Make Your Own Decals! - Anyone done this before?

[dragenrider]

QUOTE: BTW: How did you get the 'Cedar Branch & Western' decal printed with white ink on that Caboose No. 10 on spur track?

Silver Spike, the white letters were professionally produced by a private decal maker. I highly recommend him! He's honest, fast, and his prices beat everyone else. [e-mail] is his email address, durned if I can remember his name. I'm not sure if he's still in business. I hope he is, I'm going to need more soon! [tup]

[SilverSpike]

ben610,
Answers to your questions:
1. Micro-Mark sells decal paper. (http://www.micromark.com)
Also, Walthers (http://www.walters.com) has various decal paper available, Evans Designs, Vitachrome Graphics. Price depends on quantity and brand, I see a $$ range from $15.95 for a pack of 5 sheets and up to $350.00 for a pack of 100 sheets.
2. Walthers has Solvaset - 2 oz bottle is $2.49
3. What kind of printer are you going to use? I see Canon, but what model, inkjet, laserjet?

Ryan

[Anonymous]

i have a canon and i really whant to get to the point
1. where do i get the decal paper and how much
2. were do i get the solvaset and any others (tell me if there is any better or cheaper than solvaset)
3. will my printer work

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I am using word and found out how to get smaller letters
Paul

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by smyers

Ooops;
Spraying my test shots with clear Krylon acrylic enamel, as recommended by one decal paper vendor, caused many letters to bleed and run, and had the same effect as spraying weathering chalk with a clear overcoat. The colors "thinned", becoming even more translucent, even solid black.

Oh well, back to square one.

Best,
smyers

ok always always test that spray on clear coat on a nother thing that has the same ink (if you are like me and just do it with most things even though the lble clearly states to thes it)

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Paul Johnston

My letters only go down to 6.

What program are you using? Most will let you get down at 1. I know Word, for example, will let you do anything between 1 and 1638 including fractions (I use 11.5 on papers for school all the time).

[Anonymous]

After reading about making decals I have a couple guestions. I have a alps md-1300 printer. Will this work okay. Also when you make your decals how do you get your letters small enough. My letters only go down to 6.
Paul

[SilverSpike]

QUOTE: jhugart

Today, even cheap ink-jets handle 1000 dpi or more.

Jacob,
Great explanation you gave of the raster and vector image rendering aspects. I have a Canon photo printer that has a dpi resolution of up to 4,800 X 2,400. I have printed photo quality images on photo paper and I cannot tell the difference between them and the ones from the photo lab. I have not tested the decal paper on it yet, still working on the creating images and lettering stage.

QUOTE: BRVRR

Alas, my lettering is still individual letters and numbers from Microscale.
Here's a picture:

Allan,
Thanks for the great photo, and I like the decal work.



Ryan

[cmrproducts]

From the sounds of these posts making decals with an ink jet (water based inks) is not very productive.

Well every week I get a new batch of decals as I do not produce them myself but one of my regular operators on my layout does them.

And there seems to be no end to what can be done. I had a special logo made for the side of an Atlas CVR Hopper. We slapped the decal right on the gray undec. body and it looked good. But I wanted the logo to cover the whole body so I ask our decal maker if he could make it 5 inches wide and 1 inch tall. Last night it showed up just as I ask.

So I think that we have the system down pretty good and again it is using an Epson printer with the oil based ink system.

If you are serious about making one off decals then consider the Epson (and I am in no way an Epson user, I use a Cannon printer) but then I am not the one doing the decal printing!

BOB H Clarion, PA

[BRVRR]

Ryan,
I used the Testor's kit to make the heralds for my BRVRR engine. I made a whole sheet so some of them will eventually turn up on 'house' rolling stock.
I printed the images and let the ink dry overnight. Then sprayed them lightly with the 'setting spray' that comes in the kit.
I had no problems with applying it to the nose of my F7. Solvaset didn't seem to hurt it, but I used it sparingly. After everything was dry I over coated it with Dullcoat.
Alas, my lettering is still individual letters and numbers from Microscale.
Here's a picture:

More on the website.

[Anonymous]

EVen after taking all the care you can, it seems that using color ink jet printers for decals is kind of hit-and-miss. From my professional experience with these printers I'm not surprised. Another potential issue is longevitiy: most ink jet print fades rapidly in strong light and if you use unshielded fluorescents they emit a lot of UV. Not sure that the Epson oil-based inks offer a significant improvement in handling but they were designed to retain a quality image longer.

Having said all that, I've had excellent results with laser printers. You just need to find a shop that will let you run the decal paper through one of their copiers - not all will, but its not too tough.

Jacob makes an excellent point on raster versus vector. I use Coreldraw with great success and its cheaper than Photoshop.

[jhugart]

A couple of thoughts...

First, on resolution. Ink-jet printers these days can print in very high resolutions, because the market demands photographic-quality prints. The limit of resolution then becomes the software you use, not the printer.

