Help with decal printing

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quaffin1

Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
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8
Location
Apex, NC, USA.
Hello all,
I am trying my hand a making some decals for pens. But so far, not happy with results.
I have tried "Testors" clear and white decal paper found at local hobby shop. These
are inkjet printer type. I have an HP inkjet printer here at home which prints nice
photos, but when I try printing decals the logos seem to all have microdots in the ink and the resolution of decals is not very good. When I print the same logos onto photo paper they look excellent, but the decal paper not so good.
I think it is the Testors decal paper? Also it could be the inkjet printer not being the best way to go compared to a Laser printer.
I was looking at going online to get some different decal paper. I see some use papilio brand of decal paper, do any of you have any suggestions?

In order to print the laser type, I will have to go somewhere to use a laser printer, not sure where it would be best. Have heard that some places are reluctant to allow you to print decals on there expensive Color laser printers/copiers. As it could jam up there printer.
Others say hot rollers on commercial printers can cause the decals to stick on rollers.
Some suggest Best to use on printers that have just been turned on and not gotten hot yet.
I will have to buy decal paper online, as can't find any local other than the Testors brand.

I mainly have been trying to do college logos, or military logo types. So when reducing the size of these logos, the resolution needs to be good or else details get blurred. So far my inkjet trials have not been satisfactory.

Any tips are appreciated.
 
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Hey quaffin1,
You are in my old neck of the world. I lived in Lillington growing up.
I do decals and as long as I set the printer to glossy paper and print quality to high it works out great. Here is one I made for my brother up there. I started with the Testors stuff but now buy full size sheets and use Power point to lay them out. It gives more flex on where on the page you put them. I use a Cannon inkjet.
 

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That looks great, but I tried those settings on my inkjet and still not real happy with the detail in my decals.
What decal paper have you found works good?
I think the Testors just has a slightly rough or pitted surface that may be effecting my printing. Do you use inkjet or laser printing?

My wife has some cousins in Lillington, they are the "Long"s
 
Sorry not paying attention, I see you said using Cannon inkjet. I also am using powerpoint and looking to buy the full sheets of decal paper. I will be ordering soon online. Just not sure whether to go with decalpaper.com or papilio or other retailers that I have found. Any paper suggestions?

I have some highend adobe photo software that I have used to play with the images, so I think the images are fine, as you shrink them down to pen size, the logo text has to stay sharp or else it gets so blurry that it is hardly readable on the decals that I have printed.
I am trying to print some USMC logos and the text is not coming out as sharp as I would like.
 
I use decalpaper.com. Try doing print head cleaning and alignment. I notice on the computer it looks blurry but when I print out a plain paper test they look sharper. So far they come out the same on the decal paper. The quality of the orignal has some to do with it also. My relates are the "Roberts". What size are you making the logo?
 
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--- I use the same set up as Rick Roberts does (get my paper from decalpaper.com) and having very good luck, so far.

--- attached a picture of (two views of same pen) a pen I made for a retired Maryland State trooper.

Joe
 

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I had that problem and I was getting really frustrated until I changed the printer properties to print photo. Most inkjet printers have a default setting to print a lower resolution since most of the printing is text. When you print, go under properties and select photo or best photo (at least that is what my Epson Workforce 600 Inkjet printer allows me to do).... Hope it works...nothing more frustrating than not getting something that seems so easy to not work like it should!!! Good luck!

Bob
 
Thanks for the replies.
I have been downloading the logos as jpeg images. I then do any editing to the logos in Adobe Photoshop. Then Paste them into powerpoint so that I have 10 or 20 different logos and get them to the proper size.

What I was trying to do was apply several different images onto a pen blank.
For instance, my uncle was a graduate of NC State, a Federal Forest Ranger and also was
in the US Army.
So I wanted to make him a pen with NCSU logo, Forest Service logo, and US Army logo.
Placing the logos randomly around the pen blank. So these logos have been shrunk to
definitely smaller than dime, but larger than pencil eraser. May be that I am trying to make them too small??
I then print them onto paper first to get alignment and check quality. They look fine at this point. I then cut out a piece of Testor decal paper to size and tape it over the logos on the paper printout.
Then refeed the same printed sheet back thru printer and decals print onto decal paper. but as i wait for ink to dry, the ink seems to form into small dots. Looks like resolution is better just after printing, but gets worse as ink is drying.
This is a pretty nice HP inkjet printer/copier with the 5 separate color cartridges.
I set printer for Best quality and Photo paper.

Also, When I print the same image on actual 4 x 6 glossy photo paper they look awesome, but not the same resolution on the Testor decal paper. I tried both the white and Clear Testor paper.
 
---- Have you tried printing on the decal paper directly (not taping it to another pre printed paper sheet)?

---- there may be some effect from the tape such as adhesive transfer, decal paper movement?

