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sanking
29-Nov-2012, 08:22
The question of what is in Kami mounting fluid comes up from time to time. In the US Kami can be purchased from Aztek, but in many parts of the world it is not available. The formula, which comes from a Kami MSDS sheet, is fairly simple.

Mineral Spirits <10%
Solvent Naptha <90%
n-Hexane <4%

Mineral spirits and solvent naptha can be purchased at many hardware stores, or easily on the web. n-Hexane can be purchased on the web, or substitute an equal amount of methyl alcohol.

Home mixed Kami works just like the store stuff, and is also just as flammable and explosive.

Sandy

Ed Bray
29-Nov-2012, 10:13
This is very useful information Sandy. What are the ratios between each constituent part?

JBelthoff
29-Nov-2012, 10:34
I'm no mathematician but doesn't that equal 104%?

sanking
29-Nov-2012, 10:36
This is very useful information Sandy. What are the ratios between each constituent part?

Hum, perhaps I confused myself, but I took the formula to mean a bit less than 10% of mineral spirit, a bit less than 90% of solven naptha, and a bit less than 4% of n-Hexane.
I would mix the fluid mount one part mineral spirit + 9 parts solvent naptha + one-quarter part 1/2 part n-Hexane (or methyl alcohol).

If that does not make sense hope someone will correct me.

Sandy

Drew Wiley
29-Nov-2012, 10:36
The other 4% or maybe 14% is excess water. I doubt that Kami gets their ingredients at
the local hardware store. You have to be careful about quality these days.

JBelthoff
29-Nov-2012, 10:39
Also, is that "Solvent Naphtha" or Solvent Naptha?

sanking
29-Nov-2012, 11:31
I'm no mathematician but doesn't that equal 104%?

I don't think so. All of the percentages are given as less than (<). I take this to mean that the MSDS data does not give the exact formula.

And yes, it should be solvent naphtha.

Sandy

Jason Greenberg Motamedi
29-Nov-2012, 11:33
Sandy already said it, but these are off an MSDS sheet, so all they are telling you is that less than X% of the composition of the whole is made of Y. They don't have to tell you the exact proportions for safety precautions, and certainly wouldn't want to to prevent home-brewing.

Were it me, I would buy them through a reputable chemical supply house. Much more expensive, but they would come as a known quality.

adam satushek
29-Nov-2012, 13:54
Interesting, but personally ill keep buying the real stuff through Aztek as long as I can. I really like Aztek and appreciate that they still service my scanner so I try to buy as much from them that I can. Just my opinion though. But it is good to know the ingredients in case Kami is not always available.

sanking
29-Nov-2012, 14:26
Just for the record, there is another MSDS sheet for Kami that lists the ingredients as follows.

Naphtha (petroleum) < 90 %
Isododecane < 10 %

I have never seen Isododecane for sale but brief search indicates that it is a fairly common synthetic hydrocarbon that functions as a solvent and dispersant.

Sandy

JBelthoff
29-Nov-2012, 15:43
Sandy,

Have you made up a home brewed batch of this stuff yet? If so do you just put it in a magnetic stirrer and let it work?

I'm at my last bit of a Kami bottle and wondering how easy it is to mix at home.

Oh and I was just trying to be silly with my math comment.... :p

--JB

sanking
29-Nov-2012, 15:59
Sandy,

Have you made up a home brewed batch of this stuff yet? If so do you just put it in a magnetic stirrer and let it work?

I'm at my last bit of a Kami bottle and wondering how easy it is to mix at home.

Oh and I was just trying to be silly with my math comment.... :p

--JB

JB,

Solvent Naphtha, mineral spirits (oil) and methyl alcohol are all liquids so no need for a magnetic stirrer.

And some time ago I did mix some naphtha with mineral spirit and it looked and acted like Kami. The stuff I mixed was bought at a local hardware store.

I definitely recommend caution and careful consideration when using chemicals, but very often things we mix at home works as well or better than store bought stuff, and cost a lot less. One of my close friends has ED but unfortunately his insurance won't pay for medication, and the stuff is too expensive for his budget. He could buy the generic medication from Canada or India but is afraid it might harm him. If I were in his shoes I would probably just buy the Indian stuff and take the chance, since for me the desired end usually trumps fear. But we all have to make our own decisions about rewards and risks.

Sandy

Drew Wiley
29-Nov-2012, 16:24
MSDS sheets are not required to show all ingredients, just those that fall under a potentially hazardous category and are not otherwise exempted under trade secret. In
this case, certain solvents might have been interchaged at one time or another due to
whatever - enviro regs, safety, shpg rules, cost & avail, etc.

Drew Wiley
29-Nov-2012, 16:32
Sandy - mineral spirits and mineral oil are completely different substances! Mineral spirits =
paint thinner, but mineral oil is nontoxic and you can treat butcher blocks and salad bowls with it. The problem with methyl alcohol for hardware stores is that the water content can
very significantly, and at a certain point will create havoc. It's common nowadays for
manufacturers to test their luck by diluting the solution. Methyl alcohol behaves very differently in different degrees of concentration. But it's probably the mineral oil doing most
of the work in this case.

