Product Review For Chroma/Blue®

Product Name: Chroma/Blue®

Made by: Chromaline

www.chromaline.com
Phone: 800-328-4261 Ext. 254
jbejar@chromaline.com

Today’s product review is the liquid emulsion our shop uses, Chroma/Blue® made by Chromaline.  We buy our Chroma/Blue® from Reece Supply Company www.reecesupply.com for $53.95 for a one gallon can.

Here is what Chromaline says about Chroma/Blue®

ChromaBlue, for use with plastisol inks, is ideally suited for textile printers using direct emulsions who are seeking faster screen turnaround without sacrificing image quality.

• Very fast exposing
• Fast drying
• Superior mesh bridging
• Excellent reclaimability
• High solids — lower cost per screen
• Dyed only (no mixing)

Product Performance

• So, does it work?

Heck yes!  Long story short, this is the best liquid emulsion we have used.  We have used a lot of different emulsions and they all seem to take too long to expose, not hold up well, or not want to come out of the screen when reclaiming.  We used to use Chromaline UDC2 until our supplier offered us a free sample of Chroma/Blue®.  It was a little more expensive than the UDC2 (which is a little more expensive than most other brands) but the performance was much better.

• Positives

This stuff comes pre-sensitized.  Most emulsions require you to mix the sensitizer into the emulsion to activate it, making it time consuming and very messy (dont get it on your hands!).  We like pre-sensitized!

Fast exposure.  Our shop can burn a screen in 1 minute and 10 seconds (110 mesh screen using a florescent bulb exposure unit – would be even faster with a metal halide lamp).  When burning a lot of screens at once, this is a big deal.

Rinses out well.  We can rise the screen developing the image into the screen in less than a minute.  All the stuff that isn’t supposed to be there washes out, the stuff that is supposed to stay STAYS!  This leaves you with a very strong stencil, with no pinholes (except the ones that come from other sources), that will last thru to the last shirt.

Reclaims well.  This isn’t something you would think about when shopping for an emulsion.  Until you try to reclaim a screen that has been coated with a low quality emulsion, you wont appreciate how well a good emulsion reclaims.  We have had NO problems with reclaiming.

• Negatives

Not much negative we can say about this product.  The price is kind of high compared to others, but then again, the performance is so much better making it actually less expensive when you factor in the expense of labor involved in fixing the screw ups a bad emulsion will give you.  Also, it is a little harder for us to get from our supplier than the UDC2.  We changed suppliers since we first started using Chroma/Blue®, and have had to wait for our current supplier to build up stock in anticipation of our orders.  This has since been resolved and the shipments come on time, but you may have to shop around to find someone that keeps it in stock (I don’t know why, this stuff rocks!).

In conclusion, we LOVE Chroma/Blue®!  No, Chrmaline did not pay us to do this review (not that we wouldn’t have taken the money!), the product simply does what it says it will.  You gotta love a product that delivers, and this one DOES!

Now, let us hear from you.  Did you find this review useful?  What emulsion do you use and why?  Did we talk you into changing your emulsion?  If so, why?  We are looking forward to hearing your comments, so lets hear them.