Carbon printing process question

Rick A

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I used to use Knox unflavored gelatin from Walmart in the big box, it works well but depending on who you purchase from is pricy. I buy bulk from Artcraft Chemical current price is $17.29/lb plus shipping. I wait til I need other chemicals and order all at one time to make shipping easier on my wallet.

Gelatin - photo 250 Bloom (Part#: 1153)

1 pound
artcraftchemicals.com
 

Vaughn

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I buy food grade gelatin online from Bulk Foods in 5 pound packages. Last time I bought it, it was about $5/lb but that was awhile back. I see that it has doubled in price since Covid hit.

Unflavored Gelatin | Bulkfoods.com

Unflavored Gelatin for all Cooking and Baking Needs. Save big by buying in bulk! Gelatin at Wholesale Prices from a Leading Distributor of Dry Ingredients.
bulkfoods.com

Still cheap at twice the price.
 
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MTGseattle

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Thank you. I think I got hung up on specifications once again. It's good to know what the "standard" Knox gelatin is rated for.
I did find a few packages that are clearly marketed towards commercial baking that had specific bloom right on the package, but they were really expensive.

Yes Vaugh, $10 per pound seems to be really cheap comparatively. The one I was leaning towards was $18.50 for 1.5 pounds.
 

MattKing

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koraks said:
That's still cheap by today's standards. Gelatin prices have risen sharply as @Vaughn mentioned; I think covid had nothing to do with it and it's just due to the higher energy prices. Gelatin is an energy-intensive product.
Click to expand...

The combination of Covid and climate change had a massive effect on the cattle industry - particularly the cost and availability of cattle feed. Many ranchers were forced to sell their herds, because they couldn't afford to feed them. And that probably affected gelatin.
 

koraks

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Matt, I don't know, to be honest. I live in a highly meat-intensive society and frankly, I've seen nothing that pointed towards an increase in prices of beef, pork or other animal products that wasn't in line with overall price increases. Statistics show that there has been a slight decrease in cattle, pork and foul/chickens over the years that started around 2015 which seems due to a very slight tendency in the direction of a less meat-intensive diet - again, specifically in this country. However, this same trend is visible in global figures with the total number of cattle remaining fairly stable since around 2019. The 2018 financial crisis did have a slight impact on both cattel and especially pork production, but the latter has bounced back quite strongly during covid years to a new record in 2023.

All this suggests that a shortage of raw material is not exactly the problem. I really think it's the energy component, first and foremost. The gelatin production process spans a couple of weeks (!) and many of the steps are energy-intensive. This is one of those instances where the cost makeup is very strongly influenced by cost of capital (due to the high amount of WIP) and energy, with very little sensitivity to raw material cost fluctuations.
 

MattKing

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The energy component is incredibly important, because it has a huge affect on the price of feed. Growing the feed requires fertilizer, and fertilizer requires petrochemicals.
The other component that is important is that the Ukraine is normally one of the largest sources in the world for grain, and of course that is currently far from normal.
The energy component also affects the costs of transport - both of the feed and the cattle.
The feed costs are the main concern around here - both grain and hay. Here is a 2023 story about the climate related issues: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cattle-ranchers-sell-drought-1.6907515

All of which merely illustrates how the things that affect the photographic products we post about are very frequently not something that we would necessarily associate with photography.
 

Vaughn

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Shipping with Bulk Foods has bumped up quite a bit -- instead of $10.50/lb, shipping makes it $18/lb for a 5 pound bag.
 

koraks

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That's pretty much on par with what I pay here for a comparable bovine food-grade 240 bloom gelatin. It's currently close to €15/lb if purchased in a 1.5kg tub: https://www.naturalspices.com/gelatin-240-bloom This gelatin prints fine with both dichromate and DAS. Its only downside is that it's somewhat yellow and therefore a little less suitable for color work and (heavy) sizing. Otherwise it's quite nice - and it certainly smells a lot better than the more colorless Gelita porcine photo grade gelatin I use for most of my printing these days.
 

Rick A

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I have no local sources for bulk so I'm stuck paying the price at Artcraft.
 

Vaughn

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Andrew O'Neill said:
I always thought gelatin was on the expensive side when I started purchasing it for carbon transfer back in '08. But compared to current prices, it was a bargain!
Click to expand...
Quite a few of those first years I was buying gelatin at the supermarket -- no forums and no on-line buying back then. Not cheap, but at the time I was comparing it to sheets of 16x20 photopaper, so it did not seem expensive.

