Making Decals and needing a new printer

[acook]

If you can, design out the white, the brighton uses clear transfers on white background, i.e. reverse the colours and print a block of body colour with transparent lettering.
I think this is how Robbies Rolling Stock transfers work.
Alan

[NScaleNotes]

Jeez, I just found a website out there where one lady got her Ghost White Toner and printer bundle in 2021 for $400. Now, just two years later, their lowest cost bundle is $900!

225% increase in 24 months?   That's totally ridiculous.

Ross.

I know you love the DIY but you could just get these guys to print what you need: https://fsdecals.com/

I'd been planning to get something printed there myself. So not actually used them myself yet but it looks like they have a similar setup to other laser-printer based companies.

Another North American (Canada) option is: https://www.pdc.ca/rr/custom_decals/
I've had some decals printed by Bill in the past and it really is top notch printing.


You'd have to be printing a lot of decals before it became cheaper to buy your own setup plus you still get the work of producing the vector graphics.

[njee20]

Jeez, I just found a website out there where one lady got her Ghost White Toner and printer bundle in 2021 for $400. Now, just two years later, their lowest cost bundle is $900!

225% increase in 24 months?   That's totally ridiculous.

Ross.

They weren't that cheap ordinarily, not even close. Back in 2021 the cheapest they listed that I can see is €599, and I can now see bundles for £699, so yes a fairly large increase, but not on the same scale. Personally for me I wouldn't pay anything approaching that, unless you foresee creating pages and pages of decals. I personally doubt I've printed more than 20 pages in 3 years. I'd be minded to agree with NScaleNotes, outsourcing it is probably just as easy.

If you can, design out the white, the brighton uses clear transfers on white background, i.e. reverse the colours and print a block of body colour with transparent lettering.
I think this is how Robbies Rolling Stock transfers work.
Alan

I've never found that particularly satisfactory, but YMMV.

[ntpntpntp]

You'd have to be printing a lot of decals before it became cheaper to buy your own setup [compared to having them printed by someone] plus you still get the work of producing the vector graphics.

This is of course very true.

For me it was a case of I wanted to have a go at creating specific decals for a project, and 20 years ago the ALPS Microdry technology printers were the best option for home hobbyists. My Citizen Printiva printer cost me something like £70 from ebay even back then, second-hand (actually from a hospital according to the label that was stuck to it!) As it's not the top-end printer version I have to fool it into printing white by labelling the cartridge as silver (shiny sticky label and insulation tape to create the correct bar-code!) and make sure I use the correct printer driver settings (hence old Windows ME on the pc). Same if I want to use Roland RGB colour cartridges (another brand which used the ALPS tech for a couple of printers).

I don't produce many decals so my gear probably never will pay back the original investment, but when I want something I can design and print in an hour or so.  It's fiddly old tech but it works (for now) and it is very satisfying to create something myself