Transfers (Decals)

Ian,

I had relatively good results, and resistance to splashing castor, with the "Avery Zweckform" Crystal Clear Labels, A4 size. Paid about 1,5 Euros per sheet.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Avery-L7781-25-Crystal-Clear-Labels-for-Laser-Printers-45-7-x-25-4-mm-Labels-/122242849608?hash=item1c763ddb48:g:J6IAAOSwo4pYEk9e

The link brings you to a UK seller.

This is what I used

https://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/decal-paper-c553/inkjet-water-slide-decals-c562/inkjet-water-slide-decal-paper-p11228

I won't have any problems with fuel on these models. The coverings I have used aren't fuel proof either.

The Avery labels look good but they are for laser printers.

I keep looking at laser printers for home but ........

I see what appears to be quite good ones for £175 but they aren't supplied with toner cartridges.

A black cartridge is £60 and then the three colour cartridges are £70 each. Su Howeverddenly a £175 printer becomes £445!

However, the toner would make for a much more resilient transfer.

For this and home i wouldn't waste my $$$$ on a laser printer , i have one sitting here now that for 225-? i think i paid lasted one yr. then i got to work on it several times filling the toner roller thing till it finally gave in to needing a toner cart. 175- !!! Konic a Minolta /// then on top of that a Brothers 69- 2 yr.s later on top of that sits a HP Envy 39- working fine now 6 months. The laser is nice and fast but.... i use Document wordpad, drop and drag, import ,paint ect.

I agree a laser printer is expensive..I am abusing the one of the company I work for, in the office.. .I think 1 or 2 A4 prints will not make our company broke

Random
printer thoughts...
I sincerely wish I did not have $$$$$$ printer dollars invested since 1981

But back then, the dot matrix, fast 5 page per min, was a must have.....hell I don't even remember the brand I paid $599 for but it would spit out fanfold pages at an impressive rate! probably was a Epson

Today we have a 4 or 5 year old Brother all in one Laser for the main house computer...networked and the beauty of the laser is it can sit years and the toner is still good when we need it

In each hobby shop are HP photosmart 5512s also all in ones ...Scan, copy, print Ink-- jets and these (ink jet) need to be used frequently or the investment in Ink is lost to age and drying/gumming...These are also networked versions

When we worked for the Army and went on assignment ...many times, to just do the job in the hotel room, we would hit wally world for a $39 canon ink jet...and leave it for the wait staff on departure... re inking them was more expensive than the NIB machine

Wrote it off as cost for convenience...bought from personal funds and no Gvmt reimbursement....(all of the sign out and shippable printers were giant dinosaurs weighing 20+Lbs and costing the extra baggage fees... ) I figure between my wife and her tests and my tests during the 15 years doing that job we saved the taxpayer several thousands $$$ with our personal convenience ethic/desire

This is Cyber Monday....IF you cannot score a real good Heavily discounted Laser Printer that has a decent Toner cartridge you are NOT trying...


other observations...and I have re tonered my Brother 6 times in the 4~5 years (@$65 per cartridge)

Black laser all in ones are a damned good value for the money IF you print less than a ream per year

There are NO economical Color printers
BUT the HP all in ones with 4 cartridges are pretty good
IF you cringe and use the very low e-bay counterfeit sets of ink.... accepting that some are duds right out of the box....

HP Ink is where the profit is.... and BTW pay real attention to EXPIRATION Date on any ORIGINAL ink purchases...paying half price for 2012 ink is a bad idea....80% failure rate... Thank you E-Bay buyer support

Other notes
We NEVER buy Photo quality paper
We Never buy Photo quality INk
We Waste a lot of paper experimenting with size...orientaton, scaling... I always invert the used paper and USE the OTHER side....WINK

