Microscale discontinuing N scale decals????

[peteski]

I can confirm that all the Microscale decals sets I have are printed using multi-pass silk screen process (each pass for each color).  Unless they purchased some modern printer, that is how their decals will be printed in the future.

Problem with most color printers is that they use a CYMK process (or similar with few more inks involved) where they print pretty much any shade of any color using only those inks. They do this using a halftoning process. That results in the image being made up from many small dots.  This is not much of a problem in larger scales but in N or Z scale those dots will easily show up when taking closeup photos. Silk screen printed decals use only solid inks so there is no halftoning.

There are some inkjet printers where the halftone frequency is fine enough (or they use a dot scattering technique) where the dots are almost invisible.  For example all the graffiti cars from Micro Trains are printed using this type of an ink jet printer (printing directly on the car side).  But that printer is not capable of printing white so the areas under where the graffiti will be printed are first tampo-printed with white ink.  That provides the base color for the ink jet-printed inks to show up correctly.  But as most ink jets do, the edges of the printed images are very fuzzy. This would not work at all for small N scale lettering like dimensional data for example.

I think that silk screened decals are here to stay for a while.

[C855B]

> I think that silk screened decals are here to stay for a while.

As do I.

Buzzword central: CMYK and Hexachrome (CMYKOG) to build the illusion of a full color gamut through halftone screen rotations are called "process color", and using individual inks in each finished color is referred to as "spot color". Combination of process and spot color is common in commercial printing, however, especially when your design calls for colors outside of the process gamut, such as fluorescents or metallics. The dot scattering technique you mentioned is called "stochastic screening".

BTW, with the advent of high-precision stainless steel fabrics, process color is commonly used in silkscreen production. Screen frequencies are not quite high enough for fine-scale decal production, so decals will be a spot-color world for the foreseeable.

[peteski]

C855, thanks for the technical explanation (for the unintiated). I own an Alps MicroDry printer so I have some ideas about spot colors and process colors (although I don't know all the buzzwords since I really don't need to know them while still having the knowledge how they work). Alps allows me to print multiple layers of spot colors using any ink cartridges. I can get quite a large range of spot colors.

[C855B]

I like the idea of having an Alps since it solves the white, silver and gold problem, but don't do enough decal work yet to justify one. I'm just starting to play around with laser-printed decals, being fortunate to model a road where the lettering color(s) happen to work real well with that approach. I can set the printer for heavier toner coverage with the transparency setting and get the opacity I need. Then I use Microscale for backup.

The distinctions bend slightly for lasers and thermal like your Alps. With each you can get "dotless process" because the fusing or deposition method melts the pigments together. Solids then become a pseudo spot color. You're still printing CMYK process for the color and get the corresponding CMYK gamut, but you have the white and metallics available as true spot colors. Nice stuff!

[ljudice]

BTW, just as mentioned - giving up on waiting for Microscale doesn't mean giving up decalling...

There are some great products out there from others (Highball, Oddballs, Shellscale, etc) - and if you have a decent vector graphics program, you can do your own.  In fact, in a way it's easier to do your own since you can set numbers, etc...  and avoid cutting tiny little bits of decals - which I really, really hate to do. 

You also don't need a printing device - there are plenty of services out there that will do it for you.

I've managed to track down a dozen or so stencil fonts - all from free sources - and matched the GESCO lettering and others like the Claytor font.  I use Illustrator, which allows for very sophisticated manipulation of lettering -  size of fonts, aspect ratios, distances between letters (I suspect you typesetting experts have better names for all of this).

So all is not lost, just a different game.  Lucky for us RR's are opting not to put logos on freight cars in many cases, making this easier....

[bbussey]

A couple of observations.

First, as mentioned, there are other decal manufacturers out there, both for custom work and with stock product line that cover specific prototypes.  Prime Mover Decals, for example, has a series of decals for Erie, DL&W and EL equipment that MicroScale never has done and would fill a lot of holes for modelers of those roads.