Each of the dang little packets had about 7 grams of gelatin...12 packets per batch of glop. Going to bulk saved a lot of time by not having to open 36 packets at a time.

Wasn't there a big butter controversy in Canada -- people were finding their butter needed to be heated up a bit more to get it to melt? What was happening to Canadian cows?! I think it turned out to be the palm oil being added to the cow feed as a cheaper protein source, or something like that. I remember buying "Tropical" Hersheys chocolate bars for backpacking back in the late 60s/early 70s in the backpacking stores. They had a higher melting point (melt in your mouth, not in your pack) because they were made with palm oil. Probably developed for the troops in the Pacific during WWII.
 

Andrew O'Neill

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Yup. Palm Oil supplements. Some farmers also use it in the US. It probably beats the alternative though. Growth hormone additives.
I used to use the little 7g packages of Knox gelatin, before I started buying bulk. Knox worked well but yes, opening all those packages got old real fast.
 

Vaughn

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You might have made the same mistake I made the first time -- I measured out the water, cut open a packet, stirred it, cut open another packet, stirred it in, etc -- until about 2/3s of them had been added, and then the mixture gelled and I could not mix anymore in! I had to melt it to add the rest.
 
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MTGseattle

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Touching on the environmental component for a bit, has anyone tried a session using Agar powder yet? It looks like there are a couple of versions.
I also stumbled across Porcine gelatin as well.
For my first foray, I'll likely use a bovine version to minimize variables.
 

koraks

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@MTGseattle there's quite a bit of experimentation going on in the pigment printing arena, with people trying other sensitizers besides dichromate and DAS, and also plant proteins instead of gelatin or gum.

Keep in mind that the reason why gelatin works in carbon printing is because of the long-strain molecules that get entangled and linked up ('crosslinking') by the use of e.g. dichromate or DAS. Polysaccharides like gum arabic and agar agar behave differently; they sometimes exhibit somewhat similar behavior (at least superficially). See e.g. gum printing, where gum arabic is hardened with gelatin. However, the chemistry is different and the mechanics of producing a print, too; e.g. with gum printing there's no 'transfer' as such and I don't think it would actually work if you tried.

Agar agar does play a small role in the Chiba system that uses ferric ammonium citrate as a sensitizer. Here, the agar agar isn't the actual binder for the pigment, but it seals off the gelatin matrix so that oxygen doesn't create problems with the hardening and subsequent adhesion of the gelatin to a substrate. I've read recent reports from one printer who does away with the agar agar and simply uses gelatin and FAC. I've tested this too about a year ago but the results were problematic; no transfer seemed to be possible. However, in these cases gelatin is still used as the pigment binding medium.

The alternative plant proteins are so far mostly/only used in direct printing process, so processes without a transfer, like gum bichromate. I've seen reports of lupin proteins in particular being successfully used in a brush-on method, using FAC as a sensitizer. While such prints are also pigment prints and they also employ proteins, the printing mechanics are quite different from carbon transfer as we know it, and the results are, too.

The short answer is that so far I've not seen a drop-in replacement for animal gelatin in actual carbon transfer printing. If you broaden the scope to pigment processes, then there certainly are other options out there.

MTGseattle said:
I also stumbled across Porcine gelatin as well.
For my first foray, I'll likely use a bovine version to minimize variables.
Click to expand...

I use both bovine and porcine gelatins and apart from the smell, I notice no particular difference in the sense that one is more difficult to print with than the other. It really doesn't matter.
 
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MTGseattle

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I couldn’t find the recent Uv led box thread.?.
Here’s mine.
Barrina 24” tubes. Connectors cut/ soldered to be approximately 2.5” long
Power lead in cut and soldered to be a more normal length.
It all seems to run fine with the Saunders Et-400 timer I ended up with.
Interior is skinned with Reynolds wrap in the “extra large” variety. Box was from a kitchen demo.
 

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MTGseattle

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The lithographer's tape that gets mentioned from time to time. Is it the 3M 616?
 

fgorga

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MTGseattle said:
The lithographer's tape that gets mentioned from time to time. Is it the 3M 616?
Click to expand...

For what it's worth... plain old red construction paper works just fine as a masking material for all alt process I have tried (Pt/Pd, salted-paper, cyanotype and cuprotype). It is a bit thicker than rubylith so one might lose a bit of sharpness (I've not done a side-by-side test) but it is much, much cheaper and easier to get.
 
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