Adventures in trying to make waterslide transfers

[Corbs]

Getting started in waterslide transfer printing

 

The ability to make custom transfers affordably is great for modellers. I’ve long wanted to get started doing it, so I thought I would chart my progress, the trials and tribulations of how I got on, the mistakes I made, appeals for help etc. etc.

 

There’s not a great deal about this online as it’s quite a niche subject, but we are very lucky in that there have been a small number of people who have published their findings and advice. I’ll try and link to them as I go.

 

I want to be completely honest about this, as I have made several mistakes.

 

I think that one of them has been not asking for help/advice when I should have, I feel strange about asking sometimes because it feels a bit like ‘hey could you give me some tips on how to set up a rival business please?’ even though so many of the helpful articles are from people who run businesses, so maybe that’s my own hang-up.

 

 

The Aim

 

Eventually I want to be able to make transfers like Fox do. That is, high quality, high definition transfers in a multitude of colours, with the backing film almost the same size as the transfer itself.

 

I don't think the cutting out bit is easy to do, so I'm willing to compromise on having to cut out the transfers myself

 

I want to be able to do custom designs for people, and make transfers to supply with our own kits or via the website.

 

The Challenge

 

It might not immediately be obvious but the biggest challenge is white ink. Home and office printers are generally set up to print on white paper. This means that they don’t need to worry about the base layer because it’s already white.

 

In the past, to print white you generally had to buy several hundred pounds worth of ALPS printer (made in Japan). ALPS stopped selling their printers for export over 10-15 years ago, so there was a gap in the market.

A company called OKI has stepped in to fill the gap somewhat.

 

If you are printing at home, it is possible to buy Ghost Toner. This is a white cartridge which replaces the black in your machine, so if you convert your image to black and then print, it’ll come out white.

I’ve had a couple of things printed using this method. The issue, as I understand it, is that for colour, you need to print out a sheet of your transfers in white, and then a sheet in colour, and lay the colour over the white on the model (the white transfer does the job of the paper in a normal printer).

This is fine for some things but isn’t really what I wanted.

 

You can, of course, get your designs printed for you. In fact, Railway Mania’s first transfer sheet, for Imperial Smelting Corporation No.2, was designed and printed by the talented James Hilton of Narrow Planet/Planet Industrials fame. The definition and colour on this is fantastic.

 

 

 

Some other companies will print your designs for you. I’ve been quoted between £30-60 for an A4 sheet of transfers.

Again, this is a great service for individual modellers, but no good for starting a business with as the price I’d have to charge would be way too much just for providing a design and the sales facility as I’d have to be able to pay the middleman.

The other problem is it’s no good for prototyping and experimentation due to the lead time of getting them done, and the margin for error.

 

The OKI

 

After reading up and doing research, it sounded like I needed an OKI printer. I had the money saved up to buy one, but which one?

In hindsight, what I did was possibly a blunder, but I’m not sure yet. I didn’t want to cane a load of cash on something which turned out to not be what I wanted.

I ended up settling on the C711WT. This is no longer in production from OKI, but is available second hand.

 

I bought mine for about £1300 on eBay from a company in Northern Ireland. The original supplier of the OKI is The Magic Touch, who also make a piece of software called SpaceControl. The software costs in the region of £300 to buy and only works over USB on a PC (not Mac-compatible).

I do all my design work on a Mac but do happen to have a cobbled-together PC in the living room that I can run the software on.

When The Magic Touch sell a printer, they hand-deliver it and install the software for you, every printer has a unique serial number and the SpaceControl licence is linked directly to that machine. Luckily for me, the printer came with SpaceControl, AND more importantly, plenty of ink.

For reference, an ink refill on one of these machines is in the region of £700.

 

From my rough cost estimates, every sheet of A4 I print is in the region of £1.40 just for the ink and the paper.

 

 

 

 

Printer Set-Up

 

These printers are mainly used for T-shirts. Unlike waterslide transfers, T-shirt prints are often printed face down and mirrored, then transferred onto the T-shirt with a heat press.

 

This means that by default, everything prints back to front, but more importantly, the print order goes colour-colour-colour-WHITE, laying the white on top.

