Printers and Decals - ALPS Out Of Production Still The Only Option?

ALPS are still available on the used market. Check on E-Bay. When I picked one up a few years ago I presumed it would be broken ... it was. ALPS refurbished that MD1300 into an MD5000 for $250. Check and see if that is still available.

Paul^H^H^H^H Steve the Other

-- The lotto must be rigged, I should have won by now. Modular furniture is cruel and unusual.

Reply to
Steve Stevenson
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Repair program has been discontinued.

Reply to
Howard R Garner

I was referring to Dan's question about trimming around white decal paper. I'd love to get ahold of an Alps in good condition it it weren't for the chance they might soon be totally orphaned.

Silk screening decals - as a way to get white lettering on clear decal film.

No, just white lettering for application to gray or tuscan or black backgrounds.

Reply to
Steve Caple

A little weathering should disquise that?

Paul^H^H^H^H Steve the Other

-- The lotto must be rigged, I should have won by now. Modular furniture is cruel and unusual.

Reply to
Steve Stevenson

That's too bad. Guess they are running out of spare parts??

Paul^H^H^H^H Steve the Other

-- The lotto must be rigged, I should have won by now. Modular furniture is cruel and unusual.

Reply to
Steve Stevenson

Steve Caple spake thus:

I'm pretty sure silkscreen has far too low a resolution to be useful for small-scale (HO, certainly N) decals. The resolution is limited by the fineness of the screen, which isn't sufficient for such small work.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

How do model manufacturers generate the pad printing screens/whatever that they use to apply car data and other small lettering?

-- Steve

Reply to
Steve Caple

Steve Caple spake thus:

Pad printing isn't screen printing: as the name implies, it uses rubber pads to print, just like an ordinary rubber stamp. These have much higher resolution than silkscreens do. I imagine they're not unlike the photopolymer plates I used to make for letterpress printing, which have extremely fine resolution, probably equal to or better than 300 dpi in computer terms. These can be made from digitally-generated film (that's what we did in the last shop I worked in), ordinary camera-generated film, or there may even be a direct digital process to make them.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Or the guy who was doing the work retired too. That's what happened to a lot of the electronics we had at work. The last guy that was familiar with them retired and the company would not accept them for repair anymore.

Reply to
Robert B

Thanks to everyone for a _lot_ of good information. I'm going to try to get a working MD printer to due the relatively small amount of decal roadnames I want to due. And make a lot of copies.

And d__n! I wished I'd bought all my Southern Rwy and a few other lines' passenger car decals back when Walthers was thick with them during the 80's. They had a rather large catalog of just decals.

Thanks again everyone

Reply to
Robert B

microscale doesn't have anything for you?

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Reply to
Steve Stevenson

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