Making decals

[Glorfindel]

Okay the three P's.
1. Program
2. Paper
3. Printer

1.What program would best be used to create your own decals that would include scaling abilities, i.e. rulers in metric to more accurately increase or decrease the size of the decal.
2. What brand of decal paper, white or clear.
3. What is the best type printer, Ink Jet or Laser Jet? Iv'e heard Ink Jet prints best.
Suggestions on all would be greatly appreciated.

[DaveVan]

I've been in the decal biz since the early 1980's and made them for myself before that.
1. Any vector program is good. I use CorelDraw X5(15) Corel is not cheap...either is AI. There are free programs out there.....but never used them so can't recommend.

2. The BIG issue today. There is a legal fight going on over decal paper. A process that has been around for over a 100 years was patented recently by a person as their invention. This person has threatened to sue many folks that sold decal paper. So the decal paper sellers in the USA have gone out of business. My company is on hold while I find a supplier. I tried a few but NONE are as good as the companies I bought from for 25 years that are gone now. All I can say is check ebay and Amazon and try there.....but I have no paper I'd recommend right now.

3. Laser printer is by far the best printer unless you want to spend the bucks for a good working ALPS. There is a laser that will print white but if you do not need to print white any good laser will do. I used OKI for years but it will not work with the decal paper I can get now......sorry to be vague but the home decal process right now is a mess........not the best time to dive in.

If I can answer something else I'll try. Thanks

[aussie cylon]

A process that has been around for over a 100 years was patented recently by a person as their invention.

How is that even possible?? What a crazy world we live in.....

[DaveVan]

How is that even possible?? What a crazy world we live in.....

If I didn't have a life I'd spend the time needed to challenge it........but life is to short. It's one of those things that has fallen between the cracks and the legal system is being abused by someone with enough cash to get things pushed through.

[Kylwell]

How is that even possible?? What a crazy world we live in.....

If I didn't have a life I'd spend the time needed to challenge it........but life is to short. It's one of those things that has fallen between the cracks and the legal system is being abused by someone with enough cash to get things pushed through.

Do you mean the Chartpak pantent on inkjet decal paper from 2001? That expires next year? That only covers a single make of inkjet paper? And no, the process for the paper hasn't been around for a 100 years.

[DaveVan]

Inkjet materials do not affect my biz...IMHO they are of a lesser quality for commercial use.
Google BEL DECAL PAPER and it should bring up all the info you may want. BEL was my supplier for 25+ years.

[Glorfindel]

Simple question. Why is Laserjet better than Inkjet?
In a recent live show on Flory Models Phil says the opposite. In this aspect of my question I'd be interested in the reasons why by comparison. His mentioning this is the inspiration for my curiosity. I wanted the take on this topic from members here who do make their own decals.

[DaveVan]

Inkjet ink is made to dye white paper and are very opaque. The ink has little to no substance. They also tend to be a bit fuzzy on the edges when printed on inkjet decal paper.

GOOD laser ink has a small amount of metal in it and is not a dye but rather has some material substance to it. A laser applys a layer of ink rather than just dye the paper.

My decals a re all designed, printed and packaged in my office at home (also known as the dining room) I sell to support making the decals for myself.......some decals I have produced I have sold less than 10 copies.....well within a 'home' printer range.
Thanks

[Zubie]

Periodically in these types of threads (decal paper) I hear mention of DIY rub down transfers. Invariably though, the materials seem to not have wide distribution or are generally marketed to other hobby markets such as scrap booking as opposed to modeling so they don't readily come up as a custom decal method for miniatures. Does anybody know or use that kind of material? I know it does involve getting the graphics mirrored before printing.

The only time I used them was on the original Refit-E release and I recall the tricky aspect of having to get the position right the first time as they could not be re-positioned in-situ. On the plus side, there was no accidental re-positioning while blotting. I do seem to recall a certain amount of silvering if the surface wasn't particularly smooth - which in my case was because of an amateurish attempt at "aztecking". I wish I could find the remains of my "smoothie" refit now

[DaveVan]

Home made rub on transfer have some benefits.....but for me too many negative. A logo with just 5 colors becomes a nightmare to make. You need a heat laminatior too. Single color logo or words work well. and you can rub them on clear decal paper so they work like a waterslide and can be moved around. Pretty costly too.....IMHO only!

[naoto]

We have a colour laser printer at the office. The cyan, magenta, yellow, and black toner cartridges are anywhere between $80 to $120 *each* (price depends on the colour).

