White, Chrome & Gold
Water Slide Decals at Home
Using DecalPRO
by Greg Holland
http://VSRNonline.com
| A Practical Way Of Making
White, Chrome & Gold Water Slide Decals at Home Using DecalPRO by Greg Holland http://VSRNonline.com |
|
One of the dreams of almost every scale modeler is to be able to make their own decals at home.
This has been theoretically possible for a
long time using silk screening.
But this was not a simple task, requiring
a photographic process to create the artwork.
Consequently, not many of us even tried.
When the home computer became common, and the
decal paper for inkjet printers appeared,
it became possible for many people to start
making their own decals. But the real catch is
that home inkjet printers don't print white.
The now discontinued ALPS printer is capable
of printing white, but is hard to use, expensive,
and the "ink" cartridges are getting hard
to find.
In 2005, a company named Pulsar came out with
the DecalPRO system of making dry transfer (rub-on)
"decals" at home. This is a very clever technique,
which uses a coating film over a photocopier or laserjet toner image,
which is then run through a heated laminator.
The heat softens the toner, and the coating film sticks to the
toner, producing the desired color. Then you
have to go through several more steps to create the dry transfers.
Here's a link to the DecalPRO site:
http://www.decalprofx.com
There is quite a bit of information on decals
on this site, but everything is heavily slanted towards dry transfers.
However, for me, water slide decals are far
more practical than dry transfers. I asked Frank at DecalPRO
about making water slide decals from the dry
transfers, and he told me that it absolutely wouldn't work.
Not satisfied with that answer, I rooted around
in a junk box until I found some 20 year old LetraSet rub-on
(dry transfer) letters, and a piece of blank
decal paper. 2 minutes later, I discovered that it did work,
but could be improved. So I ordered the DecalPro
system, and started experimenting.
To answer everyone's first question, yes- DecalPRO
does work! But it does take some practice to learn how to sucessfully
produce usable transfers. And after going
though all of the steps to make the transfers, it seems like a waste to
just stick them
on water-slide decal paper to use. So I thought
about it for awhile, and I finally came up with the solution to my problem.
Enough talk, let's get started. Here are the 7 steps:
Create the
Artwork
Setup
Print the
Image
Dry The Print
Color The
Print
Peel &
CleanUp
Coat With Liquid
Film