If you don't know, resolution refers to the number of pixture elements (pixels) - the squares of color - that you can fit into a given space. Usually, this is measured as dots-per-inch, or dpi. If you imagine a sheet of 1/4" rule graph paper, and you colored in the squares entirely, that would be 4 dpi. Twenty years ago, laser printers were commonly 300 dpi. Today, even cheap ink-jets handle 1000 dpi or more.

The reason why the high resolution is required is because of the color. Inks are not dyes. In order to get a given color in a given space, you have to combine inks to create the appearance of the color. Most ink-jet printers handle the four process colors: Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and blacK (hence CMYK). If you want something that looks green, the printer puts some yellow and some cyan in that area, but the dots are so small that your eyes perceives them as green. Take a magnifying lens to a color photograph in a newspaper to see how different dots combine to show areas of color.

A dye sublimation printer layers dyes that combine to produce exactly the color desired, there's no optical effect involved. This means that one dot or pixel in a dye-sub printer can represent the color you want, whereas it might take many more pixels with an ink-jet printer to achieve the same effect.

Anyway, regarding software: If you use Photoshop, it is a raster program. That is, it stores pixels and works with pixels. It paints, it doesn't draw. So you have to use a dpi in Photoshop to match the dpi you want on the output device.

Vector programs, like Adobe Illustrator, store shapes as mathematical descriptions. The printer driver converts this information to the rasters needed to render the image. If you could develop your logo in Illustrator or some other drawing program, then it would print at the maximum resolution of the printer, and the file on disk will be smaller, too.

As already noted, ink-jets are great at transparencies -- that's what the market wants. People still print on transparency film. The ALPS printers printed opaque colors, so you could have white on clear. I don't think there's a printer made today for consumers that has this feature. Maybe some service bureaus could handle printing opaque colors to decal paper. You could call around and ask if they can produce decals you can apply at home using water, and what resolutions it would require.

Another thought: Scrapbooking is a popular thing these days, with places like Archivers having huge amounts of stickers, stamps, and such. They sell pens in opaque colors. Perhaps it is possible to get a rubber stamp of custom artwork, such as a road name, and use it with paint or an ink pad? Next time I'm at Archiver's I'll ask about this. Microscopic lettering is probably not something they would sell in any form, though.

[SilverSpike]

John L,
Hey, no problem, thanks for the reply! I appreciate the follow-up refgarding the drying process, the hair dryer technique will surely speed things up!

Dragenrider,
Thanks for the tip with the Dull Cote applications, which makes perfect sense since you are only wetting the decal to remove it from the backing it should not affect the ink. I will have to try that one out too. Thanks also for posting the image, good job there! I checked out your images on the Railimages site, great layout.

BTW: How did you get the 'Cedar Branch & Western' decal printed with white ink on that Caboose No. 10 on spur track?

Thanks

Ryan

[dragenrider]

Let me chime in on the decals. I print my own decals using an HP ink jet printer. What I do is let them dry overnight and then give them several coats of of Testers Dull Cote, allowing them to dry well in between each coat. This seals in the ink and I can dunk and stick without the letters running.

The only problem I've encountered is with an occasional letter run during spraying the entire engine after the decals have been applied. I attribute this to not sealing the letters good in the first place.

It can be done! I hope this helps. There's an example below my name.

[Anonymous]

Ryan,

Apologies for not replying sooner, didn't realise there were 2 pages to this thread.

Decal was flat on the workbench.

By thoroughly dry I mean I ran the hair dryer for 5 minutes on low setting - duration was one minute on, one minute off, one minute on, one minute off, one minute on. Hair dryer was about 200mm (8 inches) from decal.

I then left decal for about an hour. Don't know whether this is overkill but it worked.

regards

John L

[SilverSpike]

John L,

Great tips on printing and applying the decals! [:D]

On warning #2 you mentioned "Make sure the decal is thoroughly dry", I am assuming you mean that after printing the decal you should let the paper sit on a level flat surface and allow it to fully dry before coating with the bonder spray. Am I correct in this assumption?

Thanks again,

Ryan

[Anonymous]

Ryan,

I have used an ALPS MD1000 for some years but recently decided to try inkjet decal paper on my Canon MP700.

On Testors white injet decal paper as a test I printed a UP shield and Cushioned Load logo - both these have white backgrounds. The decals went onto an 'O' scale container which had been painted with gloss Tamiya Chrome Yellow

Have to say I was agreeably suprised at how well both decals came out.

Only 4 warnings

1. I think from memory the instructions said use ordinary print setting. Even though the Canon has 2 picolitre print capability I had to use a high quality print setting or the decal came out patchy.

2. Make sure the decal is thoroughly dry (I use my wifes hairdryer). before spraying decal bonder

3. Decal must be horizontal, (laying flat on workbench) before LIGHTLY spraying Testors Decal Bonder. (My first attempt had the decal vertical - the ink ran). To ensure that water did not get to the print I sprayed bonder twice -2 once north-south once east-west.

4. Testors say that decal should only be in water for 5 seconds the downside is that you do not get much time to move the decal around on the car.

I used MicroSol on one side of the container and plain water on the other. The MicroSol crinkled the decal initially but after about 3 hours it smoothed out.

