Best Wash Wash Up Chemical?

I am quite new in the Sheet fed Offset Printing Industry and we are having problems when doing wash ups Dark > Light colors, takes up 1 to 2 hours (3 to 5 wash ups) depending on the contrast of the colors. Does anyone have any recommendation on the best wash ups that we can use just to reduce that?

I have observed that we always use a cleaning paste when washing Dark > Light colors. Is it really necessary?

 

Ive found that often the commercially available deep cleaners lack the tack to pull the residual old ink out of the roller trains, if the rollers are older or neglected. My suggestion would be as follows.... Make sure all rollers are set properly, and that your wash-up blade is in decent shape. On occasion see to it that your entire roller train gets a deep cleaning. For this I like to once a month go old school and run some putz pomade into the rollers for a good 15 minutes. The abrasive nature of the putz pomade will scrub the rollers of the old residual dried ink, and leave the rollers with a velvety feel. You should also as a part of this deep cleaning be sure that all traces of calcium are removed from the rollers. When going from a dark color like reflex blue to something lighter I like to, after a good washing of the rollers of the reflex blue, tap on a bit of neutral black and let it run in for a few minutes. Then wash the neutral black followed up with an application or 2 of a commercially available deep cleaning paste. At times tapping on a bit of water repellant varnish or body gum will offer a bunch of tack to remove the residual ink. Id be careful with the really high tack stuff like I just mentioned if you've got rollers that are really old and worn as ive seen the really high tack pull apart compromised rubber.

 

I use some opaque white ink to pull color out of the rollers sometimes during washup. Normally roller cleaner like easy street and tap in color washup get me there on light colors. Putz I only use by hand (on rag with wash) on the hard rollers. Deglazes them nicely. Putz in the soft rollers acts like offset powder in ink train if not washed a few times with ink to pull it out. I don't like the quick dry "pronto" type of press washes. I prefer a water miscible wash and some warm water.