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So I'm faced with a bit of an issue.  I'm sure many of you have experienced the need for O scale decals and the inability to get them.  I did some digging around on the net and found a old topic in the o-27 forum.  Someone mentioned making your own decals by buying the waterslide decal paper and printing them.  Has anyone here done this? If so, what were the results like?  I don't really need to reproduce a whole sheet or lettering, just some hood stripes.  I can get the rest from other decal sets.  

 

It's getting to the point now where I have the time, trains and paint resources, but no decals.  No point starting the projects if they can't be finished.  I don't mind spending 20-30 dollars a set or some of my time on a computer to get this going if that's what it comes to.  But I cannot justify the thousands it will take to procure them from the large decal shops.  

 

thanks!

 

 

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McQ,

I think generally the primary issue with printing your own decals involves the ability to print white as opposed to black or colors.  Most traditional consumer level printers don't have the capability to print white.  The old standard for "diy" decal printing was the Alps printer, which could print white shades.  However Alps is either no longer supported in the states or too expensive to maintain.

 

An alternative is to find a custom decal maker like Highball Graphics that can still print using Alps technology and therefor can still produce small quantity custom runs.  There are others out there as well like Cedarleaf Decals that deal in large scale decals.  By the way, Highball produces custom decals for Don Smith of Industrial Models.  I've only ever heard good things about both of the mentioned companies.  I'm not knocking any other manufacturer by excluding them.  It's just that these are the two that I could think of off the top of my head.

 

You can still get custom O scale decals run by Microscale, but the minimum quantity is something like 250 sets, most likely due to the increased cost of prep for screen printing.

 

If you just need striping in a color other than white, then I would say give it a try. Search around the web on the topic if you don't get a definitive answer here regarding pros and cons.  It's been covered repeatedly in forums all across the modeling spectrum.

 

Jim

I've used a color laser printer with good results absent the ability to print white.  If you are going that route then a word of caution.  The laser printers generate a lot of internal heat.  If it's too hot then the water slide material can start to melt causing lots of problems.  

 

The recommendation I was given was to turn off the laser printer and let it sit long enough that it cools off internally. Then when you are ready to hit the print button, turn on the laser printer with the slide paper already loaded.  Once the printer is booted up hit the print button.  The idea behind this method is to only print the decal paper on a cooled off printer.  

 

I've printed about a dozen sheets and never had a problem.  

 

Ed

FWIW some railroads used their own particular font.  Although close to the standard fonts they are slightly different.  if you can't find an acceptable font there is a site that offers "railroad" fonts. I don't have the link any longer but  if you google it you'll find it.

 

I also seem to remember a site that will identify a particular font you might be looking for.  This site assumes you all ready have an example of the font. It asks you about a number of the font characteristics.  I fooled with it for a while to see how accurate it was. It was spot on with the few examples I tried. Again I am sorry but I do not have the link for this one anymore either.

 

Ed

I've been doing it for several years with my Alps MD-1000.  I use laser compatible decal paper which is recommended for the Alps.  The Alps doesn't use laser tech, rather a wax tape cartridge.  The cartridges are still available, however have gone way up in price - especially the white and metallic gold ones.  I'm thankful that I bought a pile of them when they were being clearanced.  There are a couple of Alps user groups on Yahoo, which offer invaluable info on using & maintaining these (sometimes finicky) printers.  Downside?  Only one place in the world that will rebuild these if they die and it's in Japan, and very expensive.  So, I save up my jobs until I can do at least one full page.  

Could someone please provide some opinion on the use of art & craft cutting machines like the Silver Bullet Cutters to make custom decals? These machines are more functional than a Silhouette machine available at Arts & Crafts stores like Michaels but less expensive than a laser cutting machine. They cut shapes out & could be used to make stencils for decals. This post has a lot of discussion on printing white color & the limitations in doing that. I was on a tour of a diesel locomotive repair facility last Friday & I saw similar stencils at a workstation inside the building with common words like Caution, etc. So if the real railroads use these stencils to add letters & numbers to the locomotive, why couldn’t a similar approach be used to make custom decals? The locomotive stencils even had segmented shapes for characters that have an enclosed inside area like 0, 6, 8, 9, B, or P. I was in touch with a sales rep from Silver Bullet earlier this year to evaluate its use in cutting Plastruct ABS sheets for some roadside structures & stencils for pavement markings (to Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices standards). She believed that the cutting accuracy (0.025 mm) was better than the accuracy of current commercial printers that print white.

Thanks,

Naveen Rajan

Interestingly enough, you can get some older versions of Adobe products for free direct from them. Consider it an extended trial maybe, or just to see it is something you want to upgrade to newer versions and use.  Either way, go to...

https://helpx.adobe.com/creati...QK#download-products

Click "I ACCEPT"

Click "English"

And download what you want.  You MUST use the install code to the right of whatever you choose to download during install.  Illustrator Cs2 is an older version, but it will do anything you need to do as far as making decals goes. 

I’ve made decals using a laser printer but they were black. Inkjet printers didn’t do a good job of color reproduction.

I’ve sent custom artwork to Jim at Highball Graphics and received excellent decals back for very reasonable rates.

I recently created art for the Dulux lettering for Green PFE steel express reefers. Using Adobe InDesign I had to manipulate a font to get the correct letter width and kerning.

I recommend getting in touch w Highball

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