In both cases (MicroSol one side - water the other) the decal snuggled down onto the container ribs. In fact unlike Carlb my decal grabbed really hard - probably because I only left the decal in the water for the 5 seconds advised by Testor.

As a last comment the colours appear to match the original 'O'scale decal (source unknown) particularly in respect of the orange, reds and blues.

Even though the ALPS is old technology I would still use it over the inkjet because of its ability to layer colours and print white + and this is a big plus, you do not have to dry the and protect the decal before placing on the car.

regards

John L

[SilverSpike]

Excellent work! Thanks for the update on the scale lumber and weathering. I just received some Bragdon weather system stuff, and looking forward to trying it out too.

- Ryan

[Anonymous]

Ryan,

The fences are scratchbuilt from scale lumber that has been weathered with alcohol and shoe dye. The stock cars in the long shot are weathered with Bragdon chalks..

[SilverSpike]

Guy,

I was actually hoping to use Word as my decal software application for printing them out, especially since I already have it installed. Thanks for the tip on trying out the printed test pages with fonts next to existing rolling stock, I will have to do that and test the various sizes and fonts as you said.

On a side note, I just looked at Adobe Photoshop and the best deal for it is around $350.00, I could buy a heck of a lot of ready-made decals for that price. I know it is a great program, but I would not have any other use for it. So, I will absolutely use Word first.

Also, I checked out your layout on the weblink, nice job! In the first photo of the junk yard, did you scratch build the fences?

Thanks,

Ryan

[Anonymous]

Yep, the HP ink is "an aqueous ink solution", according to their MSDS, useless for making decals. You'd be better off with an oil-based Epson, I think, if you're just starting out. I can't buy another printer just to make a few decals so I'm stuck.

Time for plan B!

Good Luck, Guys,
smyers

[Anonymous]

Ryan,

There are actually several rather flexible tools in word for manipulatting font sizes etc....Look in the format - font menu. You can change point size, spacing, etc to get what you want...I don't remevber sizes exactly, I just printerd out a bunch on paper and compared them to stuff on rolling stock and took it from there... I set up car and loco numbers on a page so that I would'nt have to piece together decals to get different numbers...for example you might have 411234, 411235 etc rather than a bunch of 1's, 2's 3's etc that you have to cut out and put together like many decal companies do...

The decals came out very sharp right from the word file.....

[cmrproducts]

Any printer using water based inks tends to have this problem. So trying to do your own decals is a hit or miss proposition. Very few have reported much success with the water based inks for decal printing.

The only printers that have fewer problems are the Dry-Ink (ALPS) and the oil based inks (Epson).

BOB H Clarion, PA

[SilverSpike]

Yep, I feel for you! I am still in the gathering supplies stage. So, I will keep you posted after my first attempts. I just saw a separate post on the decal topic for vendors that make custom decals..... if all else fails!

Good luck!

- Ryan

[Anonymous]

Ryan;

Man, what a heartache!! I spent hours building my lettering in Photoshop only to encounter this issue. I tried putting a sample in water just for jollies, the ink numbers evaporated into the water!! The Krylon does help the old decal paper to hold together, but the ink jet letters simply don't work. I'm doing something wrong, obviously. Maybe an experienced modeller, out there, can help us out.

Like you, I can't spend $200+ for an ALPS printer just for a half dozen decal sheets, at the most. Luckily, I do have a backup lettering plan, but I'd sure like to see this homemade inkjet decal system work!

Best Regards,
smyers

[SilverSpike]

smyers,

Oh no, not good!
I thought that stuff was supposed to make the ink set up. Good luck, I will be testing the same as soon as my product get in.

Thanks for the update!

- Ryan[:(]

[Anonymous]

Ooops;
Spraying my test shots with clear Krylon acrylic enamel, as recommended by one decal paper vendor, caused many letters to bleed and run, and had the same effect as spraying weathering chalk with a clear overcoat. The colors "thinned", becoming even more translucent, even solid black.

Oh well, back to square one.

Best,
smyers

[SilverSpike]

Hey Guy, thanks for the input. Hum, and ALPS printer deal! Good option, and I may try that as a plan B, anyone out there in the New Orleans, LA area have an ALPS printer available for decal time? And I was wondering if the decals would come out using MS Word. What font and font size do you use for HO scale lettering?

Bob, my Canon printer has the 6 color tanks as well, I have printed transparancies on it and the lighter colors also have a hard time showing up. I wonder if you can bold or increase the intensity of the lighter colors for more ink, would that work?

Thanks,

Ryan[:D]

[cmrproducts]

Ryan

The Epson printer that we are using are the C80 and the RX500. The last one has 6 color tanks but we have not had time to really get into using this machine.

Now to do white, we use the white decal paper and just print the body color around the letters. It has worked out ok but we need access to a pantone chart so we can color match the colors to the unit body color so the decals blend in better. We have the CR blue down pat!

We have made road signs, route signs, police decals, Pennzoil decals, Conrail, Pittsburgh & Shawmut RR and a lot of special industry decals for various freight cars.

The system works but I wi***here was a way to double print the color as the lighter colors (Yelloe, Orange) tend to be somewhat translucent.

BOB H Clarion, PA