When the image is transferred onto the T-shirt, the white backing ends up on the bottom and the image is now the right way around.

 

With waterslide transfers, you can either live with this and accept that you will need to place the transfer paper face-down and slide the backing off the decal rather than the decal off the backing, or use the SpaceControl software to override the OKI defaults and print WHITE-colour-colour-colour.

 

Of course if all you are printing is white, then this isn't an issue, so that's what I started with.

 

Initial Tests

 

I got the OKI C711WT set up in my room and connected to my Mac. I had not installed the SpaceControl software on the PC yet.

 

After some experimentation and a steep learning curve, I was able to print solid white transfers in the definition and quality I wanted.

These are the ones currently available on the store, I’m very pleased with them, BUT they could easily have been done with Ghost Toner so in a way they are nothing special.

 

 

 

 

Mixing Colour

 

Now we come to the worst and most hardest part. This is something I had not fully understood.

 

When printers such as my C711WT mix a colour, they do it using dithering.

If you look at an image in a newspaper close-up, you see that the blended colours are created by tiny dots of different solid colours, mixed in a sort of grid, so that at normal viewing distances it looks like the right colour.

This does not work on models, because the gaps between the dots are such that for something like this, where the red should appear as a solid shape below the white lettering….

 

… appears like this, as a bunch of dots, because the dithering interval is so big compared to the size of the transfer.

 

 

Similarly this NCB NW Division Emblem comes out like tartan on the model, and it looks like the white is sticking out one side.

 

On the other hand, printing solid white is absolutely spot-on and really crisp, it’s the colours where it all falls apart.

 

Apparently, the solution to this is to print the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and White separately, in semi-opaque layers, adding different amounts to mix the colour on the sheet rather than in the printer components.

This process is called Spot Printing.

 

Here are two articles on the subject that help explain the process:

 

http://www.precisionlabels.com/colours.html?new

 

https://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/decals01.htm

 

 

Dreams Crushed?

 

This is the bit I still don’t fully understand, and possibly where the dream unravels.

 

I get the nagging feeling that this is not possible with the C711WT. Originally I was under the impression that the SpaceControl RIP software supplied by The Magic Touch would enable the colour layers to be split apart, but speaking to the support team today, they didn’t seem to know what spot printing was. It’s possible that this is only something available to high-end ALPS/OKI printers (which may be discontinued now).

 

I cannot find any reference to how you put the printer into spot-printing mode, and how you get the printer to do multiple passes. For example, does the printer reverse the paper itself and print again in the same ‘session’? Surely it would not rely on the user feeding the paper back in? I cannot see how the printer would print in exactly the same place each time.

 

I’m going to tentatively contact some people and ask for advice.

 

If I’m totally honest I feel dejected and like a bit of a failure, having been foolish enough to think that the barrier to entry was ‘only’ a few thousand pounds and a bit of understanding of software and design programs.

 

If it all becomes too expensive, I’ll probably do a few designs, print lots of copies, sell the printer and call it a day. We shall see!

 

Advice and input is welcome as always....

Edited October 2, 2020 by Corbs

[simonmcp]

Hi Corbs,

 

Just a quick note before I start work.

 

I have worked in Print since 1982. My college specialism was Typography (lettering).

 

If you want to print Just 4 "spot" colours then you can but with the following reservations:- you will only be able to print the colours of the toners in the machine. So if you swap the black for the white, and your printer has separate colour toners, then you can print solid White, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Red should be 100%, 100% - that is solid Yellow and Magenta so no need for 'dots' usually referred to as "dots per inch", not to be confused with "lines per inch" which is the resolution of the printer. You could also print solid Yellow, Magenta or Cyan. If you have Abode programs they will let you print Spot Colours and hopefully override your printer software. IF you could get special colours of toner made you could also print that colour but you will always be limited to a maximum of 4 colours in one pass and as you say the printer does not have the ability to print in exact 'register' if you reload the paper.

 

Fox Transfers use "Screen printing" and some of their transfers are around 12 separate colours, there is an article where they interviewed Fox Transfers in one of the fairly early Model Railway Journal's 125, or there about, which explains the process better.

 

Feel free to ask any questions and I will try my best to answer.

