Making your own decals?

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

Great tip Ed,

I've had image deformation following the decal medium package instructions, now I know why, makes perfect sense.

Pete

Google Jerry Glow and you'll find his website where you can see what he offers.  If he doesn't have what you need email him and see if he'll make them.  He doesn't require you buy a large batch.  I had him make a number of sets for some of my Seaboard Air Line PS1 cars and a couple of specialty cars I built.

Very good info.  Looks like I might have to see if there is a laser printer at work that is up for end of life.  I'm pretty sure I could draw up what I need on the computer.  I have a microscale set here that I can measure/compare with.  

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.  

I printed my own Mopac cab and number board decals using ink-jet water transfer decal paper.  The trick for the white was to first lay down a white trim film decal under the cab decal so the white would show through.

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

I made all these myself. I have covered the subject in depth in other posts.....mostly 3r forum. Biggest hurdle is GOOD ART. After that not as hard as you think. Search my ID and decal for more info and how to.

You get the idea.......