Does anyone do decal work for hire?

[dieselfan1]

I'm looking to get some conspicuity stripes on some Z Scale boxcars and hoppers. Maybe some renumbering of a few cars also.
Does anyone do this still?
I would supply the decals when I ship the cars along with a postage paid sticker for return.

[ednadolski]

I've done this sort of thing:



Please PM if interested.


Ed

[Jesse6669]

I've done N and T scale model RR decals, plus assorted aircraft and ships.  I'm now modeling in Z so would probably be able to help you out--I'm likely going to be makings some of my own for various I&O and other patch jobs.  Let me know. 

[RockGp40]

I've done N and T scale model RR decals, plus assorted aircraft and ships.  I'm now modeling in Z so would probably be able to help you out--I'm likely going to be makings some of my own for various I&O and other patch jobs.  Let me know.

Jesse has done quite a few custom decals for me.

[randgust]

Uh, I've just taken Microscale striping and cut it up with a jig to get uniform length.   HO sets work better than N for N and a lot more material.

White and yellow are beasts to get right, home brew laser or inkjet doesn't cut it.

[Jesse6669]

Just to clarify--I don't print the decals, I just do the artwork and provide vector graphics to a printer.  My preference has been Fusion Scale Graphics--they do a great job--but several others also do custom printing.  My understanding is most of them use high-end CMYKW inkjets (or lasers? I'm not sure).  A lot of my preference for Fusion has to do with the thinness of the film and the service.  I find their white printing is excellent and opaque.  They also do metallic colors and masks, though I haven't tried to make either. 

The issues I occasionally notice, especially with very fine details and small lettering, is the artwork pushes the technology to its limits.  The calibration of the machine has to be perfect. When printing light colors like yellow they do indeed seem to use a 2-pass process with a white background going down first, then the yellow on top.  If it's off a micron, there can be "shadowing" -- an effect like the numbers on an aircraft carrier with white on black.  Also, sometimes the visibility of dots of blended colors (CMY) are visible.  By contrast, I believe Microscale screen-prints all of it's decals using solid ink colors so there are no CMY artifacts.  But of course custom MicroScale decals are expensive and you'll have a steep minimum.   

Here's an example of a set for a 1:450 GG1.  To put the size in perspective: the ruler in cm and 1:220 feet, and that this entire sheet pictured is about the size of a credit card; the stripes are about 1mm thick.  At normal viewing distance the yellow looks fine and the red stripe crisp;  But zoom in and you'll see dots in the yellow to darken it to achieve the shade desired, and bumps on the side of the red stripe because that's the limit of the printer's resolution, along with white visible behind it to keep it a good solid red.  The stripe edges in the artwork are straight-line vectors.


Then close up:   



As suggested by @randgust you might find the right spacing of an N scale stripe and/or cut them down as needed.   

All that being said: Printing an A6 quarter sheet is around $10 so.

[peteski]

The issues I occasionally notice, especially with very fine details and small lettering, is the artwork pushes the technology to its limits.  The calibration of the machine has to be perfect. When printing light colors like yellow they do indeed seem to use a 2-pass process with a white background going down first, then the yellow on top.  If it's off a micron, there can be "shadowing" -- an effect like the numbers on an aircraft carrier with white on black.  Also, sometimes the visibility of dots of blended colors (CMY) are visible.  By contrast, I believe Microscale screen-prints all of it's decals using solid ink colors so there are no CMY artifacts.  But of course custom MicroScale decals are expensive and you'll have a steep minimum.   

Those decals look like they use use halftone CYMK printing with white undercoat. You can see that the colors are composed of small dots. Probably a laser printer.

Unlike the screen-printing process (Microscale's) which uses opaque inks without a need for white undercoat, the CYMK halftone printing uses translucent inks and requires a white undercoat for the color images to be opaque (so they are unaffected by the color of the surface they are applied over).  That often results in slight misalignment of the white undercoat. That is especially apparent in very small objects.

I have the same problem with my Alps MicroDry printer which also prints white undercoat under the translucent color inks.

[altohorn25]

Great guy and a great product:

https://circuscitydecals.com/