Hello all. Question. I just invested in a "high fallootin', mega powered computer w/ a color INK JET printer. Now that I have the graphic power on my computer, and a color printer, I wanted to ask. WHAT experience have any of you out there had w/ fabricating your own decals?????? I am in the process of building industrial flats for my HO railroad. I have a major city (Albemarle City) that will feature some rather large buildings begging for large decals of industrial advertisements. I have collected many magazines from antique stores, circa 1940's that fit my layout. I intend on scanning some ads from these puppies and turning them into decals for building flats. Any advise? Experience? Bad idea on my part? Good idea? Comments? Criticism? Suggestions? [ 24 February 2002, 01:29: Message edited by: Kitbash ]
You're going to have to be real careful if you use an ink jet printer to make decals. All of the inks that I am aware of are water-soluble, meaning they will more than likely run when you get them wet. Micro Mark claims to have a spray fixative that will eliminate the problem, but I don't have any experience with it. I tried making some decals on a laser printer with not so good results, too. I wanted a shade of yellow, but the toner was too transparent and the dark background of the car I was lettering made the decal essentially disappear. If you are making signs for buildings, you might want to print them on regular paper rather than decal stock.
Isn't there a spray similar to artist's fixative that you coat the inked lettering that makes it water proof? I think that was mentioned in one of the articles in Railroad Model Craftsman several years ago.
I used to live with a digital graphic printer hand had him print some decals for me on both clear and white decal film on a $35,000 color laser copier. The color dyes wern't opaque enough on clear paper to be useful, though the ones on white paper were okay. The problem I ran into was that the ink tended to pull away from the edge when they were cut. My advice, for what it's worth, is to get everything designed and contract out the actual printing, I wouldn't even try doing them on an inkjet unless it was just for the expierience. the other probelm with inkjet decals is that the film is not permeable so the ink has nothing to bond to. It just kind of sits on the surface of the film. If I were doing decals I would find someone with an ALPS printer to do them. I have some decals for the CP beaver scheme that were done on an ALPS and they are beautiful shaded metallic colors. Look in the back of MR and I'm sure you can find someone to do some for you.
