Insight Into the Relationship Between Print Density and Ink Film Thickness

Based on experimental data, three new findings are presented. The first is that the Tollenaar and Ernst equation does not provide a good fit to measurements of density versus printed ink film thickness while the second is that the widely accepted theory used to explain the same relationship could not be substantiated. The third finding is that the shape of the ink mileage curve is strongly affected by the type of densitometer filter that is used. Additional experimental data is generated to show that a different equation provides a much better fit to printability data. Insight into the relationship between ink mileage and the properties of the ink and paper used to produce a print is also presented.