 

Simon

[simonmcp]

Hi Corns,

 

I have found the article where they interviewed Fox Transfers it's in Model Railway Journal 140 and it explains the process very well. It is 6 pages long. 

 

The 12 colour one is a full sized Caledonian Railway crest.

 

I seem to recall that Alps also did a dye sublimation printer that used a waxy type of ink but that was a while back.

 

The other thing you're up against is that even if you use a Vector illustration package, most if not all photo manipulation software is also raster/bitmap and so subject to jagged edges, to draw your transfers the print file generated for the printer will usually be a raster or bitmap/pixelated file, which will give you jagged edges. Some printers can handle postscript files, PS for short but not to be confused with Photoshop PS files, but you would have to dig deep into the settings to find out. This is also why it makes a difference how high the resolution of the printer is. Magazines etc in the UK are printed to 2500 LINES per inch- the output of the laser imagesetter or now more likely digital plate maker, not dots per inch as usually misquoted (newspapers used to be 80 or 100 dots per inch, easily seen on the pictures with a cheap loupe) and magazine images are usually at 300 dots per inch or sometimes 400 for high quality ones.

 

As you're probably gathering it is a minefield of conflicting terms so if any of the above is confusing just ask, I have probably gotten so used to in-house terms that I don't realise which terms need explaining further.

 

Simon

[Corbs]

Hello Simon,

 

Thank you very much for the detailed responses, it is very helpful and I am slowly making progress with the jargon

 

On the back of your first post, I've found this guide for converting a design to swatched layers for spot colour printing, but unfortunately this seems to be only part of the process.

https://www.practicalecommerce.com/How-to-Create-Color-Separations-in-Adobe-Illustrator#:~:text=Your spot colors should be,will output an Adobe PDF.

 

I've been on and off the phone to TheMagicTouch over the past couple of days, they flat out stated that the OKI C711WT will not do spot colour printing, only dithering, how true this is I do not know, but I'm yet to find anyone that can do it.

 

So far my findings have pointed to if you want to make high-quality colour waterslide transfers for models, do NOT buy a C711WT laser printer. They seem to be great for T-Shirts, Mugs etc. but for the fidelity we require they don't seem to be able to do anything but dither colours.

 

I've used TheMagicTouch software on the PC and so far it's not given much advantage over printing directly from Illustrator. It's supposed to be able to enable the transfers to print face-up, but you still get dither and it comes with a load of issues of understanding what should and what shouldn't be white.

 

Annoyingly I have a fault with the printer which will affect if I can sell it (the printer) - all the colours print with this streaking effect (white is not affected). I am speaking to TheMagicTouch about what this might be, and I may take the matter up with the people who sold it to me.

 

 

To me it looks like something is damaged.

 

Here are a few more examples of stuff I've been experimenting with.

 

H&P wagon decals - if printed solid white these are excellent, but add the black shadow and the edge goes jagged (presumably due to dithered colour).

 

A lining and decal set for the Somerdale Sentinel - note I have reverted here to printing the decals face-down as I cannot get a good colour result 'right side up'. What happens if I try that is the decal comes out nearly completely see-through due to a lack of white.

 

 

I slapped one on a Peckett body to see what it might look like. It's ok-ish from a distance but you can see the white is not registering with the gold (they are slightly offset) and the dither pattern in the gold itself.

 

 

 

Regarding vectors vs. rasterised edges - this is something I've been wondering too. All the lining and lettering I've been getting good results from has been designed and printed from illustrator, as I understand it the printer handles PostScript ok.

However, to use TMT's software one needs to export as a 300dpi PNG file, which seems like a backwards step to me.

 

Here's my current thinking on the C711WT.

I want to get rid of it, it's an expensive millstone and if it doesn't do what I want, it needs to go. My main issue is this streaking effect, I can't sell it for what I paid in good conscience, and I don't want to take a massive hit on the cost.

 

If it's broken, and will require expensive repair in order to print colour

1 - request refund/return from the seller

2a - if I can get this, print off any remaining white sheets I want and send it back

2b - if not, keep the printer, use it to print only white sheets and try to make some money back from white-only prints until the ink runs out, then sell it for a reduced price

 

If it's broken but can be fixed easily
1 - fix it

2 - print a load of white-only sheets

3 - sell it ASAP for near enough what I paid

 

I'll write about the next phase in another post once I make some headway.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Corbs

[Corbs]

Also - here's a top tip for anyone creating graphics in Adobe programs for OKI laser printers.

