Build thread: Plasma Dart

[neil_w]

PLASMA DECALS, PART 2

Based on the learnings from the first plasma decal, the second one went down without much drama: little or no decal damage, only ink bleed I could see was just a little at the edges, where it is unavoidable.

This was the process:

1. Soak decal (half at a time, alternating every few seconds) for about, oh, 30 seconds.
2. Place the decal face down on a piece of paper towel, making sure the back is good and wet. For all intents and purpose, the decal is still soaking at this point, but it is not submerged and the front is out of the water.
3. Once it seems like the edge of the decal will separate from the backing easily, trim the decal. Recall that I soak these in an oversized state, so any ink bleed at the edge will get trimmed off.
4. Apply Micro-set to the body
5. Peel decal off the backing and lay it down into position. For this large decal, never try to slide it to adjust it; if it's out of place, lift up and try again. This one I came very close to getting right on the first try; only needed to lift and re-lay half of it.
6. Do the old rolling Q-tip trick to get out the bubbles
7. Apply Micro-sol
8. LEAVE IT ALONE UNTIL DRY (currently at this step)

I remembered why I didn't print any extra pieces: each of the three pieces is unique, and the patterns all fit together. I thought that the only useful way to print extras would be to print a whole extra set, which would have used a lot more decal paper. Actually I didn't have room for even one more.

What I could have done, in hindsight, would be to print and extra of one of the pieces, and started with that one. That would have allowed for the learning process; certainly if I had an extra I would have pulled off the first one and tried again. I should have guessed that I might need one piece for practice. Oh well, no biggie.

Here's the first two pieces in place, showing the continuous pattern. I had to pay careful attention to make sure I put the second piece in the correct orientation.

Also notice I put the second piece in the "correct" position. Even though it's misaligned with the first, I couldn't bring myself to put all three in the same wrong position just to make them match. Maybe it would have looked better, dunno.

 

[boatgeek]

<lovely pictures snipped>
Also notice I put the second piece in the "correct" position. Even though it's misaligned with the first, I couldn't bring myself to put all three in the same wrong position just to make them match. Maybe it would have looked better, dunno.

Can you rotate the "off" side so that it's against the rod when it launches? At least then it's less visible and doesn't show up in glamor shots.

 

[neil_w]

Can you rotate the "off" side so that it's against the rod when it launches? At least then it's less visible and doesn't show up in glamor shots.

That first decal won't be in any of the glamour shots if I can help it. So as long as the second and third line up, I should be OK.

Orientation of the rocket on the rod is dependent on which way the rod needs to be tilted on the day, so I don't have good control over that. And I won't worry about it.

 

[les]

Looks GREAT!

 

[neil_w]

Looks GREAT!

Thanks! Only 19 more decals to go!

 

[mbeels]

Peel decal off the backing and lay it down into position. For this large decal, never try to slide it to adjust it; it it's out of place, lift up and try again. This one I came very close to getting right on the first try; only needed to lift and re-lay half of it.

What happens if you try to slide it? Does it break?

 

[neil_w]

What happens if you try to slide it? Does it break?

It seems to be too big to slide easily, and if I try too hard to push it I'll damage the clear coat (which is what happened on decal #1). I feel like I must be doing something wrong with the clear coat, but that's how it's behaving so I will adjust accordingly.

 

[jqavins]

I've been meaning to ask since the first plasma decal: how long are they? You've probably got a container in the kitchen that's over a foot long: a "regular" baking dish which is nominally 9"×13". Over 15" diagonally.

 

[neil_w]

They're 10.5" long. Sure there are things in the kitchen that would work. Consequences if I were to actually use one would be.... undesirable. In any case it seems that the half-and-half water dipping I've been doing is actually OK, any problems I might have (which are plenty) lie elsewhere.

Seems I missed some bubbles, or else they settled into a particular position after the Micro-sol (latter seems more likely):

They're all in a line like that, which is interesting, and also why I suspect it as an after-effect of the Micro-sol. I'll probably leave these alone, because I have not had great luck getting rid of bubbles without damaging the decal, and they're pretty hard to see unless you get the light just right.

Otherwise, that decal came out pretty good.

 

[mbeels]

Bubbles? What bubbles? I only see 3D plasma effects.

 

[neil_w]

Bubbles? What bubbles? I only see 3D plasma effects.

