White Custom Decals

Don’t have time today to filter through past posts so pardon if this repeats anything discussed lately.

I’m working on a rehab of the simulator board used in local incident command classes for fire/police/EMS. The board itself is HO, some 16’ x 8’. The vehicles used are of the “Matchbox” variety, mostly for durability. Todays HO emergency vehicles are certainly capable of doing the job, except they would lack the durability.

I’ve done most of the vehicles, including repainting and lettering them for appropriate functions. They are lettered with custom decals, using Testors decal paper (I’ve also used Micromarks, and sealed the Testors with the MM finisher). In general, this has worked very well, with one exception - the red fire trucks. I’ve been able to work with white vehicles for everything else, and have even done some yellow fire trucks, but the red ones…

So, the question is: Does anyone have the ability to print white decals??? I don’t recall the brand of ink jet printer that has the white ink available. I only need one sheet, maybe two - getting a commercially produced run is overkill. I’ll produce a Word document with what I need. The white on red you see below was done on white decal stock, and doesn’t look all that good…

If anyone can help, please drop me an email off-line and we’ll talk.


You’ll have to get an out of production ALPS printer to print white decals. They use a plastic ribbon to print the waterproof images on decal paper. I’m told used ones are available on eBay, and ribbons are supposedly still available. The only other option is to have some custom make decals silk screened, or find someone who uses an ALPS printer commercially. Injets do not print in white.

Bob Boudreau

Larry,
I used the Search the forums , , , function to review some of the earlier threads, and in one post about using a reverse image to print on white paper found a reference to this outfit:
http://www.echomtn.com/custom.htm
I’ve not used them, but they claim they can custom make white decals. Now the question is, will their price fit your budget ?
Haven’t searched:
http://www.greatdecals.com
but, perhaps one or more of the custom decal makers linked there are capable of making white decals.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543

Thanks for the leads. Just too busy today to spend time picking through search results. Also hoping one of the forum members might actually have the printer and be willing to help out. I’ll try to keep you posted on how I make out.

If the artwork is all done I may be able to help you out. I have an Alps printer (actually 3 of them) and a small supply of white cartridges. If I have to do the artwork then it may take a few weeks as I am pretty busy right now. Send M an email and I can get a quote to you.

Dan Pikulski
www.DansResinCasting.com