JBelthoff
29-Nov-2012, 16:49
JB,

Solvent Naphtha, mineral spirits (oil) and methyl alcohol are all liquids so no need for a magnetic stirrer.

And some time ago I did mix some naphtha with mineral oil and it looked and acted like Kami. The stuff I mixed was bought at a local hardware store.

I definitely recommend caution and careful consideration when using chemicals, but very often things we mix at home works as well or better than store bought stuff, and cost a lot less. One of my close friends has ED but unfortunately his insurance won't pay for medication, and the stuff is too expensive for his budget. He could buy the generic medication from Canada or India but is afraid it might harm him. If I were in his shoes I would probably just buy the Indian stuff and take the chance, since for me the desired end usually trumps fear. But we all have to make our own decisions about rewards and risks.

Sandy

Sandy,

Thanks. I may just try this out this weekend. The Mineral Spirit version anyway.... I think that is supposed to be the right one.

Peter De Smidt
29-Nov-2012, 16:53
What do the other ingredients add that naphtha by itself won't accomplish? Do they up the viscosity?

sanking
29-Nov-2012, 17:00
Sandy - mineral spirits and mineral oil are completely different substances! Mineral spirits =
paint thinner, but mineral oil is nontoxic and you can treat butcher blocks and salad bowls with it. The problem with methyl alcohol for hardware stores is that the water content can
very significantly, and at a certain point will create havoc. It's common nowadays for
manufacturers to test their luck by diluting the solution. Methyl alcohol behaves very differently in different degrees of concentration. But it's probably the mineral oil doing most
of the work in this case.

I misspoke because what I mixed was mineral spirits with naphtha. I have never used mineral oil, or had any around that I can recall.

Sandy

oysteroid
28-Jan-2013, 22:02
I only had a semester of organic chemistry in college, and I forgot most of it, so I am no expert, but it seems to me that naptha alone wouldn't be such a different substance from naptha mixed with some other miscellaneous volatile hydrocarbons. All of these ingredients are just light fraction hydrocarbons distilled from petroleum at a point somewhere between the gases like methane and the heavier liquids like kerosene. And the name naptha doesn't refer to any specific compound, but rather a range of light hydrocarbons with anything from 5 to 12 carbon atoms. Hexane is just a straight chain hydrocarbon with 6 carbon atoms. So it is normally part of naptha anyway. And mineral spirits is similarly a broad term for a mixture of light hydrocarbons ranging from 7 to 12 carbon atoms. I suspect that all we have here is a range of petroleum distillates and the MSDS lists hexane specifically because of a law that requires it to be listed by itself if it is present. But the hexane isn't likely to be something they added to naptha. The term mineral spirits might generally refer to a mixture with a higher percentage of hydrocarbons leaning more toward the heavy end of the 6-12 carbon range. I think typical mineral spirits is a bit less volatile than naptha, taking longer to evaporate. But they are very similar.

I don't see why straight naphtha wouldn't work. Even the hardware store stuff seems to evaporate cleanly. I used some VM&P naphtha to degrease some old shutters before relubricating them and I tested it to see if it would leave residue when I evaporated it as I didn't want any oil on the shutter blades. It didn't leave anything behind that I could detect. Some mineral spirits, however, will leave a bit of oily residue upon evaporation. I don't think you want that on your film. The straight naphtha might evaporate a bit too quickly though. You'll just have to try it. It isn't going to hurt anything in any way that the Kami fluid that contains naptha wouldn't. But whatever naphtha you buy should be subjected to an evaporation test to make sure it is residue free. Just pour some onto a sheet of clean glass, allow to evaporate, and then inspect carefully. One way to tell if there is any oily residue that might not be very visible is to put some water drops on it. Clean glass is polar and causes water to spread out on its surface, to "sheet". Oil is nonpolar and water is more attracted to itself than to the oil, so it beads up. Just make sure your glass is super clean to begin with. Wash it with dish soap and dry it and don't touch it with your oily fingers.

And keep in mind that all of these light hydrocarbon mixtures are harmful and contain carcinogens, to some extent even benzene, which specifically causes leukemia. So use at your own risk and make sure to have plenty of ventilation and, particularly if you are spending much time in close proximity and can readily smell it, a respirator with cartridges for organic solvent vapors, something like this:

http://www.3m.com/product/information/Organic-Vapor-Respirator.html

Wear some purple nitrile gloves too.

I see no reason to pay Kami's absurd prices for what is a very common and cheap substance.

ruckusman
29-Jan-2013, 07:58
Just a quick word of caution, methyl alcohol can attack some plastics and remove plasticisers leading to crazing.

It's a polar solvent, thus it's easily mixed with water -miscible.

Naptha is recommended for film cleaning, and also used by many drum scanner operators for cleaning their drums also.
It's a non-polar solvent.

http://www.nfsa.gov.au/preservation/handbook/conservation-treatments/solvents/

On the scanhi-end yahoo group, the preferred mounting fluid is liquid paraffin - from the pharmacy - laxative (not kerosene - also called paraffin in the US), not dissolved/diluted with anything, but obviously there needs to be cleaning of both film and drums afterwards.

peace out

Glenn

coisasdavida
30-Jan-2013, 15:08
On the scanhi-end yahoo group, the preferred mounting fluid is liquid paraffin - from the pharmacy - laxative (not kerosene - also called paraffin in the US), not dissolved/diluted with anything, but obviously there needs to be cleaning of both film and drums afterwards.