 

Some of this may be wrong so feel free to correct me, but as I understand it....

 

Photoshop and Illustrator treat transparency differently.

 

Photoshop has a screen 'full' of transparent pixels as it's a bitmap-based program.

 

Illustrator just has blank 'space'.

 

This is important because if you send a file from photoshop to the printer, it will read the transparent pixels as 'white' and lay down an entire sheet of white ink, a massive waste of a valuable commodity.

Here's an example of a big white rectangle, these decals are useless.

 

 

Files created in Illustrator don't have this issue, but photoshop files imported into Illustrator WILL have the same problem.

 

So if you are working with Adobe software, ALWAYS use Illustrator if you can.

 

Sometimes this is unavoidable, though. So to get Photoshop to print without the white area, here's what you need to do.

 

1. Save your photoshop document as a copy

 

2. Flatten the image so there is only 1 layer

 

3. In the LAYERS window, cmd+click (mac) or ctrl+click the thumbnail of the only remaining layer. This will select the outline of the layer.

 

4. Open the PATHS tab and its menu by clicking the three horizontal lines, then select 'Make Work Path'

 

 

5. A pop up window appears, set the Tolerance to 0.5 pixels and click OK. The Work Path will appear in the Paths window.

 

6. Open the menu again and click 'Save Path' - then name the path.

 

 

7. Open the menu AGAIN and select 'Clipping Path', then set Flatness to 0.2 device pixels

 

8. SAVE THE PHOTOSHOP FILE and open Illustrator, new document using an A4 template or whatever

 

9. Import the Photoshop file using 'place' into illustrator, slap it down, now you can print it. The white rectangle should no longer appear.

 

[simonmcp]

Excellent tutorial there Corbs.  The 'trick' I used to check if the clear was really blank was a background colour on the base layer and therefore it was possible to see any stray 'white'.

 

I think the fault is a dodgy drum on the printer, is normally a consumable but if you only just bought it they should replace it for free.

 

Sounds like the TMT software is a waste of time. It is possible to set up illustrator to do reverse prints, not in front of it at the moment but think it's under image flip horizontal - don't do both vertical and horizontal as you will be back to 'normal' don't ask how I know.

 

Simon

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

With regard to the ability to only do white transfers, I for one, and I suspect a few other people too, would very interested in this aspect of non carrier film transfers for British Rail wagons and coaches, for the blue/blue grey era there is hardly any other colour of lettering, in fact I can think of a requirement currently on my workbench, that of GUV's.

 

Mike.

[Izzy]

I believe dithering is the basic way most digital printers work. I am not quite sure about such as the alps etc never having used one. It revolves around the way tonal images are produced and is generally known as half-tone. Normally the size of the ‘dots’ varies according to the screen size used in normal plate printing (dpi) but with such as digital printers this can be varied a bit, but is still composed of dots/dithering. As has been said such as newspapers use low dpi for the speed the presses have to run at, to produce the quantity of print in the timespan, while high quality CYMK 4-colour press work, magazines upwards etc, use higher dpi at much slower printing rates. These presses can of course use both half-tone and block printing plates depending on needs. The quality of the paper material used also has a bearing on the final outcome as does the inks and so forth.

 

For what is needed with transfers block printing is required, solid blocks of colour rather than half-tone. This is why most transfers are produced using (silk) screen printing. This gives much deeper/bolder colours/tones with clear definition between them at very high quality, especially needed for the smaller sizes.

 

The only way to get anywhere near this with ordinary digital printers is to use very high image file dpi, say 1200dpi upwards, combined with a high res capable printer. One that uses very tiny dots to make the edge delineation invisible at normal viewing distances. This can produce acceptable results, but the drawback is of course the limited printable material available and the need to print onto white, which is where this all started..... and why screen printing is still employed........easy answers on a postcard......

 

Izzy

 

(who as a former industrial photographer used to fiddle about with this stuff!)

