Decal printing question

[tamiya monkey]

I was going to look at making my own decals or group full colour stickers, what sort of printer would i need to accomplish this.

[njmlondon]

I am just finishing up a custom decal selection for my Kyosho Scorpion using MCI decal design.

Gutted feel is you not only need the right software, but then the right vinyl and then a really good printer. I did some research into doing my own and quickly came to the conclusion that the ££ involved in buying a printer good enough was not worth it unless you have other uses for it.

[yogi-bear]

howdy, I have the right printer for doing decals, I have two in fact and both cost me around $40k AUD.  Although you can get cheaper ones from about $20k onwards. These printers fall under the category of wide format printers. They are generally either latex ink, UV ink or eco-solvent ink. All designed for use in the signage and sticker industry.

You could use a home inkjet or laser printer, but it won't have the durability and you would need to coat or laminate them.

Software wise you could use Inkscape which is free, or there are some that cost a little but nowhere near what Adobe Illustrator costs.

[Mad Ax]

I use inkscape for all my graphic design.  It's a bit quirky but there's loads of tutorials on how to do things, so if you get stuck, you can probably find the answer online.

As for printers - do you want to print on white vinyl, or clear?  White vinyl is definitely the easier option but you will either need a cutter such as a Cricut to neatly cut right up to the printed edge, or you will have to cut everything precisely yourself.  Even then, you still have the issue of a white edge appearing around your decal, so if (for example) you put a blue Ford oval onto a black body, you'll always be able to see the white ring around the edge.

Printing on clear is how Tamiya and others do they thang, but then you either need to only put your decals on light-coloured backgrounds, or you have to splash out on a much more expensive printer that can print white ink.  I've looked at going this route several times but it's very big money and only worth it if you intend to sell decals in bulk.  I doubt there's enough money in pure RC-related decals to make it worth it.

I thought I'd lucked in a few years ago when I bought a colour Brother laser printer, but I only found out after it was unboxed and working that it wasn't compatible with vinyl sheet, and it doesn't really work that well on glossy paper either.  I have used it with glossy paper sticker sheet but it doesn't cut well, it leaves fibres at the cut edges which look cheap, and the decals are ruined by water.  I have tweaked the settings enough to print small designs on white vinyl but large colour panels look washed out and blotchy, and the toner flakes off pretty quick.  The best results are black or dark colours on clear, which I then stick on silver, gold, camel yellow or white bodies.  This means I tend to design my liveries with large panels in those colours for adding my own decals, then a contrasting colour onto which I can stick commercial decals.  Here's some examples:

Runeblade, isol-8, Scrapspeed logos are laser blank toner onto clear vinyl, Firestorm and Trail Blazer logos are from JConcepts decal sheet

All the black decals in this are laser toner on clear, the bed decal is laser toner on sticky back paper - it had wrinkled and peeled in the workshop.  White logos are JConcepts.

I would be interested in more info from @yogi-bear on wide format printers - I've just done a super-quick Google search and most things are £500-upwards, some cheaper stuff is showing but I think it's Google missing the mark (wi-fi printer, not wide format printer).

The alternative option - and one I use when I want to stick onto dark backgrounds - is do the designs yourself and use a 3rd party for printing.  I use MCI Designs in Canada, great service and quick delivery and they have lots of generic sponsor sheets as well which are great for motorsport liveries.

All the silver and blue graphics on Tanto are designed by me, printed by MCI.  Sponsor logos are mostly from SRB repro decal sheets.

[yogi-bear]

1 hour ago, Mad Ax said:

 

I would be interested in more info from @yogi-bear on wide format printers - I've just done a super-quick Google search and most things are £500-upwards, some cheaper stuff is showing but I think it's Google missing the mark (wi-fi printer, not wide format printer).

Thats some creative sticker making!

happy to expand a bit more on wide format printers. Also when looking for a printer, there are also markets like t-shirt and direct-to-film (DTF) with printers that might be more relatively more affordable. In saying that you might still baulk at the prices! Ideally you want something that can print white, and there are laser printers that do that too, Oki is one brand, used in the hobby and up t-shirt area but they tend to be at least a couple of thousand dollars. But to print a good quality sticker that will last, you are going to need to spend a bit of money.

also with the vinyl sheets and laser printers, the issue will be the heat, usually the heat needed is just too much for a standard vinyl, and it will also need a coating to be receptive to the toner. You can non-paper based sheets to run through a laser printer, Raflatac is one such brand that makes a synthetic label that runs through laser printers or more specifically large digital toner based printers.

I'll add a bit more info shortly on the printers I have and why I have them.

[yogi-bear]

ok, so to continue. Not too sure on how to proceed, so apologies if it seems a bit random and a bit dry, I'll add so pics towards the end.

Since there are so many types of printers available I am mainly talking about printers used within the signage industry to make signage, bumper stickers etc and that would also be used to make RC stickers. So for the printer size itself, you have normal desktop printers, large format (I think thats up to about 914 mm wide), wide format (about 1620 mm wide), then there are 3m wide and 5m wide and all the way up to grand format (which goes to about 10 m, and there are probably wider printers out there). Those larger printers are mainly doing banners and billboards etc. Also in the mix are flatbed printers (one of these is on my wish list!).

Ink wise, there are a few options, you have:

1. Latex printers - these are water based, and use a lot of heat to cure the ink once printed. These are one of the most eco-friendly printers you can get. 

2. Eco-solvent printers - these are an evolution of solvent printers, basically the first type of signage printer to be on the market. They have less harmful chemicals than full solvent printers in them, but they still smell a bit when printing. They require heat to set, but to as much as Latex printers. Usually they meant to set or cure for about 3 days before you laminate or trim them, as they outgas solvent gases. Traditional solvent printers required their on print room with extraction fan.

