Hi all, I’m getting a printer for Christmas and need advice. I want to print decals with it. What printers have you used that work well? Thanks for the advice!
[#welcome]
Welcome to the forum.
Printers? Decals? Remember one thing, Printers cannot print white. Not even my super duper xerox color laser machine can do that.
You must therefore use a decal paper that IS white to begin with, or else print decals that do not use any white in them and use the regular clear paper.
LIONS have NEVER had good luck with decals. Well him tried it when him was a little lion cub, and got it stuck all over everything, and hhim never got them straight.
Now him uses clear lable material. prints on it with this fancy laser printer, and just sticks the “decal” to the product. It is nowhere near as nice as a good decal job, but it is good enough for a LION.
Good enough is good enough, Perfect is a pain in the tail. And is expensive too!
See Layuout of LION below.
ROAR
Any good quality photo printer should work; also a photo editing program would help. I use Photoshop Elements. If you design a small decal that needs to be shrunk down to size, changing the photo quality to 300 or 600 DPI (dots per inch) will keep the details.
You should have both clear and white ink jet decal paper available. As mentioned above, white will not print on a normal printer - it just comes out clear, so the white decal paper background is needed. Some ink colors print out kind of transparent. If applied to a dark surface, the color will appear to wash out. White decal paper will cure this, but then a color to match the background will have to be applied to the vwhite areas of the decal. Micro Mark sells good decal paper
Clear:
http://www.micromark.com/clear-decal-paper-for-ink-jet-printers-5-sheets,7942.html
Most ink jet inks are water solubile, and will run when you soak the decal in water, so a clear coat spray is needed to protect the decal. Many clearcoats that model railoraders use have solvents that attack the decal ink; Krylon Acrylic spray works well, and is recommended by MicroMark. Most craft stores like Michaels have it, and many hardware stores as well. Craft stores have a UV protective version as well.
One of my things is making my own decals.
If you have got a good money tree the Epson WT7900 will print white.
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Pro/SeriesStylusProWT7900/Overview.do?BV_UseBVCookie=yes
I chose to buy a used Alps MD1000 printer (eBay), the older Alps will print white although ink cartridge supplys are running low and Alps doesn’t support them any more. Another problem is the last printer driver written for the older Alps printers is for Windows XP and the Alps printer requires a parallel port.
The Alps MD1000 uses a tape type cartridges and prints at 600 dpi. It does a wonderful job printing decals. The Alps will do several passes to print full color spectrum and the repeatable is amazingly accurate.
The Alps MD1000 will also pri
I am sure a printer could print white if there was a demand for it.
I didn’t have much luck printing my own decals until I tried the Evans Design decal paper. This white background decal paper made it easy to print both full color and white/light color lettering decals using an Epson NX430 inkjet printer. White lettering is easy if you are applying the decal to a black background, are creating a patch-out decal or purposely creating a decal with a background color that doesn’t match your model’s paint color. Using your computer, create your background shape and assign a color. Then add your white or light color lettering atop the background. When you print the decals, the printer just leaves the lettering areas blank which allows the white background of the decal paper to show through the colored background you printed. The result is a white lettered decal!
It’s a little harder to make the decal background color match the model’s paint color but it can be done using a trial and error method. I pick a color on the computer screen that looks as close as possible to the model’s paint color. I then create small color swatch squares along one edge of my design page. I assign my “best guess” color to the center swatch, then successively darker shades of that color to the swatch squares left of center and successively lighter shades to the swatches right of center. I then print out the swatches on the actual decal paper (don’t use regular bond paper as it will take the printer colors differently than the actual decal paper). I then compare the swatch colors to the actual model and pick the best match. If no swatch is a perfect match, I start with the closest match and try creating a new range of swatches until I finally achieve the correct color match. Be sure to name and save this color for future use (i.e., Athearn Santa Fe Box Car Red). Once you have your decal background color, you can then design and print your decals.
The Evans Design decal p
I am now using a Canon inkjet printer, and I’ve had much better results than I did with my old HP. I think the ink is just better suited to the project.
Is decal paper still hard to find? Some time back, none of the hobby shops had it and even Walthers was out of it and had no estimate of when they would get more. I ended up ordering 25 sheets from www.decalpaper.com, and I’ve found that it’s a perfectly good product and costs a lot less per sheet than the brands I used to buy. Of course, now I’ve got 23 more sheets to use up…
I use a trick to get around the “can’t print white” problem. I paint a white rectangle (or whatever) on the model, and then apply the decal over that. This lets the clear show through as white and restores the color balance to the lighter colors as well.
Thank you all! I’ve printed decals before, but I’m getting a new printer so I’m looking for advice. I’ve not had good luck with the micromark paper - it tends to curl and not stick. No idea why, but MM was pretty confused by it too when I contacted them. I’ve had better luck with the testers paper, but will have to try out the Evans paper.
