# Shelf life for waterbased ink



## lancelot (Jun 1, 2007)

Hello, I brought some equipment the other day and was given fair bit of water based Ink too, alot of it is quite old (some ancient) and the few I opened had white fluffy mould on the ink, obviously I will remove the mould if I use it, but it got me to thinking about the shelf life of waterbased ink ,and if I do use them, what is the chance of it failing down the track ?

Thank you


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## ryonet (Aug 17, 2007)

I don't have much experience with water based inks but I would encourage you, down the road, to use platisol inks. They're a lot easier to use (don't dry on the screen), and can be reduced to have the feel of water based inks without the difficulty of using the water based inks.


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

To be honest I've never even considered scraping off the mould and using it anyway. I would with cheese, so I suppose it might be okay.

The shelf life of waterbased ink is generally measured in months. If it's not sealed properly I've seen it go mouldy in a shorter timeframe (weeks), and it can potentially last longer, but somewhere around one year is a good rule of thumb (for opened ink... I imagine unopened ink from the manufacturer could last longer).


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