[Kylwell]

Inkjet materials do not affect my biz...IMHO they are of a lesser quality for commercial use.
Google BEL DECAL PAPER and it should bring up all the info you may want. BEL was my supplier for 25+ years.

Wow what a bitch. One, she patented a process which uses off the shelf equipment & supplies, that uses processes that have been around for decades, including the transfer of toner to other sub-straits, and because she was allowed to sneak in using waterslide process she's suing everybody. Hoa V L needs his head examined for allowing this.

[DaveVan]

YEP!!!

[jpolacchi]

I have a similar issue coming up.I have a 1/4 scale resin figure and the character is covered in tattoos.However,as expensive as the kit was,no decals come with it.I'm not sure how to go about finding the correct tattoo images,printing and scaling them correctly let alone having them "made".

[trekkist]

I'm planning on making (not for sale) a custom name for the THANK YOU GREAT GODS OF THE COSMOS Galileo kit: hand drawn, scanned as a png file, reduced after copying into MS Word (I'm a...image manipulator of minimal technical skills).

In re: the "fuzziness" of inkjet printed waterslide decals, is this apt to be an issue in a red image of that size? Any suggestions for the "best" currently-sold decal "paper"?

[Kylwell]

I highly recommend Papilio decal paper.

As for the "fuzzyness" it's usually a result of using raster images instead of vector images.

[naoto]

One thing to keep in mind is that the DPI (dots-per-inch) of your video monitor is likely to be much lower than what you'd have on a printer. At the low end of the scale for a printer might be 300dpi (more recent printers should would be capable of 1200dpi). Back when CRTs were common on microcomputers, typical CRT would have DPI somewhere between 70 ~ 120 dpi (which would be comparable to if not slightly better than a dot-matrix impact printer).
If I use my no-name generic IBM-PC clone from the early 1990s as an example. If we assume that the display area measured 15" diagonally, then this works out to 12" x 9" (1). Typically I'd be using video resolution of 1024x768. This works out to dpi of around 85.3. If I print an image that filled the screen (i.e. 1024x768) on a printer that was capable of 300dpi, the printout would measure 3.4" x 2.56". A more modern printer capable of 1200 dpi would result in a printout sized about 0.85" x 0.64 (close to the size of a postage stamp).

(1) I'm using diagonal measurement of display area for the sake of simplicity. The size stated for CRTs was the size of the picture tube itself -- with the actual display area being somewhat smaller than the picture tube (typically 1" ~ 2" smaller than the picture tube size). LCD measurements are typically closer to the display area. A "rule-of-thumb" comparison between CRT and LCD would be that with the same stated diagonal size, the LCD would be equivalent to a CRT of the next size up. for example, a 15" LCD gives you a picture that's equivalent to 17" CRT.

[naoto]

One thing that's a good idea to always have on your artwork -- a refence scale (e.g. a 1"x1" rectangle) so that you can make sure that things aren't getting distorted or resized. Frequently you might find that a scanned image imported into your drawing program may not print out the same size as the original image you scanned. Each conversion step could introduce its own rescaling change (e.g. you save the drawing to a PDF file so that our image can be printed without the drawing program you used to create it)

[TazMan2000]

Colours don't reproduce accurately as well since monitors are RGB and basic laser and inkjet are CMYK.

TazMan2000

[naoto]

Colours don't reproduce accurately as well since monitors are RGB and basic laser and inkjet are CMYK.

TazMan2000

In other words -- difference between additive (light) vs subtractive (ink/pigment).

Interesting YouTube video show fun stuff about RGB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYbdx4I7STg

[TazMan2000]

Colours don't reproduce accurately as well since monitors are RGB and basic laser and inkjet are CMYK.

TazMan2000

In other words -- difference between additive (light) vs subtractive (ink/pigment).

Interesting YouTube video show fun stuff about RGB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYbdx4I7STg

Exactly.

LCD monitors and televisions are inherently terrible for displaying true colour, but if you see 2 televisions side by side, one colour calibrated and the other not, you will always choose the screen with the most vivid colours, even though it won't be realistic. Manufacturers know the colour is a great tool, so the demo videos that are run on the TVs are custom designed to stimulate that part of your brain.

So, right off the bat, you are dealing with a non-calibrated monitor. Then you expect the printer driver to convert whatever you see on screen to the exact hue and chroma on the medium.

Generally, for decals, this doesn't matter a whole lot, if you are just doing simple markings.

TazMan2000

[naoto]

another interesting video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqaobr6w6_I

[zaphod]

What a great discussion

Here in the year 2023, Papilio decal paper is still available. I am also seeing Hayes advertised a lot.

Any other brand updates or recommendations?