[Corbs]

1 hour ago, simonmcp said:

Excellent tutorial there Corbs.  The 'trick' I used to check if the clear was really blank was a background colour on the base layer and therefore it was possible to see any stray 'white'.

 

I think the fault is a dodgy drum on the printer, is normally a consumable but if you only just bought it they should replace it for free.

 

Sounds like the TMT software is a waste of time. It is possible to set up illustrator to do reverse prints, not in front of it at the moment but think it's under image flip horizontal - don't do both vertical and horizontal as you will be back to 'normal' don't ask how I know.

 

Simon

 

Thanks Simon, the trick of adding a BG colour while drawing is what I do as it's so hard to see what you are doing otherwise.

 

The frustration was that everything would appear fine until it went to the printer, there was no indication that anything was opaque (you could send a blank photoshop document and it would come out as a sheet of white). Took AGES to find that workaround.

 

I can see why people use TMT, as it enables the print order to be reversed so that it goes white-colour-colour-colour (so the white is on the base layer) but as it doesn't help with the colour dithering I'm not sure how much use it would be to me or other modellers. There's something I've not sussed out yet in its settings which is forcing it to put down a white base layer before it adds the colour (otherwise you end up with something that looks amazing on paper but as soon as you take the decal off you realise it's 90% transparent).

 

18 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

With regard to the ability to only do white transfers, I for one, and I suspect a few other people too, would very interested in this aspect of non carrier film transfers for British Rail wagons and coaches, for the blue/blue grey era there is hardly any other colour of lettering, in fact I can think of a requirement currently on my workbench, that of GUV's.

 

Mike.

 

Possibly, unless using the screen printing method as mentioned above, getting transfer film that is the same size as the lettering is either very tricky or impossible. One positive thing I would say about this laser method and the backing film is that, if applied on a gloss surface with micro-sol and micro-set and then varnished afterwards, the film is very hard to see.

Micro-set helps the decal adhere to the surface and avoid 'silvering' (where you can see the transfer film outline), and micro-sol softens it so it grips and forms the shape of the surface underneath (on the big blue Avonside, you can see how the decal sticks to the rivets around the saddle tank joins).

 

The lining on the blue and green locomotives in the first post was applied (for the most part) in single sheets - all the area inside the lining is the transfer film. As long as you can get rid of the air/fluid bubbles it looks ok.

 

John Isherwood of Cambridge Custom Transfers says that even adding a tiny bit of gloss lacquer to the area you are applying the transfer works wonders at blending it in.

 

In the meantime if you do know of white decals you need doing I might be able to knock something up  drop me a message.

[ianmaccormac]

Hi Corbs

Same here with the HP and Ghost. Close up is a mess but at normal viewing distance, not too bad. These in 7mm and two layers, colour over a white transfer.Cheers Ian

Edited April 27, 2022 by ianmaccormac
reload image

[cctransuk]

As will be appreciated, I have some twenty years of experience doing what Corbs is trying to do.

 

The bottom line is that, within the budget of most modellers, it is not now possible to buy a printer that will do Spot Printing over a white base. Citizen / Alps / Oki / Kodak printers were the solution, but they are now only available secondhand or refurbished.

 

All of the above printers used Alps' Microdry technology which, at the time (pre-2000) was the cutting edge for home photo-quality printing. It used ribbon ink cartridges; the ink itself was a synthetic 'wax' that was heat-transferred onto the printing substrate. Printer technology soon left the somewhat cumbersome Alps system behind, and the niche decal printing market was insufficient to sustain Microdry printer production.

 

The secret of Alps Microdry technology's capability to Spot Print was its ability to feed the paper through each spot print colour layer, and to wind it back and repeat the operation with the next colour ink - all in perfect registration. The paper did not leave the printer until all colour passes were completed.

 

Apart from white and CMY & K inks, metallic and foil inks were available and, for some of the later printers, Spot RGB inks. Though dye sublimation ink options were available, these have no application whatsoever for decal printing.

 

The fact that I can still produce and offer waterslide decals, produced on Alps printers, is solely due to the fact that I have invested heavily in buying-up Alps printers and ink cartridges. When the last printer fails, or I run out of ink cartridges, Cambridge Custom Transfers will close.

