&Item=38374

Lets evaluate the root of the problem, everyone is thinking ink's, but what you need to etch pcb boards is an acid resistant material (doesn't need to be acid proof as it only needs to resist the acid for 5-10 minutes) disolved in a suitable solvent. A few of the well known acid resistant materials are wax, plastics, rubber, etc. Some readily available "potential" canidates are lacquer or urethane paint, plexiglass cement, wax disolved in styrene. Need to be very careful with these solvents especially when spraying etc in any amount as they are high flamable, even explosive, with out even getting into the health hazzard.

Sharpie has solved a lot of the details, solvent evaporation rate / viscosity doesn't allow the ink to run before it drys etc. The solvent used is either safer or the application method exposes so little to the air it is considered safe. The solvent is why sharpie has that smell. Personally I would prefer my dried acid resist material to have more body than Sharpie ink, but if it works it works. The safety problem may be why Sharpie ink is not available in bulk.

take a look at some electronic supply houses forget the name of the stuff but its a clear material that you print your layout on with a laser printer then iron it on the board if you can get the material but don't have access to a laser printer put your layout on a floppy and take it to like office depot and have them print it on your clear stuff cheaper then buying a laser printer and works really well

you might even get by with the overhead transparency sheets they sell at office depot too

If you really want sharpie ink, or Marks a Lot, You can get it by this method. Pry open the marker, inside you will find a kind of "tampon" which contains the ink. Place it standing upright in some kind of container like a small plastic cup. Then take an eyedropper and drop alcohol, the highest proof you can get- I use 90 percent isopropyl, on the top end. the alcohol will chase the ink down into the cup. I use this to get the ink to color epoxy for inlays in castings I make. Marks a Lot and sharpie are by far the prettiest inks I have found.

beone; thats an interesting method!

Try Squid ink, they sell ink in bottles for packaging ink jet printers, as does Video Jet and Diagraph. They all have web sites. My company uses lots of Diagraph ink, and some from Squid, they will definately print on steel!

I've been using my HP-7475 plotter to do this for years. The trick is that the inks have to be thin enough to work with the plotter pens from KOH-I-NOOR. Layout fluid ( for lathes ) works very well as a resist. It comes in blue or red and is cheap. Be sure to use the 1/32 inch boards from Digi Key. I have been looking for a way to do this with an inkjet, but have had no luck.

how do you get boards into the hp?

I'm looking for good ink (UK) to do this with, I'm making my own pens for the plotter from cheap CD/DVD pens, I get 4 for a £(4/$2) and they have .5mm fibre tips in a metal sleave.

If you cut the boards to size, a 1/32" pcb is plenty thin enough to pass thru the rollars as paper normally does.

I think I was using .3 mm fibre pens to trace leads. I couldnt get this to work as I always had trouble with the etching process - either taking off too much or not enough.

http://www.ink-refills-ink.com/1printer-bulk.php
Try this link.

JPG

tam $15 dollars shipping is a sting though (uk) and I cant order more than 1 bottle as import limit is about $30(18ukp) before I get taxed to death ((total+4%)+17%)+$40 handling)

If you cut the boards to size, a 1/32" pcb is plenty thin enough to pass thru the rollars as paper normally does.

I think I was using .3 mm fibre pens to trace leads. I couldnt get this to work as I always had trouble with the etching process - either taking off too much or not enough.

Ha I see, no my problem is boards I get are about 150mm*100mm so dont hit the rollers, tried taping one to paper but it just slid about.

No problem as I'm now trying them on the calcomp as its a gantry style flatbed upto a3+ a bit more