3. UV printers - these use UV light to cure the ink as it prints.

4. I'll also include water resistance printers like the Epson one I have that uses what they call their Ultrachrome ink. This print is a large format and we use it mainly for printing building plans, posters as well as some specialty papers. I'm highly unlikely to ever print any RC stickers with this, but I have done paper based stickers.

There are other printers out there, like dye sublimation and t-shirt printers, but I won't go into them.

So Latex, UV and eco-solvent, they are all suitable for outdoor use. The Epson one, will fade quickly in the sun, as will any home based printer or laser printer.

Also, the Latex, eco-solvent and the Ultrachrome ink, for want of a better term, merge with the surface of what you are printing too. This means if you print onto a glossy surface, the print has a glossy finish, if you print onto a matt surface, the print has a matt finish. The UV sits on top of the surface and I'll show you some pics as to my this makes an interesting and a very useful difference in the next post. Also the UV print is matt only, if you want gloss, it needs a layer on top, and I'll also mention why this can be cool later on.

Now most of these printers (not too sure about the Epson though) are available in a variety of options, which includes a white ink (some you can get silver ink, or green and orange as well), plus the signage printers typically come as print and cut package. So when I had an eco-solvent printer, a Roland SP-540V model, it was an all in one solution. I could print stickers and cut straight after printer, or print stickers with a registration mark, let it cure properly and cut later on. It had no white or special ink options. But it was a good entry level printer for signage duties. I think at the time it cost around $32k AUD

So my next post will be much more interesting with pics of what my particular printers can do.

[Mad Ax]

thanks @yogi-bear, I will read that through in more detail when I have more time but it is much appreciated  

[yogi-bear]

13 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

thanks @yogi-bear, I will read that through in more detail when I have more time but it is much appreciated  

no problem, I have more to come with pictures! Just have to get through Easter lunch and dinner today. Plus I have some other ideas for making decals and painting cars with logos etc that I will talk about.

[yogi-bear]

ok, so firstly the HP 700W. When you get a wide format printer, you usually have to specify the ink configuration. There are 10 ink slots for this printer, and I opted for a Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, Yellow, Black, 2 white, one called an optimiser and one called an overcoat. The optimiser is a special ink that goes down first so the ink has better adherance on some materials, the overcoat is like a protective layer on top, and you can adjust the amount of both. The light cyan and light magenta help with colours especially when doing things like photos.

Now as mentioned before, one of the reasons I like this printer is that I can take out the white print heads, but this comes with an issue. When you put the heads back in, you should really do a print head alignment. Only problem with that is it's time consuming and uses a bit of material. I usually don't do one too often, which means when we do a print, the white will be slightly out of alignment, but we have a small work around for that.

Also as most people are aware, ink has a translucency to it, this will go for just about any printer too, which is why you need to print onto a white surface. But that also means if you print to a different coloured material, you will get some of that coming through. This bad if you want to print to black so you have to do a white layer. But this is great if you want to print to vinyls like gold or silver or chrome. So you can make colours pop really well. I'll also note that this example with done on my other printer, but the point is the same. The heat from the HP when curing makes it too problematic printing to some vinyls, mainly polyesters. Do-able, but a pain.

 

So prints with white ink to a matt metallic vinyl and a clear. If you look carefully so you can see, especially on the clear on, there is a bit of a white offset to some of the images. But overall not too bad. The other issue I sometimes get and seems to be random, is the cut isn't always perfect (despite spending lots of money on the cutter!) This is an issue with a lot of cutters though, and there are many causes, but we shall see in the next post not all machines are affected. Also it only takes half a mil or so and it becomes very noticeable where the artwork is small, so in our day to day cutting its not normally an issue.

The stickers below I recreated myself either from scans I was able to take or finding images off the internet and then hand tracing in Illustrator. A program like Inkscape would be capable of doing this as well. Importantly is how you make them, and vector based images are going to be better for you in the long run. Firstly because they scale better, can be easier to adjust and you can vinyl cut them too. For any of the text ones, I have two approaches, I either find the closest font I can and make adjustments, or I as in the case of the GALAXY sticker, just completely hand trace it.

 

 

 

 

[yogi-bear]

ok, so now onto my other printer, this one uses UV light to cure the ink and no heat. The printer has 8 ink slots, and the choice is Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, 2 white and 2 clear.  Also this printer has a cutter built in, so I can print something and then cut it straight away, and 9 times out of 10 the cuts are spot on too. I think the no heat is a factor in that.

So the clear is specially set up on this machine, unlike the other printer, where the clear was on top only and it printed it on all the image or nothing. So with this setup, I can print clear either on top, or beneath the image that I am printing, plus I can set artwork or a pattern for the clear to print. UV ink also prints as a matt finish, with the clear I top I am able to print this as a gloss or matt finish, plus I can vary the number of layers I give the clear. Now UV sits on top of whatever material I am printing, unlike other inks that basically blend into the surface. So this gives the ink a bit of an edge that you can see and feel, and this basically means is that I can print textures.

So some examples:

scale number plate for Holiday Buggy (you can also see in some of the pics the white printhead was out here too, I have since learnt to control this better on this UV printer)

here is a thicker example of raised text printed, it is very slow to print though.

 

Here is another example, fake texture to a passport cover

 

playing around and when I added in a bit too much clear ink underneath, but shows that I can vary the effect a little. Its this ability that was the main draw for me buying this printer. 

the passport is a remake of the one this chap had in a movie. I make them for a friend, plus some other Herbie decals that he sells.

and an example of the opposite effect, alcohol labels with gloss clear on the top in parts

 

So thats all well and good for me, but what about if you want to make your own stickers without spending a fortune? In the next post (it might be a couple of days), I'll outline a couple of ways you can make your own decals.