I think I’ll look at the Cannon or Epson, photo quality. I’ll let you all know when I get one what the result is.
From my experience, a color laser is the only way to do. Inkjet printed decals are only good for flat surfaces. Applying a clear finish to injet printed decal paper only goes so far. Once you apply Solvaset or MicroSol, to get a inkjet printed decal to go over irregular surfaces, it will bleed.
If you don’t want to spend the money on a color laser, take your artwork, printed on high quality injet paper, to Office Depot or Staples, and have them print it on your decal paper with their color lasers.
I use this Brother color laser and it works great for any of my modeling needs.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JBVWDB8?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00
Frank, there is a learning curve for making decals. Different brands of decal paper will respond differently, it’s not a big difference but ink jet printers and the type of ink you use will print slightly different too.
As mentioned above a Laser Printer is an easier learning curve but I get excellent decals from my Ink Jet Printers.
To prevent bleeding from Ink Jet printers I use Testors Decal Bonder. Two light coats of Decal Bonder will shrink and conform to curved surfaces and details when you use Solvaset or MicroSol. Clear Krylon and Rust-Oleum will work on flat surfaces but won’t conform to details.
I’ve had good luck with several different brands of decal paper but some take some learning. Be patient until you get the hang of printing decals.
Mel
Here is an example of two labels with white letters made using an HP all-in-one officejet.
Don’t ask how I did it as I’m still trying to figure it out. I think I printed the background color on Avery labels and then typed in the letters and used the no print option leaving the white of the label showing.
I don’t have time tonight to verify this method, but here is a picture of the results.
EDIT: And Yes There Is A Prototype. These tanks are located North of Marion, VA on I 81
Bob
The Alps MD 1000 was a great printer that should have had better support. I finally wore mine out, and even though they did not produce it anymore Alps offered to rebuild mine for a mere $550.00. Needless to say I did not take them up on their “generous” offer. However I still have 18 new print cartridges for it, including 1 each of the gold and silver foil. If anyone wants them they ar yours for the cost of shipping.
There is if you want to pay $7000 for the commercial printer that RR_Mel mentioned. For printers in the $100 to $300 price range, the need for white ink printing just is not there
Are the decals nice and opaque? This looks like a great machine, and very inexpensive.
I agree they can be a pain - I’m wondering if that Solvaset (or similar) stuff would give a better finish the way it does with regular decals? - once the things are all nicely lined up, that is. LOL
Frank
It looks like I’m the only responder with any experience using the Evans Design decal paper. I probably wouldn’t have tried this decal paper either but I found myself standing in front of the Evans Design booth at the NMRA National Convention several years ago in Anaheim. At the time, they were selling five sheets for $15 so I bought a pack to try. This decal paper is designed to work with any inkjet printer and the special coating is designed to absorb and lock in the injet ink without a sealant overspray. Surprise, it really works! I have made dozens of decals with this paper, both white background and clear using fairly basic Epson Inkjet printers. Out of the dozens of decals I have printed on this decal paper, I have managed to smear the ink on only one single decal. This was a full color decal of a round Southern Pacific shield I applied to the nose of an EMD F7 loco in “Black Widow” paint scheme. At that time I was still using Solvaset as a setting solution and kept having to reapply it to this decal as I couldn’t seem to get it straight on the model. After five or six applications of Solvaset and then pushing the decal around, I finally managed to smear the decal - slightly. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to print another decal and try again. I made several other decals for this loco (plus a second). The “Southern Pacific” roadname, the loco numbers and the “Radio Equipped” decals are all white lettering on black backgrounds. The loco number decals on the nose of these locos are black lettering on CLEAR backgrounds I made from the same sheet of decal paper as the white background decals. For me, the learning curve for using this decal paper was quick. The only things to remember are “Acrylic based clear coats when you want the decal background to remain opaque white” or "Solvent based clear coats when you want the decal background to turn and remain clear.&
I’ve not used Dave’s decal paper, but if it’s as good as I’ve found his software and LEDs, it is likely top notch!
Hi Hornblower - your story rang a bell for me so I went and looked in my decal drawer and lo and behold - there is Evans Design decal paper. I recall buying it at an NMRA national too, with the brickyard CD. I got freaked out about using lighter fluid to soften it (thought it might remove/craze the paint, the fumes, etc) so I never used it. Good to know Solvaset works on it too. What is your experience using lighter fluid on painted models? I may have to try it.
Frank
Since I purchased the lighter fluid, I have applied decals to several Accurail “data only” open hoppers using the Ronsonol lighter fluid to set the decals. The lighter fluid had no affect on the factory paint and did a much better job than Solvaset keeping the decal edges from curling up. I don’t know yet whether it would affect the paint used on other brands of rolling stock.