On 7/15/2010 1:14 PM Barb/Bob Alexander spake thus:
I have no personal experience with making my own decals. but I can tell
you definitively that the best printer for this job would have to be the
old Alps printers. Why? Because, among other things, they could print
white (and silver) as well as colors, so you could make decals that
weren't possible with non-white-printing printers (unless you could get
ahold of white decal stock).
These printers used to be available on eBay; anyone know if they still
are (plus supplies for them)?
--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.
On Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:14:07 -0700, David Nebenzahl wrote:
While Alps (or a few of its kin) are the only way to print white decals,
using an Alps to print colors other than those available is a labor
intensive process of multiple overlays.
Why? Because dithering on a dry ink printer works poorly. There's no
spreading of the inks and thus no overlap. Inkjets and lasers deposit
wet inks that do merge, making the individual dots invisible or at least
a lot less visible.
I have an Alps and an inkjet and have come to the conclusion that the
Alps will be used only for white decals. And if I could find a steady
source of white dry transfer lettering in a variety of fonts, I might get
rid of the Alps altogether.
Just my opinion - YMMV.
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
Retired, over a year ago. Business defunct.
Several people were interested in taking over the business but his demands
ware too much.
Get 'em while you can.
On Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:00:38 +0000 (UTC), Larry Blanchard
It sounds like there is an opportunity for an after-market entrepeneur
to supply white cartridges for some of the popular printers.
He only needs to do it for one model, and the original manufacturer
would sell a heck of them to railroad and other modellers.
Probably because it wouldn't work, or at least would not work well, with
inkjet printers. The Alps printers were not ink jet, but solid-ink (dye
sublimation) printers, like the Tektronix ones still made today, that
deposit a wax-based ink on the paper. It would be *extremely* difficult
to formulate a white inkjet ink that would be thick enough to cover
while still not clogging the ink jets.
--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.
[...]I have an Alps and an inkjet and have come to the conclusion that the
Sounds like a good idea until you mull over the technical and economic
problems.
Whether for inkjets or lasers, printing opaque white is tricky. White
pigments opaque enough to be useful are oxides (eg, titanium oxide),
AFAIK, the rest are metal salts. Both are abrasive, and the salts are
chemically quite reactive. Developing a white ink cartridge is not
impossible technically, but would be expensive. IIRC, the Alps printer
uses a wax, which simply couldn't be used in an inkjet, but a variation
might work in a Xerox laser (which uses a wax-based toner.)
How many is a heck of a lot? What would you pay for a white ink
cartridge? $15? $25? $50? At $15, about the same as a colour cartridge,
and sales of 100,000 per year, the retail gross would $1.5M, the mfr's
would be about half that, net would be about 10% of that, or around
$75K. Sounds like a lot, but suppose it cost you $500K (a low ball
figure IMO) to develop that cartridge: it will take you about 8 years,
not counting interest, before to recover your investment.
Are there sales for 100,000 or more white ink cartridges? I don't know,
but there are certainly nowhere near that many sales to model
railroaders. Fact is, the market for opaque white ink isn't large even
in the printing trade.
cheers,
wolf k.
Ackshooly, you're a *little* bit confused between laser and dye-sub
printing technologies. Close, but not quite.
Laser printers (and most current copy machines) use dry toner which is
not wax-based, but usually made of some type of fusible plastic
particles, typically styrene, mixed with pigments (carbon black for
black, other stuff for different colors). The printer or copier deposits
the dry toner on the image areas of the copy/print electrostatically
(the paper and toner are given opposite electrical charges at high
potential, so the toner sticks to the paper), after which a fuser
(basically just a hot roller) actually melts the toner onto the paper.
This is why you need special decal paper for laser printers, because of
the heat.
Dye-sub printers use a different method; they use solid ink, in the form
of wax bars, which are actually vaporized by the printhead, hence the
"sublimation" part (the ink goes directly from solid to vapor form,
without turning to liquid in between), whence it is sprayed onto the
paper. When it cools back to solid, it adheres to the paper. It's almost
like using a crayon and a blowtorch to create an image on paper.
These printers are variously called "phase-change" (hence the "Phaser"
trade name), dye-sublimation or dye-sub, or "solid ink" printers.
I actually have one here, a Tektronix Phaser, which anyone in the area
(S.F. Bay Area) can have if they want it. It's *huge* and works,
although it needs a little attention (plus replacement ink cartridges).
I've used it to make model RR signs, which are much, much better than
inkjet since they don't run or smear, plus they're much more resistant
to fading. Print resolution is 300 DPI, I think.
--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.
Xerox calls their solid toner a wax. Maybe so's not to confuse potential
customers with technical details.
[...]
'ta for the technical details. ;-)
wolf k.
Well, it's on Craigslist now (in the free section); someone gave it to
me, and it's clear it's in the "I'm probably never going to use it"
category, so it's time to pass it on.
If someone here wants it, they can have it (must pick it up).
--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.
I would also like to know. The Alps thing was so far back, the odds of
getting a workable solution using one - if you can find one - might make it
not worth the effort.
Also, how about dry transfers?
I've had good luck using an off-the-shelf HP Photosmart C6180 for
decal printing. I've yet to find a really good decal paper, but stay
away from the stuff sold by Micro-Mark. Bad product.
The film is so heavy that the edges of the decal remain obvious unless
you do some serious camouflage work, it absolutely refuses to snuggle
down into depressions for the same reason, and it also tends to
"silver" a lot.
~Pete
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