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 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
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
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
White:http://www.micromark.com/white-decal-paper-for-ink-jet-and-laser-printers-and-copiers-5-sheets,7945.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.
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
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 paper has a few differences from other decal papers. First, this paper has a special coating that locks in the inkjet printer ink. It does not need a sealant spray. Don't use one. Just let the printer ink dry for at least 30 minutes before applying your decals. This paper also prefers lighter fluid for a setting/softening solution. It sounds weird but it works and the lighter fluid is cheaper than traditional decal setting/softening solutions.
The best part of the Evan Designs decal paper is that you can make both white backgound and clear background decals from the same sheet of decal paper. The trick is in how you clear coat your model. If you clear coat your model using only acrylic based clear coats, the decal paper background will remain opaque white. However, if you want clear background decals, just apply a little vegetable oil to the decal and/or use a solvent based clear coat (such as Dull Cote) and the original white background will turn clear and remain clear permanently. Oh yeah, the white background turns clear when you wet the decal for application to the model. Don't freak out as the background will turn back to opaque white as the decal dries, although this "featrure" can make it a little hard to properly align your decal during application.
Evans Design sells five 8 1/2" by 11" sheets of their decal paper for around $20. If this sounds too high, keep in mind that you don't have to buy a sealer to keep the inks from running as required for most other decal papers. You also don't have to worry about buying both white and clear background papers as the Evans Design decal paper gives you either/both from the same sheet. Give this decal paper a try. I think you'll be pleased with your results.
Hornblower
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.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
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
BroadwayLion 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.
Don't Ever Give Up
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.
rrebellI am sure a printer could print white if there was a demand for it.
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.
BroadwayLionNow 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.
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
"There are always alternatives, Captain" - Spock.
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 did learn not to use aerosol acrylic clear spray cans as the propoellent chemicals will also turn the white background clear. I recently found myself standing in front of a store shelf full of Ronsonol lighter fluid bottles so I bought one to try per the Evans Design instructions. Although I found that Solvaset will work with this decal paper, I found that lighter fluid works even better (and you get a much larger bottle for less money than you get with the Solvaset).
No, I don't represent or work for Evan Designs. I'm just a very satisfied customer who won't buy any other brand of decal paper again.
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.
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.
Im wondering, if you cold get the lighting set correctly, if you could use a close up photo of the model itself to use as the background color? I know hardware stores have color matching spectrometers, could they give you the RGB color formula?
-E-C-Mills Im wondering, if you cold get the lighting set correctly, if you could use a close up photo of the model itself to use as the background color? I know hardware stores have color matching spectrometers, could they give you the RGB color formula?
No, sounds good, but not realistic.
rrebell I am sure a printer could print white if there was a demand for it.
It seems to me just buying white decal paper is a much cheaper solution than an expensive printer that prints white.
I tried scanning a boxcar to create the background color but between the software and the printer the color changes so you don't get an exact match. I found by using Photoshop to adjust the color through trial and error I got something that was close when I went to print it. I then cut the decal as close as I can to the lettering and the slight difference between the car body and the space between the letters is hardly noticeable.
jecorbett I tried scanning a boxcar to create the background color but between the software and the printer the color changes so you don't get an exact match. I found by using Photoshop to adjust the color through trial and error I got something that was close when I went to print it. I then cut the decal as close as I can to the lettering and the slight difference between the car body and the space between the letters is hardly noticeable.