|
Post by shoofly on Mar 24, 2013 12:31:25 GMT -8
chris@microscale.com
|
|
|
Post by trebor on Mar 25, 2013 7:15:34 GMT -8
Chris, have you tried spraying Decal Saver? If so what did you thin it with?
|
|
|
Post by Mark R. on Mar 25, 2013 12:15:19 GMT -8
Chris, have you tried spraying Decal Saver? If so what did you thin it with? Alcohol .... Mark.
|
|
|
Post by trebor on Mar 25, 2013 13:01:16 GMT -8
I tried alcohol a long time ago and found the DuPont acrylic laquer thinner with retarder added to provide a beter high gloss finnish on the decal. Alcohol dried very fast perhaps too fast and sometimes got a flatter finnish like Herald King decals.
|
|
|
Post by shoofly on Mar 25, 2013 14:14:51 GMT -8
I never tried decal saver. I personally use liquid decal film thinned with lacquer thinner
|
|
|
Post by Mark R. on Mar 25, 2013 16:31:24 GMT -8
I personally prefer the liquid decal film applied with a soft brush for small fixes and a one inch foam brush for whole sheets .... that is how Highball Graphics seals their printed decals to make them more durable when handling.
Mark.
|
|
|
Post by John Sheridan on Mar 28, 2013 10:19:36 GMT -8
Mark probably does this as well, but when cutting a line that absolutely has to be straight, I begin with a new blade. The only tearing and shattering issues here have been with sets that were several years old; yellow seems to be the touchiest color. Most of the cracking issues are usually due to the decals being improperly stored (either @ home or the LHS). Decals can & due dry out if improperly stored. I'm sure Chris can give you a better idea,but all of the Reds through Yellows have a white background applied to them. Once-in-awhile the pressmen will miss the registration as the white layer is sometimes hard to see once you have several colors over it. As for those Guilford decals. More than likely what happening is that the plates have not been updated before Vicky & Co. started checking for overprinting during the creation of the artwork. Chris would know better as he can simply walk into the back room & look.
|
|
|
Post by John Sheridan on Mar 28, 2013 10:31:43 GMT -8
This is another reason why RTR sells.....often the lettering on the RTR cars is better researched than the decals. Ummmmm.......NOPE! Microscale does a pretty good job on the research department. Chris is pretty good on doing his homework when he designs a set. I've been pretty impressed with his work. As for inaccuracies, well sometimes a mistake is made so often & copied over, that when you get someone who got it right, it might look wrong because that's what you are used to seeing. Often, the same person is doing research/artwork for multiple companies. Often, you can find the same mistakes across several companies too... I knew one guy (thankfully no longer doing it as he is dead) that simply copied all of the Herald King artwork & sold it to several Manufacturers. Of course all that work ended-up on production models. Oy. I would have to say, about 60% of the Herald King stuff was even remotely accurate. They were created during a time where the models were even less accurate than the decals on them so no one really was concerned. (Of course Champ was the Villain who made everyone think that all Steam Locomotive & Passenger Car Lettering was Dulux Gold.)
|
|
|
Post by Mark R. on Mar 28, 2013 11:54:34 GMT -8
Mark probably does this as well, but when cutting a line that absolutely has to be straight, I begin with a new blade. The only tearing and shattering issues here have been with sets that were several years old; yellow seems to be the touchiest color. Most of the cracking issues are usually due to the decals being improperly stored (either @ home or the LHS). Decals can & due dry out if improperly stored. I'm sure Chris can give you a better idea,but all of the Reds through Yellows have a white background applied to them. Once-in-awhile the pressmen will miss the registration as the white layer is sometimes hard to see once you have several colors over it. As for those Guilford decals. More than likely what happening is that the plates have not been updated before Vicky & Co. started checking for overprinting during the creation of the artwork. Chris would know better as he can simply walk into the back room & look. All my decals are stored in a box in a climate controlled shop. I have decals that are twenty years old that work as good as the day they were new. It's the sets that I buy NEW are the ones having the brittle ink problems, not my old stock. Regarding the Guilford decals, there is plenty of trap on the white for the orange overprint. There is as much trap under the orange as what I'm seeing white along the edge, which means the registration is out double the thickness of the white showing along the edge. Having run a printing press for twenty six years, I can pick out that poor registration looking at it in the package ! Any pressman worth their papers can see that - plain and simple .... poor quality control. Can only be two things - the operator isn't paying attention or the press guides aren't set tight enough. I've gotten to the point of not buying decals unless I can see them first. The last time I bought decals I was in need of some Milwaukee Road. The store had five sets in stock and only one of them had the red box centered properly within the black border. Here's my guess (if Chris decides to verify) .... Something has changed with the ink formula over the last five plus years due to environmental issues. Cobalt driers and other flex agents and binders have been banned from ink formulations, and I'm sure it's even stricter in California. This is where we are getting this brittle ink. Regarding the registration issues, my haphazard guess is that the old hands are probably getting up there and the new guys aren't as well versed in the trade yet. I experienced this numerous times in my twenty six years in the trade. Close just isn't good enough in the printing industry. Mark.
|
|
|
Post by shoofly on Mar 28, 2013 14:33:35 GMT -8
Mark and all, There are some things just out of our control when it comes to testing a decal set and it arriving a distributor. Frustratingly I can test a decal sheet and it behave normally, then when I send one from the same run, same stack of sheets to a customer, the decal breaks apart! What the heck happened?! Sometimes I think there is some sort of issue enroute from Microscale to the world. Perhaps it's a new scanning method homeland security is using? I just don't why this could happen! Inks have not had lead in them for over 15 years. That said, the 2 biggest changes to production of decals happened about the same time. Digital imaging and transitioning of inks. Now imagine the same shaking up is happening to our model railroad industry is happening to the ink industry. Keep in mind there are not many company's that are printing decals for model railroading. What works for Monogram won't work for Microscale. Ink company's will discontinue a line of inks, or reformulate them on us, to make the production more economically viable (or multi purpose). The list goes on. Skill of the press operators has a lot to do with the outcome of registration...but so does weather conditions. Keep in mind decal sets are still silk screened. There are a lot of factors that will throw something out of register, including screen tension, humidity, etc. However, if a decal sheet that is off register makes it in to your hands, that's a QC issue not a press issue. The press operators deal with registration all the time and they do their best to get the greatest yield from a print run. If you find a sheet that is off register, again, let Microscale know and they'll be happy to swap it out with you. Chris
|
|
|
Post by shoofly on Mar 28, 2013 14:36:40 GMT -8
As for inaccuracies, well sometimes a mistake is made so often & copied over, that when you get someone who got it right, it might look wrong because that's what you are used to seeing. Andy Harman can tell you all about the GP30 fan botch that has been done over and over. P2K is the only one that has got it right! Chris
|
|
|
Post by John Sheridan on Mar 30, 2013 16:52:52 GMT -8
Yes Chris, I know this all too well. I ran into this when I discovered through considerable research that Pullman lettered their cars yellow and NOT dulux gold. The feedback of "they are wrong"!!! Was long & heavy.
Of course the source of the mistake was champ decals for many years printed Pullman decals gold because that's what they were told at the time.
As Goebbels once said: repeat the lie long enough it becomes true.
As for cracking, decals falling apart, I ran into this problem & actually looked a tad deeper into it. I found out we had a major distributor in the area that served all the local shops would leave the decals in the trunk of his car as he was too lazy to unload. Well, guess what ? After being exposed to cold / heat for months on end, the Lacquer layer was drying out which caused the decals to fall apart when used. Removing the decals from the trunk fixed this problem !
|
|