Blanket Wash

Blanket wash has a pretty self-explanatory name. It is most often used for the purpose of cleaning the blanket in offset sheetfed printing. The blanket is a carrier of the image and in times when it's necessary to move the image or make some kind of adjustment it can be of benefit to the operator to clean the blanket before proceeding. All washes are capable of cutting ink, they will cause it to mix with the wash itself and become more viscous in order to be wiped away. Blanket wash and solvents can contain harmful chemicals and release VOCs (volatile organic compounds) as they evaporate. In the recent past there has been a hard push to green this process of printing and come up with more environmentally friendly forms of blanket washes.

Specialty Washes

Blanket Washes come in a wide variety of formulations for specific applications. Certain types of blankets perform better with specific formulas of blanket wash. Some other blanket washes are engineered to work specifically with a particular type of blanket material. There are even blanket washes that are formulated to be water-miscible meaning that they can be mixed with water.

Environmentally Friendly Washes

In modern times, we are all aware of how important it is to take care of our natural environment and our bodies. Both government regulations and a widespread drive from end users and operators have led manufacturers to come out with specialty Blanket Washes that have extremely low levels of VOCs and low oder without compromising performance in the press room. Although these blanket washes are certainly better to use they do come with an added expense of operation. For this reason, environmentally friendly blanket washes have not yet been universally adopted in operation throughout the entire printing industry. With time and perhaps some further regulation the industry will no doubt fully transition to better more responsible formulas.