Decals

Hi guys, sometime I come back...
Well, I like re-paint an old F7 Marklin. There are so many possibility I know, but where can I find decals or dry-transfer to complete the paint scheme?
Thanks so much.

Paolo

Italy

P.S. To improve my orrible english, me and my wife will spend our holiday in Great Britain, in a school.

Paolo,
There is also the question: what railroad will you be modeling? There are a lot of possibilities. If you have a color printer, you can printed your own, if you can use the white decal material or will be applying the decal over white paint. Some roads had "Big Logos" and "little Logos" and I've found the HO scale "Little" will work for Z scale "Big" on commerical decals from people like Microscale. This works for me on the Western Pacific.
Finally, there are people who print custom decals, but I'm afraid I have no experience with them.

Hope this helps,

Mark

PS: It's "...my wife and I...", but don't let it bother you, it seems like about half of all Americans make that mistake.

PSS: Did you ever get the NCE DCC unit?

Here's a source: Link

With the Alps printers long gone, I did a quick search for any new alternatives for lasers that print white. I found this one that was released about 6 months ago:

www.oki.com/en/press/2011/12/z11090e.html

www.okidata.com/mkt/html/nf/proColor920wt.html

It looks like is is specifically designed for transfers such as decals. The printer is not inexpensive, but it is still interesting.

Rob

Rob,
Very interest. From research I did last fall, Epson and HP both make a similiar units, similiar capacities and similiar price. The issue I have is that the toner cartidges have a limited printer life, and were rather pricey themselves. One would need to print at least 1000 pages per month to be financially viable...and that's A LOT of Z scale decals.

Mark

Rob, at $7500.00 for a printer... I'll stick with used ALPS printers. The trick in making these older Alps printers viable is knowing what to look for when buying them and knowing how to repair them if something goes wrong.

Joe

Joe, Mark, I am with you both. I just worry about the time when the Alps finally give up the ghost. At that price point, I can't see a viable way to get your money out of it by offering decals. It would be so nice to have a less expensive option.

Rob

Rob,
I really don't think you'll find these printers going down in price (as friends tell me the professional printers support the printer R&D), Meg has promised new good stuff out of HP's professional printer group. But for the price, it's about the same as a laser unit, or a low end 3D printer, or one of each of the AZL brass locos.
Some other thoughts: Does anyone know how Microscale does their decals? Also, I seems to me that the printer MTL showed us in 2010 could do decals. Maybe a business opportunity for them?
Joe,
I declined purchasing an Alps last fall because I came across an end of notice for the white ink in a discussion group. Maybe you can comment on the ink availability.

Paolo,
All this is probably more than you need to know. Depending on the decal design, you can do some very good decals on you home printer and as I mentioned, many times decals from other scales can be used. Although, since you are in Italy, can you get U.S. railroad decals in the hobby shops?

Mark

markm wrote: ... Meg has promised new good stuff out of HP's professional printer group.

Mark

Wow, Mark! Impressive! You know the President and Chief Executive Officer of HP well enough to call her by her nick-name? Did she personally tell you of HP's next products? Please ask her when her company is going to make a turn-around so investors can start making money again.

thanks for all, I thinking of give me nce dcc for Xmas.
A laser printer color is not a good idea, I think...

markm wrote: Rob,
Joe,
I declined purchasing an Alps last fall because I came across an end of notice for the white ink in a discussion group. Maybe you can comment on the ink availability.

Mark,

Yes, the ink was discontinued years ago. I took this into consideration when I bought a couple of Alps printers well over a year ago (one of them I needed to repair and I learned a lot along the way). However, I figured that I would just stock up on enough ink to hold me through all of my Z scale needs and probably enough to hold out until a less expensive new brand of white printing printer was on the market… and as we see, we’re all still waiting.

Alps-supplies.com in New Zealand is still sitting on almost 2000 of the regular white ink cartridges at less than $20.00 per (plus s/h), (as well as almost 2000 of the “wrong” type of white (the opaque)). I’ve dealt with them and there were no problems. Although I see they are fewer in numbers than in the past, Alps white can also still be found on eBay at about the same price.

Joe

Sorry, I don't know Meg personally, although if she doesn't do something with HP, she'll get to know me at the next shareholders meeting.
The first name/nickname thing is actually a silicon valley slap in the face: seen you on TV so much (too much) that we should on a first name basis. BTW: I've never heard the founders of HP called Bill and Dave.
I still know enough people in The Valley, that I get to hear some of the stories between the lines of the press releases. It was suggested to me that in the near future HP will have a line of professional graphics printers for SMB with the existing printers, like the Oki being the middle of the product line. We'll have to see.

Mark

Paolo,
A home inkjet printer can do a very good job on many decals at a much lower cost than a laser printer or a decal service. If you want to do that, post some specific details of the decals you want to print and I think we can help.

Mark

markm wrote: Rob,
Does anyone know how Microscale does their decals?

AFAIK, they use an offset printer. Same principle as printing newspapers and magazines, but small, like an A.B. Dick (which is sometimes called an offset duplicator).