Overseer
Western Thunderer
I have been looking for simple methods of producing white lettering on red oxide wagons for many years and the solution finally seems to be here - White toner for laser printers. Following a mention on the 2mmSA VAG group that a company in Germany was selling white toner I looked into it and have purchased a couple of cartridges from Ghost (Ghost White Toner Bundle) to see how it works. At the moment they only supply toner for two HP colour laser printers, one A4 and the other A3. My office bought one of the matching colour printers, a HP Laserjet 200 M251nw, just in time as this model seems to have just been superseded. The white toner cartridge replaces the black cartridge in the printer so if you want full colour you need to print white first then a second pass with the black cartridge in the printer. The intended purpose of the toner is to allow printing in white on coloured paper but it will print on laser waterside decal paper as well.
So far I have only tested the white toner on black 80 gsm paper which is not particularly smooth. The results are very positive and the white toner behaves in the same way that black toner does. I haven't tested printing on transfer/decal paper yet as I stored it safely in a box during the recent office move and haven't found the right box yet.
All the fuzzy bits and flare in the photos are thanks to the snappy camera and are not on the paper. The detail view is of 7mm scale BR wagon numbers printed from the same CAD file seen previously on WT when I printed in black on white decal paper, which was fine for stock with black patches around the lettering but no use for white lettering on red oxide.
David at Ghost is very helpful and easy to deal with, I am apparently their first customer outside Europe. The toner is not cheap but it is not that much more expensive than black toner and it does what it says it will do. I will report on the decal trials, but it will probably be a few days. I have also ordered a couple of different types of waterslide decal paper from the US to see whether there are differences to the locally available papers.
I have no connection with Ghost apart from as a customer. One of the major printer manufacturers also now has colour laser printers available with white toner but they are considerably more expensive.
So far I have only tested the white toner on black 80 gsm paper which is not particularly smooth. The results are very positive and the white toner behaves in the same way that black toner does. I haven't tested printing on transfer/decal paper yet as I stored it safely in a box during the recent office move and haven't found the right box yet.
All the fuzzy bits and flare in the photos are thanks to the snappy camera and are not on the paper. The detail view is of 7mm scale BR wagon numbers printed from the same CAD file seen previously on WT when I printed in black on white decal paper, which was fine for stock with black patches around the lettering but no use for white lettering on red oxide.
David at Ghost is very helpful and easy to deal with, I am apparently their first customer outside Europe. The toner is not cheap but it is not that much more expensive than black toner and it does what it says it will do. I will report on the decal trials, but it will probably be a few days. I have also ordered a couple of different types of waterslide decal paper from the US to see whether there are differences to the locally available papers.
I have no connection with Ghost apart from as a customer. One of the major printer manufacturers also now has colour laser printers available with white toner but they are considerably more expensive.