could you do the art work for this : guess that's several layers of art work for some good results on an alps md5000
decals are getting hard to get in N scale, I have my own road name made for me by custom decal makers, and as a Sante Fe fan I'd love to see more available for that road, car info, loco decals with all the number board numbers etc.
i guess the number of custom painter is getting smaller every year. seems like there's a fast shrinking market for decals out there.
yeah, the more I read what gets posted to this tread, I can see that N scale decals is a small market,I was wanting to produce mass production sheets instead of the one off custom orders, not that I wouldn't mind drawing them, I just don't have away of printing them at home and I really don't want to go the ALPS printing again. I guess I need to think about it some more
For me I'd like to get "custom" decals for BN road numbers/numberboards. For when I paint and decal locos, sometimes its a pain to do a 4 digit number with 4 seperate numbers, esp for the numberboards. But this is one of those for me only sets, who else is gonna want to buy a sheet of random BN loco numbers
Somewhat new here... perhaps naive to these issues. What about home/office photo printers? Is the quality of available decal paper that different than commercial decals? My experience is that the available decal film is heavier than commercial slide decals. Different processes...? If ModelerX could create the graphics and save them to an online file that we could pay to download, there is no minimum orders or extra stock on shelves, etc. We just need a good (photo?) printer and better decal/slide paper... perhaps?? What is the consensus on dry transfers? Appropriate for custom modeling? I once worked with a printer who made custom dry tranfers. Individual sets at a reasonable cost. Must be someone able to do this still... -Steve
There are some limits to printing decals at home. Here are some of the problems 1. They do not print the color white, which is a problem since most car markings and data marking are white. 2. The inks used in your home printer are translucent which means if you need a lighter color on say a black locomotive, your out of luck, it will disappear against the background colors. 3 The inks are not water proof. You can get around that by spraying a clear coat over the printed decals. 4. you really can't layer your colors,Say you where doing a Seaboard Coast line locomotive, They where black with gold pin stripping. You would need to be able to put white under the gold so it would show up on the black, but once again you would need white and the ability to to lay the yellow over it, can't do that with your everyday HP printer There are several good places to buy decal paper in clear and white but you have to remember that your working with a 8.5 x 11 sheet of decal carrier film. Now before any one mentions the ALPS printer which can print white and do it in layers which is what one would need to print good decals at home. I have had 4 of them and they really are not good for mass printing. One big thing is that since its not in production anymore your going to end up paying Ebay prices which I when I last look was about 600.00 for the printer. Also the cartriges are out of production, so if you can find the your ending up paying a pretty high price for them which doesn't make it a feasible operation. Now as for Dry Transfers, I have never worked with them,so I can not comment on how they are made or how to make them at home Vince
I guess I am thinking of these photo printers that print with "thermal dyes" versus an inkjet. You still can't print white (I think) Has anyone tried using decal paper with the thermal photo printer? Is it even possible being that decal paper is subject to the "thermal" aspect of these printers...?? Just trying to think out of the box. I almost bought a "dye-sublimation" printer from Canon but I can not find any reference to using decal paper in these. -Steve