Fred - we could be brothers from different mothers!! Very very similar experience with printers. Starting with a Okidata fan fold tractor drive dot matrix ink ribbon printer, to the cheapie dispose-a-printers. Slowly moved up into better quality ink jet printers at work. All the salespeople had HP5650 desktop ink jets for printing fancy proposals and quotes with a really handy supply of ink cartridges in the supply room. While the rest of us used a networked connection to a single HP laser jet with dual paper trays. Seems like my "part time" job was to keep the printer full of paper, and toner! ( because it sat on a cabinet just outside of my cubicle) All the computers, printers, cables  and spare ink cartridges made the move across the city to our new corporate offices.  A short time later after getting all the "bugs" worked out of the re-installed "IT" system, some really smart executive in the Corporate HQ, made the decision that ALL factory and Sales offices would be better served by a Single printer, provided by the Company selected printer provider and serviced by the same. Oooh, what a Three Ring Circus that turned out to be. The big bonus for me and my fellow sufferers was that HQ no longer was going to support our existing printers. That meant the IT department ( one really overworked ex Navy tech) had to "dispose" of all existing printers and supplies. Being part of the "One Team" of the corporate team building program, the one person IT department selected the necessary personal to complete that task at hand. The directive was to remove and discard all existing printers and supplies He did note that there was a dumpster on the far end of the parking lot for us to use, but if the printer became too heavy while in transit to the dumpster we could rest them on or in our cars trunk. Wink wink.  Needless to say, being part of the team , I pitched right in and helped complete the Corporate Directive. I ended up with my favorite friend the laser printer and its twin from the another department ( felt sorta like the guy with the red stapler in the movie) and a backseat full of HP 5650 color printers,along with, what turned out to be a five year supply of  toner and ink cartridges. 16 years later I still have both lazer printer (inoperative) and I'm down to Three of the 5650's and gave away all the others.....here is a free printer.....you just have to buy the ink!! Ha ha ha. Its almost the the way they should sell them anyway.   So, you want to know how I got so friendly with the girls at the blueprint shop down the street?  I was there picking up blueprints and printed proposals,  while the Service Tech from the Ingorant Big Machine company was either doing repairs or maintence on the "One" printer in our office!! Yea Team go, go, go.


PS: I always printed on both sides of the paper, for test sheets or non important print out

I would think that decent editing software is worth the expense.. but when it comes to printing the graphics for a model.. why not just take the reworked/re-sized image-file and your print-media to a print-shop and have them upload and laser-print the image(s) for you? For what you'd pay for a laser-printer and toner cartridges.. you could have a LOT of graphics printed at a shop. How many airplanes can you build per year to justify the cost of owning the equipment to print the graphics for them? Obsolescence is also a factor that has to be considered if you're only using the equipment for hobby use.

My wife Lynne helped me with the graphics for my Rare Bear Speed model. Some of the images needed the background-color removed. She figured that out. I was able to scale the images.. but she did the rest.. including printing the images on a laser-printer where she works. I used matte-clear full-sheet (8.5" x 11') laser-printable "shipping-labels" as my media.. top-coated with crystal-clear TF Lustre-Kote for glow-fuel exposure. I figured that the "matte" finish would provide a better base for the final Lustre-Kote to adhere to.

My example isn't a transfer/decal though.. it's a pressure-sensitive sticker. I was however pleased with the outcome.

I have been burned so many time downloading Freeware that I shy away now as a matter of experience...

Got forced to Windows 10 after loving Win7 and did do the revert back to 7 on one machine, but that was so painful I just left the other two on Win 10 and learned to live with the new interface

I usually can keep reinstalling my old copy of MS Office 2007 well beyond the 3 PC license... MS is actually pretty good about letting you use older software indefinitely accepting there are no security fixes anymore

Win 10 has enough built in editing (A Program called "Photos" that SUX but "CyberLink Photodirector 5" is pretty robust) and my copy of MS Office has Powerpoint, Word, and Picture Manager...each fairly good tools to edit, crop, resize, paint, draw, color correct etc etc......I did NOT activate the subscription version of MS office preloaded

AT work I had a copy of the real deal Adobe and hated it...same with all the very expensive CAD programs...real steep learning curves for a casual user