Second, MicroScale will do custom decal work without hesitation if not based on any of their existing sets.  In fact, if you have finished artwork, the turnaround is around five weeks and the pricing is very reasonable.  So if you design artwork for a 4x5 sheet loaded with a number of schemes, you can have your decals and sell enough of the excess stock to cover your cost.

[ai5629]

For those of us who are unable to do our own artwork, there is a company called "Solidesign" that does custom decal work (they advertise in the back of MR all the time).  All you have to do is send him photos of the prototype car and a scan of the car you want to apply the decals to.  They do the rest.  I had him do some custom Conrail gondola and hopper decals.  The decals look good, but I have not applied them yet.  So, I cannot speak to their ease of use or how they look on a finished model.  My order was rather complicated, so it ended up being costly.  However, I am looking forward to using them, since I am sick of piecing decals together on my Conrail models. Thanks.

Jeff

[peteski]

The distinctions bend slightly for lasers and thermal like your Alps. With each you can get "dotless process" because the fusing or deposition method melts the pigments together. Solids then become a pseudo spot color. You're still printing CMYK process for the color and get the corresponding CMYK gamut, but you have the white and metallics available as true spot colors. Nice stuff!

Well not quite.  While this is getting OT, I think that I should explain.  Alps does not melt the multiple pigments to obtain spot colors.  In standard (halftoned) CYMK color printing mode the pigments still show the halftoned dot patterns.  Here is an example (printed at  different halftone settings:



When using Alps' spot color printing, if the objects you're printing are defined in 100% saturated color (preferably black), the printed areas will have 100% (solid) coverage.  You can then overprint the previously printed spot color (even multiple times) with another color ink but that layers (not melts) the inks.  That is how you can get a wide gamut of solid spot colors.   it is a pain to do but the results are stunning.

Good tutorial of Alps printing is available on http://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/decals.htm

[C855B]

Unlike the Atlas forum, Pete, OT is a way of life on TRW.

OK, so the thermal process part of the Alps is only just enough to move the ink from the ribbon transfer medium to the paper, with no attempt to fuse or re-fuse blends. You're right, it remains "process color". We may be able to express it in the drawing program as spot color, but once it passes through the printer's rendering engine, the spot color is then broken down into the closest CMYK for execution as dot screens, i.e., process - but now not spot. "Spot color" is only when the ink in the printer is the finished color, such as putting down white or metallics, or 100% of a single color that happened to be in the process palette. I was hoping for some magic there, or - hope beyond hope - a selection of cartridges for spot work.

Tektronix (and Schlumberger?) once sold what we euphemistically called "crayon stick" color printers, where the ink supply was wax sticks very similar in appearance and texture to artist's pastels. These are long off the market, but now I am VERY curious if these would have been quite good for decals. It was a thermal process where the ink was micro-melted and sprayed, like an inkjet, but with some surface melting and blending. The finished image had the same waxy feel as the sticks, and you could feel the ink layering on the page. In further retrospect the ink chemistry was crude enough to have entertained a little bit of home brew. I was programming PostScript raster engines at the time, so it would have been a cinch to put together a spot-color-capable rasterizer corresponding to non-CMYK in the printer. Too bad I wasn't thinking "Ah! Decals!" 20 years ago.

Have you played around with the dye sublimation cartridges? Do they blend on the Alps? I worked on the first dye-sub printers on the commercial market 25 years ago - made by Dupont, IIRC - and some colors you could not see the dots, just the blended result. It was amazing, and color rendering was unmatched at that time, but they were quite slow and also very expensive for a "desktop" printer. I had one job come through that took 2 hours to print a single page, and the customer hit the ceiling when I had to charge him for the time... at $250 an hour. Ouch.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

I wish I knew someone who did Alps decals, I have a lot of artwork I need made.

I think Microscale gets a bad wrap. Every other major decal maker has gone out of business and its nice to see them fighting on. Decal sets once sold out like Amtrak and MBTA are back in stock.

