Inkjet or Laser for DIY decals

[philc]

Can anyone tell me the pros and cons of the two printer types beyond toner being way more expensive and having to seal inkjet prints under acrylic lacquer. I currently have a Canon pixma 925 with CMYB and pigment black cartridges it has a fantastic DPI up to 9600 and prints on glossy paper are fantastic. As an added bonus the compatible replacement cartridges cost buttons and seem to perform just as well. Thought I might be missing something as posts (at least the ones I have read) laser seems to be the preference.

 

Cheers

Phil

[Steve Noble]

The only benefit of a laser printer is that the decals are waterproof straight from the printer, so no need to seal them with anything. They're also a fair bit tougher and resilient to rough handling. Other than that you'll probably get a sharper print with an inkjet printer as the dpi is usually much higher than laser. But all that aside I still use a laser for any home made decals that I print. If you use a good image to print from the detail is still good enough and sharp enough to make nice decals. Problem with both is that the decals are very thin and pretty transparent. So if you're placing them on a white background no problem, but darker base colours are harder to cover. You can print them on white decal paper and print an edge colour the same as the background colour to get better coverage..

Edited October 16, 2019 by Steve Noble

[Pin]

For many years I prefered my Canon inkjet to Laser. But the technology moves forward and now I practically see no difference in quality between my inkjet and laser printed custom decals. 

[Chief Cohiba]

On 10/16/2019 at 11:46 PM, Steve Noble said:

The only benefit of a laser printer is that the decals are waterproof straight from the printer, so no need to seal them with anything. They're also a fair bit tougher and resilient to rough handling. Other than that you'll probably get a sharper print with an inkjet printer as the dpi is usually much higher than laser. But all that aside I still use a laser for any home made decals that I print. If you use a good image to print from the detail is still good enough and sharp enough to make nice decals. Problem with both is that the decals are very thin and pretty transparent. So if you're placing them on a white background no problem, but darker base colours are harder to cover. You can print them on white decal paper and print an edge colour the same as the background colour to get better coverage..

Many thanks for sharing your experience, as I'm about to start with the self printing decals on my own with my Lexmark laser printer I would like to continue with this.

My setup: I will use as often as possible vector drawings as a printing source, this will be possible for numbers, roundels, most crests,  stripes, maybe patterns like checkerstripes or the like. As for complex graphics like nose art or the like I will use pixel graphics, of course. Most likely I will use Corel Draw, as I'm very familiar with that, just right now facing the issue that I can't use my old version any longer. But my guess is I will just acquire a newer version, the home edition is not that expensive. 

What I don't now yet and would like to start a discussion upon, is, how to start. More specifically to exchange on what are the best papers, what challenges did you and others face, or other things one wouldn't consider at the beginning.

The first specific question is, as a starter, what paper for inkjet you made good experiences with?

 

 

[Giorgio N]

Personally I've always had great results with Bare Metals's Experts's Choice decal paper. I've tried others but I've always got back to this brand.

I've used both their laser and inkjet papers and never had problems... until I got a different inkjet printer for which I never got the settings right (one of those Epsons with 6 cartridges). As today I mostly print with the laser, it's not been much of a problem...

Personally I prefer using a laser printer as not needing an extra protective layer means that the decals are much thinner. What others have said about difference in quality however is true.. or better, both can give great quality, but for the same money generally a laser printer will have a worse resolution.

Back to the paper, the Expert's Choice paper is very thin and yet quite robust, so can survive handling. As every other brand, it's available for both inkjet and laser printers in both clear and white variants. The white paper for laser is not opaque enough for my taste and for white the best I've seen is the one from Testors,.. that however may be hard to find in Europe today. Said that, I rarely print on white paper as I prefer to mask the white areas and print on clear paper.

 

Challenges: the worst challenge, particularly with inkjet printers, is to get all settings right ! Print quality, paper type and thickness, speed, smoothing... if you're lucky you'll find that the generic "photo" setting of the printer is fine. If so then you're very lucky ! Most times one sheet will be used only to find the best printer setting for that specific decal paper.

