Yes Kevin, I realize that, so those letters would have to be floated into place very carefully. I did that once, I cut out lettering with scissors and a hobby knife, from decal paper and floated them into place. It took a lot of fine work, especially the one I tore, to line up the tears so that it wasn’t noticeable. And that is partly why I learned how to hand paint lettering.
Jeeze Kevin, do you ever research something before telling someone else they are wrong?
http://www.atttransfer.com/whitetoner.html
White toner with colors on top of it, and water slide decals.
It exists, it can be done.
Greg
Greg, thanks for the link. To clarify, that’s precisely the technology I was referring to when I mentioned folks on the ALPS users group have tried it, but got inconsistent results. At issue, the process you linked to requires two separate laser printers, one for the white toner, and a second one for the CMYK toner. There’s no way to guarantee those two printers are going have the precise alignment required to not get any haloing around the edge of your artwork. (It’s one thing to rely on the feed mechanism of one printer to be consistent from pass to pass, but now you’re relying on the feed mechanisms of two separate printers to be 100% identical.) The smaller and more detailed your artwork, the more critical it is for proper alignment. That’s why these have not caught on as a replacement for the ALPS printers, especially with regard to decals for model railroads where proper alignment is often crucial.
As ALPS supplies run out and the printers die off, this technology will likely be picked up by the commercial guys as an alternative (because what else is there?), but the initial price tag and cost of toner replacement cartridges are likely going to keep this from being an option for the home hobbyist. Certainly, if I had $3K lying about, I’d be buying a new steamer and re-lettering it with dry transfers.
Later,
K
Kevin, 3D printing has come to the home user. When I first saw it on the Discovery Channel (last century) it was too problematic and expensive for anyone, but the most well financed prototyping shops and labs.
So this printing technology may come down to the home user, or at least home based businesses, eventually. Actually, it probably could be done, where someone (a manufacturer, or home experimenter) takes a 4 colour printer and makes a 5 colour printer, white, black, cyan, magenta and yellow. A beast like that could do all kinds of specialty jobs, not just decals or dry transfers.
Kevin, I’m really trying to get you to understand.
Have you ever looked inside a color laser printer?
There will be FOUR toner cartridges in it.
Remove the black one and put a white one inside.
Yeah sure, now you cannot print color AND black AND white at the same time, so you have 2 printers, one with white and cmyk and one with black and cmyk.
The real issue is getting other colors in the white, the companies that support white toner often make arrangements with the manufacturer to get the printer BEFORE any test printing with black toner.
So, I don’t think it’s an off the shelf solution yet, but definitely feasible and will probably happen really soon with the demise of the Alps supplies.
Greg
Greg, you’ve completely lost me. You cannot simply replace the black toner for white toner and get proper color reproduction. That’s not how color printing works. You need cyan, magenta, yellow, AND black to get proper color reproduction. Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, even when combined at 100% saturation, do not give you 100% black. It’s a dark grey, usually between 80% - 90% depending on the inks being used. The black is needed for that last little “pop” of contrast, as well as truer dark blues, greens, browns, etc.
Consider this illustration:
The color logo in the middle is the desired artwork. It’s fairly simple… red, blue, yellow, black, and white. To print that on white paper, the printer breaks each color into its four distinct components (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) represented in greyscale respectively from left to right above the color artwork. That greyscale represents the amount of each color of ink the printer lays down to reproduce the color logo. The darker the shade of grey, the more ink gets laid down. For example, the red banner is made up of almost equal amounts of magenta and yellow inks, with just a trace of black and virtually no cyan. The flag banner is almost entirely yellow, with just a hint of magenta. The blue middle is predominantly cyan with a fair amount of magenta, and just a touch of black. It doesn’t print anything where there’s white, because it presumes a white background.
If you replace the black ink for white, then the printer lays down white ink in accordance with that specific image that it uses for black. As a result, you’d get lighter blue in the middle, pink around the edge, and white lettering over the yellow banner. Clearly that’s not what you’d be after.
Rather, the white layer when printing decals on clear media needs to look like the bottom–a solid block that encompasses the whole of the artwork. That goes down first, and on top of that, the CMYK layers are then printed, resulting in a properly-reproduced color logo on an opaque white background which can then be applied over any color you might choose.