 

As to offering a bespoke decal service, I set out with this intention; suffice to say that good intentions are rarely translated into reality! Most modellers requiring bespoke decals have a niche / esoteric subject in mind, and usually have only a sketchy idea of exactly what the finished subject should look like. Unless you have unlimited time to devote to researching and designing decals for other people, don't go there! I know that Railtec do this, but I cannot understand how they can do so at a price that is affordable.

 

A warning; Alps technology printers often appear for sale - especially on Ebay. The chances are that these have damaged print-heads that produce a white line through each print pass, and are not repairable except by a company called Elephant's Rocket (!) in Japan; https://aikishugyo.no-ip.org/alps/info/elephants-rocket.html

 

The problem is that shipping to and from Japan is very expensive.

 

Never buy an Alps printer secondhand unless the seller can provide a self-test print - which has the printer's unique serial number on it.

 

Alps printers are fragile, and very prone to damage in transit. Always insist that the seller ships the printer strictly according to Alps original specification - you can find these details at https://alps.groups.io/g/ALPS

 

Frankly, knowing what I do now, I would certainly not set out to produce my own decals at this point in time - affordable technology is simply no longer available.

 

John Isherwood,

Cambridge Custom Transfers,

https://www.cctrans.org.uk/products.htm

 

 

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by cctransuk

[Corbs]

Thanks John, for the information and also the honesty. I've been speaking to John at Precision Labels who also has been very helpful. By the sounds of it the advice is to never post an ALPS printer! 

 

I'm going to see what happens with the fault on this laser printer. The way I'm thinking currently, it does print white excellently, and even if I did get an ALPS, it might be sensible to hang onto this one rather than burn through the limited and hard-to-get inks that go with the ALPS printers, especially if I can get a partial refund and bring the investment cost down due to the damaged toner cartridges.

[njee20]

An interesting read, sorry it's not all been plain sailing.

I have no intention of ever doing decals commercially, but I do dabble in some 3D printing and had a few wagons which needed white decals on a solid background, so I did invest in a Ghost White toner and an HP laser. In N gauge I find the results more than satisfactory. Not sure if that's relevant or not. I've not noticed the same level of dithering on the colours, then again under cruel close up...

 

Untitled by njee20, on Flickr

[Corbs]

41 minutes ago, njee20 said:

An interesting read, sorry it's not all been plain sailing.

I have no intention of ever doing decals commercially, but I do dabble in some 3D printing and had a few wagons which needed white decals on a solid background, so I did invest in a Ghost White toner and an HP laser. In N gauge I find the results more than satisfactory. Not sure if that's relevant or not. I've not noticed the same level of dithering on the colours, then again under cruel close up...

 

 

Hi NJee20, on the ones in the photo, are you applying a single black and white transfer or are you applying a white transfer to a black background?

[njee20]

That's just colour over a white background, the only photo I've got of a decal using the Ghost toner is not flattering, as I'd done nothing to resolve the visible decal film - was more just a bit of a test, but here anyway as it may be of interest:

 

Untitled by njee20, on Flickr

 

The Imerys and Nacco logos here (and the yellow warning triangle) are all applied as two piece decals, due to the issues you've highlighted of trying to line up successive prints, so apply the white decal, and then overlay the coloured elements.

 

I definitely notice the white is not that "full", but I'm not sure it would be any different on commercially purchased decals either when overlaid over a dark background colour.

Edited October 2, 2020 by njee20

[Corbs]

Oh yes! Sorry I had thought it was just the black rectangles with text that you were talking about 

 

By a process of deduction I think I have worked out that it is the Magenta that is faulty in my printer and causing the streaks, as I printed a Cyan/Magenta mix followed by pure Cyan and these were the results.

The fact that the Cyan printed fine, and the Cyan is showing through on the M+C mix points towards it being the Magenta at fault, and the consistent striping makes me think it's the drum rather than the cartridge. So I've asked for a partial refund from the seller, hopefully I can get that and buy a replacement Magenta drum with it.