As you'll be using a laser, finding the right settings is easier and faster, inkjets are more tricky in my experience. Of the various settings, the one I found most critical is the selection of the right paper thickness.. of course the printer will not have a specific thickness setting, but you'll have things like "light cardboard" and so on. With a laser you can generally just print at the maximum resolution, however there could be the risk of toner not sticking to the paper correctly.. when this happens it's a mess because the toner will stick to the rollers and leave marks on the following sheets. As said before, do a few tests to see what maximum resolution you can use without problems.

With this in mind, never ever pass a printed sheet through the printer twice ! The heat may damage the first print and get toner on the rollers. No problem in cutting a bit of the sheet and reuse the rest, of course after having adjusted your page settings if you have to draw new stuff.

 

One thing to keep in mind: laser printed decals do not require any sealant as they will not smear in the water. However the printed artwork is delicate and can be scratched easily. You may want to spray a clear coat over them if you're afraid that you may damage them while handling the decal. I very rarely do this but there have been a couple times when I wished I did

Speaking of application issues, always keep in mind that once you have cut the decal you want to apply, the film is as wide as the part you cut ! This means some more care when removing the decal from the backing paper as there's the risk of the film curling under the paper.

 

Sofware: I use Corel Draw myself and IMHO it's a great tool ! The only aspect I find disappointing is that this software does not allow me to use the full width of the sheet because of the way it handles the margins when printing. Not a big issue of course, just means I waste a bit more paper. Of course, make sure that you've set the print at the actual size of the objects, with no automatic resizing... it may sound stupid but I did this by accident a couple times...

 

[Pin]

10 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

Personally I've always had great results with Bare Metals's Experts's Choice decal paper.

Way too thick. Plus to my knowledge they don't produce the paper themselves but resell; I have surely bought exacltly the same paper (notice the watermark on the back of a sheet) for cheaper.

 

Consider

https://drdecalmrhyde.com.au/shop/super-thin-laser-waterslide-decal-paper/

 

I wish I could find something comparable closer to home but the quality is worth waiting the package from down under. 

 

 

[Giorgio N]

3 minutes ago, Pin said:

Way too thick. Plus to my knowledge they don't produce the paper themselves but resell; I have surely bought exacltly the same paper (notice the watermark on the back of a sheet) for cheaper.

 

Consider

https://drdecalmrhyde.com.au/shop/super-thin-laser-waterslide-decal-paper/

 

I wish I could find something comparable closer to home but the quality is worth waiting the package from down under. 

 

 

 

Too thick ? The sheets I bought from them over the last few years have been some of the thinnest I've ever seen, so much that sometimes they can be tricky to work with. Sure way thinner than any commercial decal.

Wonder if they changed thickness at some point ? The sheets I'm using are a couple year old

[Pin]

Good if it is so, I bought from them only once (about 5 years ago) and was disappointed because I was delivered exactly the same paper I was hoping to replace. 

 

[Giorgio N]

7 minutes ago, Pin said:

 

 

Consider

https://drdecalmrhyde.com.au/shop/super-thin-laser-waterslide-decal-paper/

 

I wish I could find something comparable closer to home but the quality is worth waiting the package from down under. 

 

 

 

I'll give them a try, I've seen them before on Ebay and delivery is very reasonable. Sure delivery time may be longer but I can wait

[Pin]

I have a theory - as I said above I switched from inkjet to laser as the quality of affordable laser colour printing has raised considerably in last 5 years; it may be (just my speculation) that laser capable decal film can be made thinner than inkjet; therefore it may be not quite correct to compare inkjet paper I used to buy earlier with laser paper I use now. 

[Pin]

10 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

I'll give them a try, I've seen them before on Ebay and delivery is very reasonable

Will be very interesting to see your conclusion.