Although is might seem that buying ink ingredients and mixing them together does not require much skill, the making of a useful ink goes far beyond that. The inkmaker's task of selecting the right ingredients for the job to be printer and properly mixing and milling them requires a combination of scientific knowledge, experience, and skill. He must be familiar with pigment, vehicles, solvents, driers and additives, and know how to select and combine them to produce the required runnability and end-use properties. Inkmaker must know what properties are needed in the ink. If the printer does not provide the inkmaker with the necessary information like the job specifications: colour, printing process, press, paper or other subtrate to be used and other requirements, he may get an ink that is less than fully satisfactory.

Inks can be classified as either paste inks or fluid (liquid) inks, and the ingredients and manufacturing procedures for these two types are significantly different. Paste ink are used for litho, letterpress and screen printing. Fluid inks are used for flexo and gravure printing. News inks, although they have a lower body than commercial offset and letterpress printing inks, are commonly though of as paste inks.

Fluid Inks

Processing of fluid inks, Flexo and gravure inks are easily processed because of their low viscosity. However, they are usually processed in closed containers because the solvent must be highly volatile to dry properly at the low temperatures used for drying on the gravure ot flexo process.

Gravure Ink
 In the manufacture og gravure inks, certain resins are dissolved in solvents and milled with the pigment. The product is filtered, and the refineed ink is either discharged to storage or used immediately. Since volatile solvents and flammable resins, such as cellolose nitrate, and involved provison are made against fire hazard.

Flexographic Inks
Procedures for manufacturing flexographic inks are similar to those for gravure inks. Flexographic inks, like gravure inks, can be produced from chips, which are dispersions og pigments in a dry resin. Since most of the work required to dispeerse the pigment was done in preparing the chips, only a high-speed mixer is required to make ink from chips.

Paste Inks

Paste inks maybe made by grinding the dry pigment into the varnish and dispersing the other additives required to modify flow, tack, and film properties.

Lithographic and letterpress Inks
The different between lithographic and letterpress inks are primarily in their formulations (pigment concentration, choice of pigment and varnish) and not in the method of manufacturing.

Screen Printing Inks
Screen printing inks usually dry by a combiantion of solvent evaporation and oxidation. The inks have a low tack and a thick, nonfluid body so that they can be forces by squeegee through the stencil screen. Screen inks are similar to paste ink that has been greatly reduced with mineral spirits.