The laser system you referenced in your link uses one printer dedicated to printing white toner for that foundation layer. To it, you would feed the bottom image artwork. (In Photoshop, it would be its own separate layer. Turn on that layer only, then print your file.) Step two would be to take your decal media with this solid white image printed on it, and place it in the tray of printer #2, which is dedicated CMYK. In Photoshop, turn off the layer of solid (white), and turn on the color layer of the logo. Then print to that 2nd printer.
Because it’s a completely separate printer than the first, there’s no guarantee that the paper feed will be exactly the same as it was on the first printer. In the case of this logo, there’s a thin white margin around the whole of the logo. If the paper is not properly aligned when feeding through the 2nd printer, the color component of the image (CMYK) will not print in the middle of the white foundation, resulting in uneven margins. One side will be wider than the other. It’s possible that it may print right to the edge or even off the edge of the white foundation. That’s dependent on the printer and the mechanics of the paper feed. If the artwork did not have a solid white border around it, any misalignment would show up as a white “halo” along the edge of the artwork.
That’s the specific advantage of the ALPS printer. Since the paper never leaves the paper feed, much less the printer, the image will remain in perfect alignment for each subsequent pass of each color. When you’re printing decals for model railroad equipment (even in our large scales), you’re often dealing with fonts as small as 6 points, if not even smaller. There’s not a whole lot of room for misalignment there, which is why the laser printer process has so far been passed over in favor of the more accurate ALPS process.
Now, there are tricks you can do with the artwork so that there’s a bit of a bleed with regard to the color over the white foundation to avoid the halo effect. You’ve just doubled (or more) the amount of time it will take you to draw your artwork because your background white layer is no longer a simple matte cut-out of the artwork, rather it has to be adjusted proportionally so the colors bleed consistently over all the edges. It’s not just a matter of scaling it; you’ve got to adjust the thickness across everything so that open areas inside the artwork still properly bleed over the edges. It’s not a fun process, and there’s no “Photoshop shortcut” to make it easy. (I do this a lot with matte keys for video–same process.)
In terms of your assessment of what you call “the real issue” of getting other colors in the white, that’s why the OKI printers you referenced are sold as a pair, with one printer specifically dedicated ONLY to white toner, and the other for the CMYK print process.
Later,
K
“….Vinyl is different because (a) you can use a contact sheet to stick to the front of the lettering in order to apply entire words, then peel it off, or…”
You USE a contact sheet !
“…(b) the vinyl lettering is strong enough to withstand being handled by tweezers to be applied letter-by-letter if that’s the better way to go…”
It is strong BUT very flexible … you ‘touch’ it with tweezers you get a dimple or bump ! And no ya would not want to apply letter by letter ! Ya might as well then do rub-ons or slipperys then ! Vinyl sticks/clings right away and then stretches out of shape when you realize wrong position and attempt to move…
imho (and ‘experience’),
doug c
Kevin, thank you. I was trying to explain the fact that in colour printing there is a certain amount of black in the colours, and simply replacing the black cartridge for a white one would not yield the desired result. Your in depth explination clarifies what I was trying to explain and expands on it so much more then I could have explained.
Thanks
Doug Cannon said:
“….Vinyl is different because (a) you can use a contact sheet to stick to the front of the lettering in order to apply entire words, then peel it off, or…”
You USE a contact sheet !
“…(b) the vinyl lettering is strong enough to withstand being handled by tweezers to be applied letter-by-letter if that’s the better way to go…”
It is strong BUT very flexible … you ‘touch’ it with tweezers you get a dimple or bump ! And no ya would not want to apply letter by letter ! Ya might as well then do rub-ons or slipperys then ! Vinyl sticks/clings right away and then stretches out of shape when you realize wrong position and attempt to move…
imho (and ‘experience’),
doug c
Doug, you can overcome that by laying down a thin layer of water with a bit of dish soap in it. Then you can put the vynal letter on the model and move it around a bit. Once it’s where you want it, you press it down with a soft cloth or piece of foam, working out from the center, so you don’t trap any bubbles under the vynal.