I tried to find this info there but I couldn't. I found some posts by Ernst about it, but can you direct me to something I've missed?

ruckusman
30-Jan-2013, 17:36
Here's a link to one post

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ScanHi-End/message/14472

A search for paraffin on the ScanHi-End group yeilds ~43 results, there's some banter, but the reprographic industry has used paraffin (inert mineral oil) for decades for mounting film to scan

One consideration not discussed often is the refractive index of the mounting fluid - IIRC paraffin has a refractive index very close to film, so it forms an additive layer, which fills in scratches and imperfections in the film also, without distorting anything optically.

Don't take the above as gospel, but it's well worth researching...

peace out

Glenn

coisasdavida
31-Jan-2013, 03:11
Thanks, I found most of it.

coisasdavida
28-Feb-2013, 10:28
Has anyone tried this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sansodor

coisasdavida
28-Feb-2013, 12:37
Sansodor just passed the "styrofoam cup test" here.

Peter De Smidt
28-Feb-2013, 13:48
That looks promising.

Ultrachrome
25-Aug-2022, 08:34
Reviving an old thread to try to get new information.

We had been using Lumina scanning fluid as it seemed much less noxious than Kami but how the company selling it has recently went out of business. We've been experimenting now with Sansodor with good results other than it takes a lot longer to dry than Lumina. We came to try this as it was suggested by Coisassdavida in this thread. Are there any updates on a safer alternative to Kami?...or perhaps just going by the odor of a substance isn't sound reasoning to determine how harmful a chemical is but Sansodor is sold by Winsor & Newton as it's safest least noxious paint thinner and brush cleaner claiming it to be 3 time safer than turpentine.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as we use a ton of fluid both traditionally and as wet gate fluid on a Lasergraphics movie film scanner.

sanking
25-Aug-2022, 08:38
Reviving an old thread to try to get new information.

We had been using Lumina scanning fluid as it seemed much less noxious than Kami but how the company selling it has recently went out of business. We've been experimenting now with Sansodor with good results other than it takes a lot longer to dry than Lumina. We came to try this as it was suggested by Coisassdavida in this thread. Are there any updates on a safer alternative to Kami?...or perhaps just going by the odor of a substance isn't sound reasoning to determine how harmful a chemical is but Sansodor is sold by Winsor & Newton as it's safest least noxious paint thinner and brush cleaner claiming it to be 3 time safer than turpentine.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as we use a ton of fluid both traditionally and as wet gate fluid on a Lasergraphics movie film scanner.

Gamsol has worked fine for me. Some speculate it is same as Lumina, don't know for sure.

Sandy

domaz
1-Sep-2022, 13:23
Since we reviving old threads. How does one safely deal with these mounting fluids indoors? My darkroom/scanning system is well ventilated but would the sparks inherent in most electric fans cause a safety hazard?

Daniel Stone
1-Sep-2022, 14:03
Since we reviving old threads. How does one safely deal with these mounting fluids indoors? My darkroom/scanning system is well ventilated but would the sparks inherent in most electric fans cause a safety hazard?

Don't water your fans with mounting fluid(or any fluid) :p

In all seriousness, yes, having some ventilation is recommended. Either into a larger "atmosphere", or, ideally, outside. If you can setup a small fan to suck the fumes away from you, and blow them out a window, that would be best.
I've done all my mounting, indoors. Granted, I'm not a service bureau so my volume is quite low in comparison, so I've never bothered. Keeping a window open too long always seemed to allow more atmospheric dust in than anything.
In short, don't huff the stuff :D

Ultrachrome
1-Sep-2022, 19:23
Gamsol has worked fine for me. Some speculate it is same as Lumina, don't know for sure.

Sandy

Just bought some Gamsol...Yeah wow, this stuff is truly pretty much odorless and is also a little more volatile than the Sansodor which is nice because Sansodor dries too slow. I'll be testing further soon.. Thanks for the tip!

Ultrachrome
1-Sep-2022, 19:30
Since we reviving old threads. How does one safely deal with these mounting fluids indoors? My darkroom/scanning system is well ventilated but would the sparks inherent in most electric fans cause a safety hazard?

I think it would have to be some pretty explosive stuff for the fumes to ignite from an electric fan and you'd have to have the atmosphere saturated to the point you'd have a bigger cancer concern than worrying about blowing up. We use this fluid in a great big giant room and when we do use it in our darkroom area, that has an HRV ventilation system and positive air pressure so that room is great. Still though I won't use Kami because it has too much odor. I think there is some link between the amount of odor a solvent has and how toxic it is. I'm not sure of this though. The Sansodor is very low odor and I"m trying out the Gamsol that someone else here mentioned should be given a try. That stuff has almost no smell at all. I don't think I would use kami in a tight space even with okay ventilation.