White decals?


You're just egging me on. :D

I've done some research into how printer cartridges work, how people refill them, and there are a few challenges, but I'm working on getting around them. I've heard of people refilling their color cartridges with food dye. Even I think that sounds like a terrible idea, but apparently it worked.

I don't think this'll work beautifully. It may work well enough to use. I'll be very surprised and rather happy if it does. If it doesn't, well, I'm out an evening's work and a bottle of ink. I'll get over it. :)

(Also, you say the machine will never work again. The print nozzles are part of the cartridge. So, I may kill the cartridge (which for all rational intents and purposes is dead already), but the printer itself should be okay.)
 
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RW&C,

I can't speak for the Lexmark printers since I've never owned one... But if the printer is a HP, then that would be correct -- the print head is a part of the ink cartridge. In my opinion, the beauty of that is you should rarely, if ever, have problems with the print head clogging, because every time you drop in a new cartridge, you're dropping in a new print head. Many other inkjet printers have their print heads built into the print carriage itself (which should lower the cost of the ink cartridges), but that means the print head would need cleaning over time. And as I understand it, replacement print heads are not cheap...

Don't know if any of this holds true any more or not -- 10-15 years ago I was really "into" computers and kept up with all the technology. But now, I'm much more into just using the computer, and have not kept up with a lot of the changes.

Regards,
Tom Stockton
 
Tom, Lexmarks (or at least this one, which by computer standards is ancient) are the same. Apparently the print heads wear out after a few uses, if you keep refilling the cartridge. I imagine replacing a head integrated into the printer would be a real pain.

Wright, you make a very good point. For most applications that's probably the way to go.

Well, I've got all the black ink washed out of the sponge... time to source some white ink. :)
 
Josh,
I've seen that site before but don't know how the details look at HO or N scale. Has anyone used these dry transfers before?

Dave
 
Once again my simple plans have been foiled. I was all set in the next few days to print out my white decals and then you guys tell me it can be done on clear decal paper. I did a quick search and this is what I came up with

http://www.mcgpaper.com/modeldecals.html

they recommend (as did most on here) to use white decal paper and a colored back ground. What I did notice on the website was how they got the background color to match. They scanned there color onto the computer. To try this out I used an existing photo opened it in Microsoft paint. I then made a rectangular box, used the eye dropper tool to pick a color on the picture. Using the fill paint bucket tool I placed the color from the photo into the box. then typed white letter. I did not try printing it but dont' know why it wouldn't work. The key to this operation would be to get your paint color and scan it into the computer with out any shadows so you get a true color. I am going to try this soon. I will spray a large patch on white paper and run it through my scanner.

I'll keep you posted.
 
white decals

hi what you are doing will work but be careful. that type of decal can get brittle if it gets too big. plus it's hard to match the color of the car your decaling. let me know how it works out.
 
My decals will be very small the largest font on the computer will be 8 down to 2 (if it will print that small on regular paper it does). The kicker is going to be matching the color. I plan on giving it a try this weekend on regular white paper as I don't have white decal paper yet. But it will let me know if I can do it. I'll post pics with the results good or bad.
 
I'm going to through one more glitch into the mix. When printing a colored band matching the locomotive's color on to white decal paper (to create white letters), more often than not when the decal band is cut from the decal sheet you are left with a minutely thin border of white showing on each edge of the colored band. Seen face-on, this is not visible. However, viewing the decaled locomotive at an angle, the way we watch most of our locos on the layout, often will reveal the decal bordered with a white hairline that ruins the overall impression.

NYW&B
 
NYW&B said:
.... more often than not when the decal band is cut from the decal sheet you are left with a minutely thin border of white showing on each edge of the colored band.
Click to expand...

+1

The damn camera will certainly highlight the border as well!..... [See my GE44 tonner thread for examples! ;)]

I wonder if it could be eliminated by touching these borders with a black pen *before* application?

Cheers,
Ian
 
NYW&B said:
I'm going to through one more glitch into the mix. When printing a colored band matching the locomotive's color on to white decal paper (to create white letters), more often than not when the decal band is cut from the decal sheet you are left with a minutely thin border of white showing on each edge of the colored band. Seen face-on, this is not visible. However, viewing the decaled locomotive at an angle, the way we watch most of our locos on the layout, often will reveal the decal bordered with a white hairline that ruins the overall impression.

NYW&B
Click to expand...