Joe
 
No Joe, I haven't tried the decal paper by itself. these Testor pages are half sheets
at 5.5" x 8.5"
Other people had said they did it like I was trying, in order to save the decal paper, with luck. I was not cutting out small pieces for each logo, but would
use a piece approx. 3" x 4" to cover like 10 logos at a time..
I don' think the decal paper was moving,
But I will look into trying it without taping it to the paper sheet.
Thanks.
 
Rick, I would typically wait til the ink was dry, maybe 30-60 minutes and then apply the several light misting coats of semi-gloss lacquer spray. I was told this was basically the same as the fixative, just less expensive.
But the problem with the decal resolution was always before even applying the fixative.
Should I be spray the fixative immediately after printing, before the ink dries?
And maybe I should buy some true fixing spray.
I thought this fixative was just to stop the ink from running when you cut them out and put them into water for sliding onto the pen blank.
 
I have had good luck with lasertran paper. It's a waterslide decal and does not need the spray fixative. It's the only paper I could find locally and am reasonably happy with it.

http://www.lazertran.com/products/lazertran_products_inkjet.htm

Dries with a white background but oil based poly will make the background clear so the woodgrain will show through. I finish with several coats of CA.

A couple samples. The printing on the yellow label is clear enough to be read although small.
 

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What you describe sounds like waterbased inkjet ink beading up on a non absorbant substrate. If you can find a friend with a pigment based printer like an Epson Ultrachrome set like mine you can tailor the ink levels to get best resolution and theres no beading of the ink as far as I can tell.
 
I have had the exact same results with a certain type of photo paper printing photos. The ink does not penetrate the coating for some reason and lays on top of the paper. The surface tension on the ink draws it into small balls that just sit there until either it dries or gets smeared. My only solution was to switch ink supplier or paper supplier. (I refill my own carts) It sounds like you have an incompatibility between the HP ink and Testor's paper. Since you are stuck with HP, try a different brand of paper. My $0.02 today. Best of luck.
Charles
 
ctubbs and Gary:
What you both are describing sounds very much like what I am experiencing. I think inkjet
printers by design spray ink in small dots (don't they?) But usually they don't show up as
such when printed in higher resolution. In my case it is acting like the dots are beading up
and sitting on the surface of the decal paper, or maybe the Testor decal paper surface has a coarse texture to it that is not allowing a good resolution.

I think I will: 1. try another inkjet printer
2. get some different decal paper
3. maybe look at using a laser printer with the proper laser paper.
 
Try and Epson Printer

There is a difference between injet printers and the inks used. Photgraphers that I know prefer using Epson printers since they get better quality prints. If I remember right Hp uses dies and Epson Pigments, which provide sharper and more durable prints on photopaper. I have both and the decals I have done come out better on my Epson, than my HP. YMMV
 
I got a question for ya'll. I am wanting to try to put a logo and initials for a customer and I don't have powerpoint on my puter. I am wanting to do this kind of work that I am reading about on this thread and am curious if ya'll know of another program that I would be able to use to do this such work. I went to Office Depot today and bought a pack of 10 window decals for $4.oo. It says on the pack that it can be put on shirts, mugs, paper and so forth so I thought it might work for pens. If anybody has any answers for a program to use I'd appreciate the feedback.
 
Woodchuck said:
I got a question for ya'll. I am wanting to try to put a logo and initials for a customer and I don't have powerpoint on my puter. I am wanting to do this kind of work that I am reading about on this thread and am curious if ya'll know of another program that I would be able to use to do this such work. I went to Office Depot today and bought a pack of 10 window decals for $4.oo. It says on the pack that it can be put on shirts, mugs, paper and so forth so I thought it might work for pens. If anybody has any answers for a program to use I'd appreciate the feedback.
Click to expand...

Try OpenOffice. It a free program that does everything MS Office does, including Powerpoint. www.openoffice.org
 
Woodchuck said:
I got a question for ya'll. I am wanting to try to put a logo and initials for a customer and I don't have powerpoint on my puter. I am wanting to do this kind of work that I am reading about on this thread and am curious if ya'll know of another program that I would be able to use to do this such work. I went to Office Depot today and bought a pack of 10 window decals for $4.oo. It says on the pack that it can be put on shirts, mugs, paper and so forth so I thought it might work for pens. If anybody has any answers for a program to use I'd appreciate the feedback.
Click to expand...
There is a free program called gimp. Just do a google search. It seems to be a very powerful program. I've used to do a few things including some touch up on photo's. It does have a learning curve, and I'm no expert. But you can't beat the price.
 
About vector graphics

Woodchuck said:
I got a question for ya'll. I am wanting to try to put a logo and initials for a customer and I don't have powerpoint on my puter. I am wanting to do this kind of work that I am reading about on this thread and am curious if ya'll know of another program that I would be able to use to do this such work. I went to Office Depot today and bought a pack of 10 window decals for $4.oo. It says on the pack that it can be put on shirts, mugs, paper and so forth so I thought it might work for pens. If anybody has any answers for a program to use I'd appreciate the feedback.
Click to expand...

