Care & Feeding of the Alcohol Dampener

(Super Aquamatic, Dahlgren, Diamond, Alcolor, Miehlematic, Komorimatic, etc.)

by Jim Meagher

We have literally hundreds of our customers running presses with this potentially trouble free dampener. 

By properly maintaining the dampener rollers you can expect to get around a year of trouble-free service from the soft water fountain or metering roller. With a little bit of extra effort or a slight adjustment of the fountain solution dosage this can often be stretched to around a year and a half, but quality may suffer slightly as the stronger fountain solution or excessive alcohol will tend to invade the ink and cause ink density and color control problems. Drying may be compromised with certain ink/paper combinations.

For this reason many, many printers just replace the metering, or water fountain roller with a new one every year, often at the beginning of summer when the first hot days are about to begin and bring about a multitude of problems as the temperature goes up slightly in the pressroom. (For purposes of this article, we’ll call the pan roller in the A. B. Dick Super Aquamatic a metering roller, and in other cases we’re always referring to the soft metering roller).

For those of you blessed with swamp coolers, remember that while we have sweat glands and the movement of moist air makes 85° air feel nice and cool, the press isn’t so endowed, and it feels heat at the temperature indicated on the thermometer. In the winter with the thermostat set at 70° it may really be several degrees cooler at the press, while in the summer with a refrigerated air conditioner set the same it will tend to be several degrees warmer. With marginal rollers in the press, things may just go over the edge and make life difficult.

BAD INFORMATION:

Isopropyl alcohol is used in the fountain solution because it has such a low solvency that it can’t appreciably attack the ink. Therefore, it is not the product recommended to clean accumulated ink off of the metering roller. It just cannot do any thorough, deep cleaning. It will, however, tend to smear ink and contaminants around and force them into the pores of the rubber, thereby destroying the water carrying capacity of the roller.

 Blue etch is an antiquated fountain solution better suited for cleaning and preserving chrome or stainless steel rollers or cylinders and keeping them from attracting ink. With that in mind, it’s not a good idea to attempt to use it as a roller cleaner. 

Typewash has been responsible for the death of many metering rollers in as little as one cleaning. The roller sure looks clean, but with a magnifier, one can see the surface of the rubber melted to a perfect, non-water-carrying condition. Most roller washes will eventually do likewise, because this roller is not necessarily made from the same material as the ink rollers in your press, it’s often a slightly different material that is very sensitive to harsh solvents.

Quick drying cleaners can rapidly dry out this finicky roller and render it all but useless.

In the early days of the Dahlgren Dampener it was learned that isobutyl alcohol cleaned the metering roller the best, and didn’t harm the material. It has a very high solvency, but not too high, and the moderate evaporation rate didn’t appreciably dry out the rubber.

GOOD INFORMATION:

The use of straight isobutyl alcohol might not clean all of the contaminants out of the pores of the water metering roller. Today we must deal with a multitude of stray ingredients that leach out of the paper and find their way into both ink and water rollers. Calcium from many sources such as limestone, oyster shells, bones, etc. is the most common ingredient we’re all familiar with. The recycling waste stream now also includes perfect binding glues, lubricating oils, and a host of other chemicals that attach themselves to rubber surfaces then repel ink and water.

We have found that Meter Tek™ is an excellent cleaner for this roller, when used properly. It has ingredients in addition to isobutyl alcohol that deal with the random contaminants mentioned above. In addition, it is not water soluble, so a metering or water fountain roller can be cleaned without draining the water. If a few drops fall into the fountain solution they just sink to the bottom and wait there for the end of the day draining.

Maticlean is another fine cleaner for water rollers. The main thing to remember with either of these cleaners is to wipe off the excess when the roller is clean. A wet drop hanging off the bottom of the otherwise dry roller may swell the rubber because the drop can stay there for several hours before evaporating. Either product also cleans cylinders and chrome rollers exceptionally well.

When the rubber roller is clean, simply coat both chrome and rubber rollers with blue etch. Just a quick coating is sufficient, like gumming a plate; takes ten seconds, tops. The blue etch prevents the chrome roller from oxidizing and also keeps oxygen away from the rubber roller, thus extending its life as well.

If you forget to apply blue etch at the end of a day the chrome roller may begin to pick up and carry ink to the rubber roller in the system. A quick cleaning of the chrome roller with ChromeTek™ followed with some blue etch will fix the roller right up. This is also the recommended treatment for a new roller.