Just got done printing white letter decals and applying them to my log flat. I printed them on white deal paper. I sprayed white paper with my car color and scaned that into my computer. I then went into MS Paint and created a box and filled it with the color from my scan. First note here there will be variation in shades, so some experiementing is needed to find the perfect shade. I saved some of these sample squares in different shades as JPEG files. I went to MS Word to create my decals because paint makes me say bad words. I created a text box and filled it using the jpeg file I created. In word you can choose to fill the text box with a color or with a picture file. IF your smart there is a way to identify the amounts of Red Blue Green and create your own color in the color palate. This seemed a waste of time but I throw it out there.

Now we can type in the text box in a white color. These were then printd out on a test piece of regular paper. Second lesson, this doesn't work. The ink soaks into the white paper and alters the color making it lighter in shade and the details of the very small lettering is lost to the soaking. I printed in size 3 font and on regular paper it is unreadable. These test prooved unuseful. I then printed on the white decal paper. The image is sharper and darker, it is a very true color as compared to what you see on the screen. It looks nothing like what was printed on the regular paper.

The directions said to use a normal setting but I did mine at the best quality. My next run I will try on normal and see if there is a difference. I actually expect better results on the lower quailty as it won't apply as much ink. But none the less at font size 3 for data info it is readable.

Once dry I sprayed the decal with a matte clearcoat. Once that dried I applied the decal. No one noticed that my decal is a tad darker than the car color. I do but thats because I'm to close to it. It looks great and I think with my next run on the other side of the car I will use a lighter background from one of the many I captured from the scan. I am using testors paper, its very thin and curls and is hard to work with.

Now as to the quote above. You can't see the white edge at all. I tried to see it , and you cant see it for nothing. I am going to do a showing off segment soon when its weatherd showing the whole process of the car build which is total custom. I will post here when its done and you can see the pics of the decal work.
 
Well here is the decal. And I have to say the picture makes the difference in color much noticable. But at any rate with the naked eye it isnt that bad. Maybe its the magnification. They really do look pretty good and one thing that made them look better was painting the body color around the edge of the decals, this helpded blend them in.

After printing white decals for the first time I would say it was a success. Custom decals printed on clear would be better but given the cost and the fact that it isn't really all that noticable I would say its worth the compromise.

hopefully weathering will help even more to blend them in.
 
hi, not bad. a little weathering will help too. this will work great for those patch paint jobs since the colors there never match anyway.
 
Nice job on those white decals.

d_sinsley said:
Well here is the decal. And I have to say the picture makes the difference in color much noticable. But at any rate with the naked eye it isnt that bad. Maybe its the magnification. They really do look pretty good and one thing that made them look better was painting the body color around the edge of the decals, this helpded blend them in.

After printing white decals for the first time I would say it was a success. Custom decals printed on clear would be better but given the cost and the fact that it isn't really all that noticable I would say its worth the compromise.

hopefully weathering will help even more to blend them in.
Click to expand...
 
That turned out pretty nice. Color matching can be a real pain the .... Also, MS Paint? Ouch. That is not a very forgiving application.

I'm wondering if I can add something to my website that lets people create these various reporting marks, labels, etc. A sort of blank canvas. Of course one of the big factors in this (and in fact, this is why I couldn't get a license to UP's fallen flags), is printer quality. If you're using bad ink, or an old printer driver, it might look great on screen and terrible on paper.
 
Great site you have there. Some interesting logos and signs. I would need the vector file for them since I print using and Alps but alot can be printed using an inkjet.

RichardAJensen said:
That turned out pretty nice. Color matching can be a real pain the .... Also, MS Paint? Ouch. That is not a very forgiving application.

I'm wondering if I can add something to my website that lets people create these various reporting marks, labels, etc. A sort of blank canvas. Of course one of the big factors in this (and in fact, this is why I couldn't get a license to UP's fallen flags), is printer quality. If you're using bad ink, or an old printer driver, it might look great on screen and terrible on paper.
Click to expand...
 
AAM197 said:
Great site you have there. Some interesting logos and signs. I would need the vector file for them since I print using and Alps but alot can be printed using an inkjet.
Click to expand...

PM me if you see any vector files you'd like. Still trying to figure out the best way of monetizing this bucket of logos I've got on my hard drive. I'm thinking about selling PDFs that are ready to print for $.99 each.
 
Sounds good but PDFs wont help me since I use Corel Draw. I dont know why but when I open a PDF with Corel, it resized the the art work in both height and length as well as spacing. You offer sounds reasonable considering what fonts and logos cost now a days.
 
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