[Scott Lupia]

I am awaiting a response from MicroScale about this.  When you posted this, I did a check and I am in the same boat.  Everything I need is discontinued as well.  Is this a ploy to make us all model Santa Fe or Pennsy?  Those decals seem to be alive and well.

Scott Lupia

I received a response from MicroScale regarding the discontinuing of product and the "out of stock" status.  Basically, the answer I got was telling me to subscribe to their "High Green Newsletter" and that that would inform me of new product and what is in and out of production.  No other information of any kind and no help whatsoever.  In fact, the part about discontinuing decals was completely ignored.  As an N-scale modeler who constantly is custom painting/building equipment, I have always done more with less so this will be no different.  There are always ways around problems like this.

Scott Lupia

[CoalPorter]

Has anyone ever contacted KADEE about their custom decal service?
I would like to have the " n scale " a few things.

[peteski]

Unlike the Atlas forum, Pete, OT is a way of life on TRW.

Good to know (I guess). This however could be annoying to the person who started the original thread, but what the heck... 

OK, so the thermal process part of the Alps is only just enough to move the ink from the ribbon transfer medium to the paper, with no attempt to fuse or re-fuse blends. You're right, it remains "process color". We may be able to express it in the drawing program as spot color, but once it passes through the printer's rendering engine, the spot color is then broken down into the closest CMYK for execution as dot screens, i.e., process - but now not spot. "Spot color" is only when the ink in the printer is the finished color, such as putting down white or metallics, or 100% of a single color that happened to be in the process palette. I was hoping for some magic there, or - hope beyond hope - a selection of cartridges for spot work.

Well, yes and no....  Alps MD printers are very strange creatures with lots of options and capabilities. It all depends on how your artwork is designed and what printer's mode you use for printing it.

Because of the poor process color resolution (especially for tiny N scale decals) most decal designers who use Alps end up printing using their own home-brew version of spot color printing.

Basically the technique is to come up with a combination of ink colors which when layered as solid (100% saturation) colors will result in the color you are really trying to achieve.   For example you are trying to print some imitation gold colored stripes for a B&M diesel loco to be applied over maroon painted body.  Either way, you first print a layer of white to give the inks which will be printed a proper color background (to block the maroon body color from showing through).  Then you could just design the artwork to have "imitation gold" color and tell the printer to print using its standard (process) color printing mode. The printer will then print appropriate halftoned percentages of CYMK inks to achieve the imitation gold color over white.  But this results in a poor quality decal (especially when photographed up close).  Just look at the samples I posted in my last message.  While this might be passable for let's say an O scale model decal, in N scale it just doesn't cut it.

Now enter the wonderful work do Alps Microdry alchemy.  We realized that by layering multiple passes of various inks in spot color mode, we can create a pretty wide range of solid colors (no halftones).  Take that imitation gold stripes decal.

First, design your artwork in black/white (objects to be printed will be black). Then you print that artwork using the following sequence (telling the printer to retain the paper after each pass):
1 pass of Metallic Gold (this is the base layer and since the metallic ink is fully opaque, there is no need for white ink undercoat).
1 pass of Vphoto Primer ink which is transparent clear and is strictly used to promote adhesion of the next layers of ink.
1 pass of standard white ink. When laid on top of another ink, white is not fully opaque, showing some of the underlaying color.
2 passes of standard yellow ink.
(for darker imitation gold use metallic cyan instead of gold)
This combination results in approximation of imitation (Dulux) gold.  It takes 5 printing passes but the resulting color is perfectly solid (as it is printed using spot colors).

There are extensive charts shown at the website I mentioned in my last post (although there are still many other combinations possible).  But the problem with these printers is that some of them have problems layering multiple passes of ink (the result is partially peeled ink from the precious layer). There are tricks to try to remedy that but I'm not going to get into this here.

When owning Alps one must do some unconventional thinking and lots of experimenting to achieve some really stunning results.

