Question about making your own decals

[Sly Fox Racing]

I’m wanting to make my own decals for a particular build I plan on doing and I have a question about it. Normally when I do a build and put decals on, I brush on decal set fluid onto the model and decal after I have it in place. After it dries, I apply my high gloss clear coat sealing the decal under the clear coat making the overall appearance much better looking. My question is how well do the homemade decals work with decal set fluid and painting clear coat over them? Thx.

[Bernard Kron]

I generally use the least expensive generic clear decal stock I can get on-line and have had zero problems with decal setting solutions, solvents and clear coats over the results. I do a lot of decal work; I build at least a half a dozen models a year and virtually all of them have home made decals, and it's simply not an issue. Even with white decal paper, which is thicker and doesn't respond to setting solutions anywhere as well, if the decal is well set and stable my experience is that the clear coat will have no effect on the decal, and vice versa.

Edited December 21, 2017 by Bernard Kron

[Warren D]

My experience is a little different than above.  I think it depends on the printer.  I have an inkjet printer with pigment based inks.  (Epson R1900).  I have found that the ink will run unless I spray I light coat of decal spray over the decal after the ink has set for 24 hours.  I use Testors Decal Spray in a rattle can.  After that, I can use mild decal solvent and I watch it.  I don't have a laser printer so can't speak to that.  I have found that black and darker colors seem ok, but yellow ink doesn't go on thick enough to hide the background color.  If the vehicle is white and the same tone as the white decal paper, you should be fine with any color.  If using an image-based program like Photoshop, you will likely see some jaggies, especially with smaller decals.  Illustrator or other vector-based programs are preferred but very few people have access to them or know how to use them.

[Bernard Kron]

Responding to Warren's comment, of course it's critical to let your printer ink dry thoroughly. I use a Canon MP560 and I allow a good 30-60 minutes to let the ink dry, then I clear coat it with a craft acrylic clear. The acrylic seems to be neutral to any paint I use over it. It dries thoroughly within 1 hour. I generally apply 2 coats, which gives the decal greater strength and makes it easier to handle.

The issues regarding the base color of your car and how well the decal color covers it aren't directly relevant to the OP's question regarding clear coat, but they are extremely important nonetheless.A humble home printer can't print white, and the colors it prints are always somewhat translucent. That's because home printer technologies "assume" that you are printing over white paper in printing their colors. So when I do decal work on my models I'm always careful to "pick my battles". I generally will use pale colors for the basic body color to get the most out of my decals. Some printer colors, like yellow as mentioned, are "weak" and don't cover the base body color very well. Dark body colors, when using any home printer, inkjet or laser, will always effect the final shade of your decal.

Regarding jaggies when using a raster-graphics program like Photoshop (which I use), this problem can be greatly minimized by using a printer that will print to high resolutions and doing your graphics using a high density of pixels. In my case my MP560 will print to 600 DPI (dots per inch) so I set the resolution of my graphics files to 600 DPI. My printer will then print to that resolution. It's also important to understand your graphics program and how it treats things like layer styles. For example, if you apply a 6 pixel outline to a layer of text in Photoshop, if you shrink the size of the text layer Photoshop will not scale down the outline (it's called a Stroke in Photoshop), so, even though the text is smaller the outline around it remains the same size as it was and therefore is proportionately much thicker. To avoid this problem Photoshop has a function to "rasterize" the text object, which basically converts the text object to a graphics object, stripping out all the font and style information. Then, when you resize it, it treats it as a unified graphic object and shrinks everything proportionately, including the outline.

But all this is a digression. Obviously it's important to know how to use your tools. But clear coating over inkjet or laser printed graphics you've created yourself shouldn't be a problem if you understand your tools and your medium.

[Lunajammer]

I've never used ink jet for decals so I have no experience, but it's been my impression that laser printers offer denser, richer ink. Though I now use an office laser copier, I used to go to a print shop for laser copies and have never been disappointed. No issues with setting solutions or clear coats. Biggest issue has been ink flaking off when doing tight, curved trimming.

[peteski]

As mentioned above, all the color (CYMK) computer printers (laser, ink jet) which are designed for printing on (white) paper use translucent inks (except for black which is naturally opaque).  Color decals printed on those printers will not show correct colors when applied to a non-white model surface.  The white undercoat is needed for those inks to show up properly on a non-white model.

There was a consumer-grade printer available which was capable of printing white ink and overlaying colr inks on top of white. It is the Alps MicroDry (MD) printers. They are no longer being made, but there are still quite a few of them around in hands of hobbyists and custom decal manufacturers. I'm an Alps owner, and I print my own decals.

As far as artwork goes, the best quality artwork is vector-based (not bitmaps like TIF, BMP or PNG). And JPG is also not really suitable because it is a lossy format.

Edited December 27, 2017 by peteski