When printing images for pens, you usually have to scale the size of the image or logo down significantly. If the image that you're scaling is a jpg, png or gif etc, then it is a raster (bitmap) image. Raster images scale very poorly because they loose detail and clarity as they get smaller or larger.

Vector images on the other hand, are infinitely scalable with zero loss of resolution. Vector graphics usually have an SVG extension. Vector graphics require different software. Lots, if not most of the military insignias are available in vector (SVG) format. The most widely used open source (free) vector software is called Inkscape. Adobe Illustrator (not free) is the vector equivalent of Photoshop. And Corel Draw (not free) is the most popular vector graphics software.

There IS a learning curve for the vector capable software but it is definitely worth the effort. When you get a clean, crisp miniature version of an image to use on a decal you'll know it was time well spent.
 
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Geppetto said:
Woodchuck said:
I got a question for ya'll. I am wanting to try to put a logo and initials for a customer and I don't have powerpoint on my puter. I am wanting to do this kind of work that I am reading about on this thread and am curious if ya'll know of another program that I would be able to use to do this such work. I went to Office Depot today and bought a pack of 10 window decals for $4.oo. It says on the pack that it can be put on shirts, mugs, paper and so forth so I thought it might work for pens. If anybody has any answers for a program to use I'd appreciate the feedback.
Click to expand...

When printing images for pens, you usually have to scale the size of the image or logo down significantly. If the image that you're scaling is a jpg, png or gif etc, then it is a raster (bitmap) image. Raster images scale very poorly because they loose detail and clarity as they get smaller or larger.

Vector images on the other hand, are infinitely scalable with zero loss of resolution. Vector graphics usually have an SVG extension. Vector graphics require different software. Lots, if not most of the military insignias are available in vector (SVG) format. The most widely used open source (free) vector software is called Inkscape. Adobe Illustrator (not free) is the vector equivalent of Photoshop. And Corel Draw (not free) is the most popular vector graphics software.

There IS a learning curve for the vector capable software but it is definitely worth the effort. When you get a clean, crisp miniature version of an image to use on a decal you'll know it was time well spent.
Click to expand...
I just downloaded Incscape, and it does a great job of resizing images. Exactly as Geppetto describes.
 
Are you sure you are printing on the correct side of the sheet, if memory serves if you print on the wrong side (smoth) you get the problem you are talking about of the ink forming small balls.
 
quaffin1,
I've printed on the testor decal paper and have had hit and miss success with it as well. I use an HP and Canon Photo printer.
I'm just down the road from you if you want to try one of my printers. Or you can send me the file and I'll try it. Maybe to a local shop visit with you as well.
thanks
Kevin
Holly Springs, NC
 
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I am getting slower as I age, so please forgive this late post. I just remembered that it is imperative to keep your fingers off the surface of photo paper. The finger prints WILL cause the ink on some papers to not adhere to the surface and penetrate. The glossy paper must be handled by the edges or back to prevent this problem. It will be located to the area of the print, however. Sorry for the forgetfulness.
Charles
 
decals

sorry to just jump right in, i don't have anything to offer but i would like to ask; what is the normal size range for a decal. I know they are different sizes depending on the style of pen. I've been looking on the net to get some answers on this but here is the only place i can ever seem to get them. Thanks for help i can get on this and sorry i don't have anything to contribute on this, i'm just trying to learn.

Jim
 
theartist07 said:
sorry to just jump right in, i don't have anything to offer but i would like to ask; what is the normal size range for a decal. I know they are different sizes depending on the style of pen. I've been looking on the net to get some answers on this but here is the only place i can ever seem to get them. Thanks for help i can get on this and sorry i don't have anything to contribute on this, i'm just trying to learn.

Jim
Click to expand...


I find that the best size for a decal is also dependent upon the image itself. I usually print the image in several different sizes onto regular paper and then look at these drafts next to an equivalent pen before I decide which size to print onto a decal.
 
@ ribanett, bsea, and geppetto, I appreciate the feedback. I will take a look at the free programs and see if the will work. I got on my wifes laptop and she has powerpoint and played with words but I dont have access to her puter all the time due to her schooling so Ill give it a shot. Another question, I made one up today with her name for her pen and I noticed that it wasnt sticky and stiff plastic that didnt really want to take shape around the pen too easy. My question is how do you get it to stick and not want to come off the pen. Someone might have answered this question in the earlier responses but I didnt see.
 
Ohh and I tried to put pics of my finished pens on here and it says, "Bad File - No File or File is too Large or of the Wrong MIME Type". HELP, what do I need to do to get them on here. I have quite a few pics and don't have any clue what to do.
 
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