Tektronix (and Schlumberger?) once sold what we euphemistically called "crayon stick" color printers, where the ink supply was wax sticks very similar in appearance and texture to artist's pastels. These are long off the market, but now I am VERY curious if these would have been quite good for decals. It was a thermal process where the ink was micro-melted and sprayed, like an inkjet, but with some surface melting and blending. The finished image had the same waxy feel as the sticks, and you could feel the ink layering on the page. In further retrospect the ink chemistry was crude enough to have entertained a little bit of home brew. I was programming PostScript raster engines at the time, so it would have been a cinch to put together a spot-color-capable rasterizer corresponding to non-CMYK in the printer. Too bad I wasn't thinking "Ah! Decals!" 20 years ago.

That technology ended up with Lexmark.  It was used in a now discontinued Lexmark Phaser 8560 printers (now replaced by ColorCube 8570 printer). In my last job we had one and I was able to do some experimenting.  While the printing technology is very different than Alps' thermal transfer (Phaser is sort of like ink jet which squirts out heated wax-based ink), the results were very similar to Alps.  Both printers produce a shiny, waxy images and the ink is waterproof.  But unlike Alps, Phaser is strictly CYMK printer which IIRC used stochastic screening instead of standard halftones, resulting in a much smoother looking process color images.

But the Phaser does not offer white ink (or metallics) and it is incapable of retaining the print media in the printer for multi-pass printing. But that is a moot point since Phaser cannot print white undercoat  anyway.

Alps is still the lone printer in the consumer market which has the ability to retain the print media inside the printer for multiple print passes in perfect alignment.  That (along with its white and metallic capabilities) makes it perfect for a hobbyist wanting to produce good quality decals.  It is almost like this printer emulates the ability of screen-printing to lay down multiple layers of inks in perfect alignment.  Too bad that Alps no longer makes these printers and there is nothing even close available now or even in the near future.

Actually besides individual modelers, several small N scale manufacturers use Alps printers to produce their decals.

Have you played around with the dye sublimation cartridges? Do they blend on the Alps? I worked on the first dye-sub printers on the commercial market 25 years ago - made by Dupont, IIRC - and some colors you could not see the dots, just the blended result. It was amazing, and color rendering was unmatched at that time, but they were quite slow and also very expensive for a "desktop" printer. I had one job come through that took 2 hours to print a single page, and the customer hit the ceiling when I had to charge him for the time... at $250 an hour. Ouch.

Yes, I have. On compatible print media it results in continuous-tone color printout. It is totally useless for decals.  The dye sublimation process (also a thermal process) vaporises the dye on the ribbon and the vapor sublimates into the print media.  Since the print media needs to have special coating which will be capable of absorbing the vaporised dye, this process does not work on decal paper.  Not only that, the ribbons break if you attempt to use decal paper instead of the special DyeSub compatible photographic paper.  The other problem is that you couldn't print a layer of white before dyesub colors.  The other big problem is that unlike standard Alps inks (which are color fast), dyesub printouts will fade rather quickly when exposed to sunlight.


Daniel, you do know (at least here) someone who owns Alps printer (me) but I am so backed up on my current projects, I cannot offer my assistance. But if you have artwork already created (which is the most expensive and time-consuming part of decal manufacturing), you should be able to hire one of many printing services to do them for you. For the complete list of such providers see http://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/decals.htm about half way down the page. As someone mentioned earlier, even Kadee provides custom decal printing service (using Alps printer).

[C855B]

Amazing. Thanks, Pete. Super info. I exited the ink-on-paper part of the printing biz in 2001, and it's amazing how the accessible technologies have evolved since.

And I didn't realize the Alps was no longer made. For a long while my understanding that there was no longer a US importer, but you could still get a new one through the gray market. So that's evaporated, too, which is a real shame.

[CoalPorter]

Wow! Sounds like it would be easier just to get a pad printer.

I would like to know what n scale manufacture uses decals ?