"Affordable" White Decal Printing at Home

[Bristol_Rich]

I have numerous custom white decal jobs to complete and whilst searching the net for custom printing options, I stumbled across this product...

 

https://www.ghost-white-toner.com/?lang=en

 

Not withstanding the existing and costly OKI and (if I understand correctly) the now obsolete-ish ALPS printers, it seems this is one if not only cost effective means to print "white ink" at home.

 

At ~£70 per cartridge (plus printer if its not covered under the supported models) its still not cheap, however it is anticipated via the blurb that you are likely to print in excess of 1600 pages from one cartridge, and cheaper than the alternatives.

 

Does anyone have anyone have any experience of the product or similar?  I'm interested to understand how well it prints, colour depth, opacity etc...

 

 

 

[Arthur]

 

That does look interesting. Sod's Law that I have a laser printer but it's not one they have a white toner cartridge for. It's a Ricoh that I only used for the home printing of decals and the results are very good. I'd have bought a cartridge and tried it otherwise.

 

I'll keep my eye on this, if it does work for decals I'd be tempted.

 

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[Anglian]

Thanks for posting this. Having had some expensive decals printed for me and with more to do this is certainly very interesting to me. I happen to need a new printer so it would make sense to buy one of those listed, that can take the white cartridge. 

 

Could you tell me which printer takes a £70 cartridge – those I'm looking at are more like £200 – £400!

Edited September 22, 2017 by Anglian

[d00m]

What I dont get with the A4 bundle is this: you get printer (hp laser jet pro 200 M251n) 1×cyan 1×magenta 1×yellow 1×black & 1×white which comes to £334.23.

If you were just buying the cartridges it costs more!!

So when you run out of toner, it's cheaper to buy a new bundle!

What would be good would be for someone to write some software so that the colour toner can be assigned then anyone with an hp printer that takes this size cartridge could just order a white one and simply swap it for (for example) the yellow one?

[Jonboy]

With many laser printer bundles you get a reduced capacity cartridge, I.e. It won't print as many copies as the full price cartridges.

[Arthur]

 

They subsidise the sale of the printer/first bundle on the basis that you will then return and buy full priced cartridges over an extended period. Few people bother seeking out a cheap new 'introductory' bundle once they've set the printer up.

 

I bought my Ricoh at a bargain price including a toner package knowing full well it would be costly to buy cartridges in the future. As I only ever use it to print off decals, that initial toner package should last me years.

 

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[tamperman36]

I will have to keep my eye on this site as they may produce a white toner cartridge for my printer yet. So far they cover several different makes and models.

[Roy Langridge]

One problem may be different manufacturers' printers work differently. We had a problem with our letterhead paper through one of our printers. The company that printed the letterhead investigated and eventually concluded that it was a combination of their printing process and our printer. They had never seen the problem before and the solution was we used a different printer. Apparently different printers work at different temperatures.

 

Given that some of the big names are not in the list, I wonder if the white toner process will not work in these printers. None of my printers are listed :-(

 

Roy

[BG John]

Nothing for my HP Color Laserjet 2550 either, so old models from big names missing too.

[Bristol_Rich]

What I dont get with the A4 bundle is this: you get printer (hp laser jet pro 200 M251n) 1×cyan 1×magenta 1×yellow 1×black & 1×white which comes to £334.23.

If you were just buying the cartridges it costs more!!

So when you run out of toner, it's cheaper to buy a new bundle!

What would be good would be for someone to write some software so that the colour toner can be assigned then anyone with an hp printer that takes this size cartridge could just order a white one and simply swap it for (for example) the yellow one?

 

Printers (along with Gillette and their disposable razor blades) are classic "loss leaders"... essentially the handle, or in the case of the toners the printer is "free" or at a much reduced cost to the purchaser.

 

 

Nothing for my HP Color Laserjet 2550 either, so old models from big names missing too.

 

 

I guess what we have to remember that its not feasible to cater for all printer model makes and types.  From what I understand from briefly reading on the net, the white toner "works" in a very different way to the typical CYRBB cartridges and hence may only be applicable to certain printers manufacturers and the processes they use.

 

Not withstanding the backlog of white decal printing I'm hopeful this might be a viable option.  My main concern is density of the print and if it allows colour bleed through from the base colour behind...

[Torper]

I suppose if you could get the backgound colour right you could use white decal paper.

 

DT

[298]

I suppose if you could get the backgound colour right you could use white decal paper.

 

DT

You still have to disguise the edge somehow.

 

I spent ten years faffing about looking for suitable images to Photoshop white decals from for various projects and printing them on white paper, before finally pulling my finger out and producing a .BMP basically in MS Paint. I sent it off to John at Precision Labels and the decals arrived the next day. I'm still kicking myself for not doing that before.

[Arthur]

I suppose if you could get the backgound colour right you could use white decal paper.

 

DT

That is incredibly difficult to do.

 

What looks right on the screen will be different in print. Trying to match a decal printed background colour to that of a model requires endless trial runs, I know, I've tried it.

 

Like 298, I've long been using Precision Labels for white, light coloured or any complex (drop shadow) decals. Reasonably priced and very quick.

 

Having said that, the ability to print white at home would be very useful.

 

.

[Anglian]

John Peck did a sheet for me. I designed it using Adobe Illustrator and did all the knockouts that he requested. The result was stunning. I had a friend send some pretty poor artwork to him which he was happy to print, said friend asked me to check the artwork at which point I said 'I'll create the artwork file so it's pin sharp.' It was very complex but we got there in the end and the results were fabulous. If you've ever set-up artwork for cmyk Alps is a bit more complex and no two Alps users will use the printer in the same way.

 

For example, John likes knockouts which means there is only one colour going down not overlaid colours, except when you are printing certain other colours that require multiple passes of different colours over printing! With the whites he gives the option of double hitting it to get opaque white. This new system may be the same.