ALP alternative - Solid Ink

OK, what is solid ink printer. And are you saying we still can't do white. The reverse color method will not work in all situations. I need white decals. The benefit of the ALPS is still the white. Does anyone know why no company supplies a white ink? Do we have the resources within our membership to create white ink ourselves to load into empty cartridges, say my black cartridge for my HP?

Ichi, This is great, you may want to pay real close attention to what you're doing and write up an article. Also, can you give us some links to some solid ink printers? Finally, if you could, kindly resize the images. Respectfully, BD

Sized the fonts up pretty close and printed the first sheet and learned something right away. Pixelation! The printer uses different color dots to make up the colors spectrum. Deep colors are fine. The problem starts when you get into the shades of colors that uses white. I colored matched the black on the Cancarb tank using the regular white paper and it looked great. The problem is the decal paper is an off white so the pixilation effect changed the color tone. The white areas registered by the eye on the regular paper were a really close match but the white used on the decal sheet changes everything. The remedy is to create the color chart on the same type/color of paper used in the final printing. This allows for the principle WYSIWYG I'm sure the real printing and graphic people know this already :lol: I printed the second sheet with the text just pure white (which is considered transparent to the printer and allows the decal paper to represent the color white) and the text came out clearer. (There was no problem with the decal paper tearing or any material flaking off.) Looking at the white ink issues again, I think it can be resolved by making color adjustments on the printer so colors can be dialed in. It may take some time but I think it can be done. The decerning factor will be how white the decal sheet is. Conclusion There was a brand new ALPS on ebay for $1000! I though that there has to be new technology out there and for that price. The fact that the ALP is out of production and somewhat of a speciality product now, takes away from a lot of its +'s. The white ink issues still has that draw but I think the over all quality and functionality of the solid ink printer pull me back across the line. Over all I think this is a viable solution for decal printing. I printed a .08 inch stop sign legible and text legible at .02 in so it can handle the small jobs. I had access to a 8560 and did all my testing on it. I saw Costco had the 8550 for sale for online with a $400 rebate putting it @ $499 it does (2400x600 dpi) which makes it a little better on the pocket. I'll post the finished products later on today or tomorrow. Ichi

Thanks for the info Greasemonkey I started to apply the decal from the white sheets and noticed some flaking issues. I did the scratch test and boy was it bad. It came off like toner on glass, well not that bad but bad enough. I started to freak out? Thinking all this work for nothing! So I started to test Microscale and Testor with the same results. Going over the other test cases I made, yellow and red sheets passed the scratch test with no problems. Going back to my desk I'm thinking the golden rules of test and evaluation. Never assume and test all cases thoughly and equally. Looking over the results of the white and clear sheets I came to the conclusing that the yellow and red sheets are laser decals and the clear and white sheets are inkjet. The inkjet requires a protective clear coat. Which is like paint so the decal sheets are different. I have to make sure that I use the laser type decal sheet not the inkjet :oops:. Although this entry seems calm and collective the truth was, I was running around like Chicken Licken until the laser paper theory klunked me on the head. Now, I have to locate the laser type decal sheets. Why can't my projects be 1,2,3 finished Ichi

OK, here's the lastest. I'm some what dissappointed in the results. The on going issues with the flaking are still here. Here is a image that would represent the naked eye. This is a 3X close up Notice the white edges and the flaking. This is the effects of shrinkage. The numbers were cut extremely small. It appeared that the white layer shrunk after being dipped in water causing the edges to seperate from the solid ink. This exposed the white layer and caused the framing. To address the shrinking issues I started cutting a larger border to dispurse the shrinking over a wider area making the final cuts without the paper backing. This helped out a little but the potential for the separation is still there. I tried to remedy that by using the Microscale liquid thin layer film but that caused a chemical reaction to the solid ink. It started to slightly desolve the ink but it only address the surface bonding bot the bonding between the ink and white layer. Reflecting on the initial bonding test, I recalled the ink having bonded to the yellow paper good. So I went back to that test case. I realized that running the paper through a number of times made the ink adhere to the paper better. Reasoning that the only bonding catylist on the printer was heat. I preated the oven. Places the decal sheet in the oven. I came back to find the paper well done :oops: . Let try again! This time I places it in a few seconds but the metal rack burnt stripes on the sheet. The sheet blistered in some places . I did noticed a stronger bond in the areas between the rack marks. Now, I will test heating the decal to get a better bond (blow dryer). ALPS anyone? No no, keep focus. ALPs is out of production. Ichi

And in New Zealand too... http://www.alps-supplies.com

[Mod note: Made link linkable! - BDC]