Sounds like ya’ll have written of the ALPS MD or Micro-Dry equipment… ALPS printers are readily available at this time, I see new equipment, refurbished equipment and used offered on eBay, Amazon at the least (25 available on eBay right now) prices start at $200.00 or so and climb to $500-800 USD for USED serviced equipment complete with all requisite needs and cartridges. There are several companies offering service, the caveat in service is NEW print heads these are NOT available, but with the plethora of used equipment parts can be had nothing less.
I have an ALPS MD-5000, there is a learning curve but its not all that IMO. Mastering the art or producing text or symbols for decals is the larger effort as I see it. Far as I know any of the MD printers will suffice for our needs, some have better DPI numbers than others
Cartridge’s are plentiful at this time far as I can tell, whatever you want is available NOW… I bought a small quantity of white cartridges a couple of months ago for $12.00 each shipped from Japan.
Michael
Thanks David ! thought of the water 'n soap after posting, but did not bother to edit again to include 
Michael, yes, the ALPS printers are really the best technology for printing decals at the moment. Trouble is, ALPS is cutting off production of the cartridges in May, so what’s out there now is pretty much all that there will be. (I should probably buy one or two more sets before the prices begin to rise.) Support for the printers ended years ago, and now support for the consumables is finished. Add to that the notion that there are no new drivers coming out for the new operating systems. So, you’ve got an obsolete and unsupported technology being driven by obsolete and unsupported computers. That’s not exactly a recipe for longevity. I’ll run mine until either it or the vintage Mac that’s driving it goes belly up. I don’t print more than a few sheets a year, so I really don’t think I’ll run out of inks before that happens. Still, the question remains, “what else is there?”
Should my ALPS die tomorrow, I’d probably look to vinyl as the “next best thing” to replace it at home. The Cricut Explore will cut it (and print on it for color logos such as the one above). It won’t work for small lettering, though. For that, I’ll have to farm the work out to custom shops; either decals or dry transfers. I would imagine as the cost of the ALPS consumables rise, the cost of custom decal sheets from guys like Stan and Shawmut Car Shops who rely on the ALPS printers will go up accordingly. There will likely be a point where a sheet of decals will be about the same as a sheet of custom dry transfers, so I think the two will become fairly equal options, at least for one-color artwork. (So long as Canada doesn’t ban the chemicals used in the dry transfer process.)
Later,
K
Kevin
I’m on the same train as you with regard to utilization of my ALPS printer, I don’t anticipate anything more than occasional use for my needs. And I suspect most prospective users are on our train too… I fully comprehend your assertion that the MD technology lacks “longevity” at this juncture in time. While consumables maybe an issue in the future; its plausible an aftermarket manufacturer may feel the void. In the meantime I believe I’ve purchased enough cartridges to play with for many years to come… If my printer ceases to print decals, there are a few companies that presently buy them for parts, and the cartridges will likely be worth their present value for years to come if NOT more IMO.
Support is or maybe a problem, yet the ALPS user groups are viable for most of our needs and companies that sell and repair the MD equipment claim to offer their customers support.
There is a fully functional driver that only works with Win 10 and XP, its V2.3.2. The company in Canada that sales and repairs ALPS MD printers has validated it works.
I’m all for a NEW replacement printer capable of producing water slide decals on par with the ALPS Micro Dry technology, hopefully it will come to be sooner than later. Unfortunately its a niche market, so we’ll have to keep our fingers crossed.
Anybody know how OEM companies that MASS produce water slide decals make it happen?
Michael
“..(So long as Canada doesn’t ban the chemicals used in the dry transfer process.)…”
A company up here supplies requisite chems ?
All Out graphics in Vancouver–not for the chemicals, but they’re a printer I use for custom dry transfers.
Later,
K
I use my wife’s Crickut machine to cut out individual letter from white decal paper, then place them where I want them. I set the letters on a damp paper towel until the decal slides off the paper, then transfer the decal to my model. If I can get this silly picture system to work, I’ll attach a finished product! Wish me luck!
Very interesting on decals… Can the text be larger? Like to have more information Richard. Sometime when you have time to tell us more about it. Like to re-do some building fronts lettering in Wilsonville for the July tour if can.
Here is the photo you were trying to show. Noel
I have used the Cricut to cut out white vinyl, but this is another use, cutting white decal paper.
But the lettering in this picture is not white. Now I’m confused, but it doesn’t take much.