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by Corbs

[heavymetalwagons]

Being following this thread with interest. And by accident came across this thread 

Page 14. His transfers look ok. Not any help though 

[jessy1692]

2 hours ago, heavymetalwagons said:

Being following this thread with interest. And by accident came across this thread 

Page 14. His transfers look ok. Not any help though 

Thanks for the kind words Heavymetal, the transfers i have done are much more basic than what Corbs is trying to achieve. I am slightly lucky i have a full colour copier at my disposal but i have stuck to what i know/think i can produce with publisher and a bit if help with photoshop with use of ebay decal paper.

All very much trial and error and it does take time to get things how i want them to be. This weeks dalliance with the home inkjet and publisher artwork, to me, just hasnt cut it for the small wording so i am revisiting it probably over the weekend. Hats off to all those who do sell transfers commercially though, the stuff they can do just shows the limitations of what we can do at home without a lot of time and significant investment.

All the best

James

Ps if anyone wants artwork for my containers or UKF wagons just drop me a pm

Edited October 2, 2020 by jessy1692

[njee20]

I find lasers much less faff, because you don’t need to seal them, just print and apply. Having to varnish the inkjet decals is definitely a pain, and an extra place to introduce problems. 
 

That said, the first time I applied Halfords lacquer to the laser printed decals it destroyed them, which was annoying! 

[jessy1692]

1 hour ago, njee20 said:

I find lasers much less faff, because you don’t need to seal them, just print and apply. Having to varnish the inkjet decals is definitely a pain, and an extra place to introduce problems. 
 

That said, the first time I applied Halfords lacquer to the laser printed decals it destroyed them, which was annoying! 

Agreed after this weeks dabble into inkjet printing. I have taken to spraying over lazer decals after printing with humbrol satin or gloss spray, i find it helps when cutting the prints you need as the toner can seen to flake a bit if your knife is anything but razor sharp. Keeps a nice tidy edge as i like to print them ever so slightly too large so when cutting off the sheet you always get colour right to the edge

Edited October 2, 2020 by jessy1692

[Corbs]

That's interesting, I've not had any issues with flaking but I have had the odd one disintegrate, so I've been designing all my sets with an extra one of everything just in case.

 

Here's one I've been working on this week, some extra H&P decals to fill in some numbers Hornby didn't do. Thickening the shadow and printing it all perpendicular/parallel to the sheet has (I think) helped reduce dithering.

 

Note that this was printed direct from Illustrator on the Mac over a network connection, not from SpaceControl.

 

The big lettering was all hand-traced using Illustrator, from a photo of the real No.21 at Gloucester Carriage and Wagon. For signwritten lettering I prefer this method, as it preserves some of the little differences that would crop up, instead of using a font.

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by Corbs

[cctransuk]

9 hours ago, jessy1692 said:

... the toner can seen to flake a bit if your knife is anything but razor sharp.

 

Try (really sharp) scissors - I use them exclusively nowadays.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood,

Cambridge Custom Transfers.

[jessy1692]

1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

 

Try (really sharp) scissors - I use them exclusively nowadays.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood,

Cambridge Custom Transfers.

Ahh, great idea! Thanks John.

All the best

James

[Corbs]

Actually had some good results from the C711WT. Increasing the shading thickness on the writing has helped.

 

This one I've printed right-side up (so to the printer, it's mirrored) and the black's actually come out ok.

 

 

However, with a colour shade, in this case red, I've printed it mirrored (so right-way-round to the printer. Note the lower decal is on the faulty Magenta strip.

 

Sliding this one off upside-down, it looks like this.

The reason for the upside down print is that otherwise the white backing all ends up on top and the red would appear pink.

 

 

 

One thing I've noticed about this decal paper is that the water can be cold, and it can be dunked for less than 30 seconds before it slides off.

[Corbs]

The Third Way?

 

Looking at Andrew Jeffcock's company, Custom Model Decals, he says that they use UV printing.

https://custom-model-decals.com/

 

I had not previously heard of this method but it does look pretty impressive.

 

 

Some examples from CMD's website:

 

 

 

So far, use of UV printing to make waterslide decals seems to be quite rare (CMD might be one of the only people in the UK doing it) but it could mean a brighter future for custom decal sets with the ALPS/OKIs getting rarer?

 

A lot of the UV printers I have seen so far are HUGE and very expensive, but it looks like a lot of desktop-sized ones may soon be more mainstream as they become available.