Questions for Decal Printers

[Romell R]

Hey fellas Im really interested in printing my own decals , And I want a professional quality setup. so my questions for you pros are: (and I do mean pros)

1. what type of printer should i look into buying?

2. whats a good program to do my decal designing from?

3. what type of paper should be used to print to?

4. not so much a question but a comment , please feel free to add any advice you feel will help in my printing endevors. thx in advance for any help you can provide.

[Aaronw]

1)

Inkjet and Laser printers can do a very good job within their limitations, but their decals are transparent so work best over white paint, and do not work well at all over dark colors.

If you want full capability (white & metallic colors) you really only have one option for do it yourself, and that is an ALPS printer. Unfortunately they are no longer in production so you would have to get a used one. Supplies are not a problem but ALPS printers are very delicate and many sellers have no idea what they are selling or how to properly ship them so buying used is very hit or miss on an item you can expect to pay $500+ for. There are rumors of a white ink inkjet printer in development but who knows when or if it will become available.

If you have very deep pockets you can get a Kodak First Check which is basically a large (up to a 13x19" sheet) ALPS printer, but they cost about $5000.

If you are looking at more than personal use, you may want to look at using a professional screen printing company like Cartograph or Microscale, but they have minimum orders making them impractical for individual use.

2)

For programs you will want a vector based drawing program, Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator are two of the more popular programs used. These programs cost a couple hundred dollers, but you can often find an older version fairly cheap. If you have kids or are in school yourself they do offer educational versions at a large discount.

There are some free vector based programs out there but I don't have any suggestions, as I use Corel Draw and haven't looked into any of the free programs. Vector drawing programs are quite different from pixel based programs like Microsoft Paint that most people have used, so there is a rather steep learning curve. The advantages to vector based programs is they use measurements between point not pixels, so there is no distortion when changing size. You can draw a design at large size of say 5x5" so you can easily manage the drawing, then shrink it down to 1/4 x 1/4" for the model without loss of detail. You can also break out the colors into layers which is required for ALPS or screen printing. It is well worth the time investment to learn to use one of these vector based programs even if you stick with a regular printer as there is no comparison between the detail vector allows. Small print done in MS paint pixelates, but with Corel Draw I've printed decals with lettering so small that I needed a magnifying glass to read it using a regular inkjet printer.

3)

Personally I use decal film from Tango Papa made for laser printers, but I've used most of the commonly available decal papers (Micromark, Baremetal Foil, Testors etc) and they each have their pros and cons. Testors film is very thin which makes it good for decals, but it comes in an odd size (5x8"), the others are available in standard 8.5x11" sheets. I know several people here use various venders from ebay. You have to use decal film made for your type of printer, inkjet and laser paper are not interchangable either way.

[Romell R]

Thx Aaron that was very helpful and educational I now know what direction to head in, need to pick up a copy of corel draw to get started. Romell

Added: 3:44pm Is Corel Draw Grafix suit X5 any good??

Edited July 6, 2011 by Aftashox

[Aaronw]

I have Corel Draw Graphics Suite X3, I assume X5 is just the most current version. Mine came with a bunch of tutorials, that I found very helpful.

There is a Corel Draw forum which can be useful if you run into problems and want to talk to people who really know how to work the program.

http://coreldraw.com/