My rocket has the bends.

 

[neil_w]

MORE DECALS

Incremental progress with the decals.

Plasma decal #3 was mostly uneventful. I did see some roughness on the surface, which I'm guessing is simply a spot where I did not get a clean coat of clear. The key is that I had little or no ink runnage except at the edges where it is expected. This one will be fine after Future. I think I got most of the bubbles out this time.

Each fin gets two decals: the white fin is now done, and looks good:

The decals are slow going because I like to let them sit horizontal while the Micro-sol dries (I've had them droop due to gravity, so I no longer give them the chance). So it' sort of like doing epoxy fillets, one pair of fins at a time. There's actually more to it, but I'll get to that later. I'm starting to do very well with the inkjet decals on clear paper, just leaving a nice border when soaking, and trimming while wet if needed.

I printed out my fifth (yes, you read that right) sheet of decals for this rocket; this time, a laser print of the white-backed decals. I may or may not be using all of them; I'll have more to say on that later. But for the crinkly spot, I wanted to see how well it would cover the texture. Answer: it looks fine, but after Micro-sol the decal does actually conform to the underlying texture quite precisely, so it didn't really cover it up at all. As before, the black areas are not really black, but will look at least somewhat better after multiple coats of Future. That is another thing that I prefer to keep horizontal while drying. This finishing process is full of that; lots of quick bits of work followed by drying time. But I'm getting there.

 

[neil_w]

STILL MORE DECALS

All the stripey fades at the ends of the plasma core are now on. Some effort was expended to ensure that the different pieces were aligned across the strakes. I think they look good. Micro-sol-ing and Future-ing will take a little while for the whole set.

While applying these, I stumbled on a new improved way to smooth the decal: a cheapo plastic paintbrush, pushed *against* the bristles like so:

In addition to working well (better than rolling a Q-tip IMHO), it is oh-so-satisfying. This is a laser-printed decal; I wonder if it would work as well on clear-coated inkjets or silkscreened. I will certainly find out at next opportunity.

I've noticed a bunch of things I could have done slightly better with the whole set of plasma core decals. Oh well, next time.

 

[mooffle]

I've noticed a bunch of things I could have done slightly better with the whole set of plasma core decals. Oh well, next time.

Sometimes we are our own worst critics, that plasma core looks amazing!

 

[neil_w]

LASER-PRINTED DECALS, PART 1

Home printed decals are a source of frustration.

Ink-jet decals *look* fantastic, but they require clear-coating, and suffer from ink bleed at the edges, which makes them not good when you want to have a dark background go to the edge of white-backed decals.

Laser decals are, by comparison, much less vibrant but super easy to work with. No clear-coating required, they don't run so they stay black all the way to the edge. The problem is, at least with the printer I use at work, the black ends up being not a true solid black, and the surface texture varies quite a bit. And so you end up with something like this:

(sorry for lousy pic, that's a snap from the video I took)

The surface is extremely dull, and the black areas have sort of a mottled look. Just to see how good I could get them, I've been applying coats of Future to these decals with a Q-tip, over and over. After about a billion coats, I finally got a uniform shine:

Note that now the black areas look a lot blacker, although still not as perfectly black as the painted area (left of picture). Still, that's a good result, but it took a ridiculous number of coats, not something I'm going to do with all decals all the time.

Also, for those decals, the black areas are confined between the light stripes, and so you can't see the contrast against the black paint. That's a perfect application for the laser paper.

For decals where there is potentially a lot of black background directly on top of black paint, it's more problematic. I think a double-layer approach in order: plain white decal paper in the back, and then clear decal paper on top. This could be good but only if you have sufficient room to put a border around the clear decal, to protect the actual edge from ink bleed during soaking.

All 6 remaining decals require black backgrounds, and have little room for borders. And so I've hit a pause, waiting for some more... supplies. Could be a while.

In the meantime, I'll keep busy with more inkjet vs. laser comparisons.

 

[neil_w]

LASER PRINTED DECALS, PART 2

Because I was impatient, and really didn't want to deal with the double-layer decals, I used laser decals for the plasma fades on the black fins. Here is where the black decal background comes up against the black-painted fin:

Apart from a bit of white edge showing (which is visible but not too bad at a reasonable viewing distance), here you can clearly see that the "black" on the decal is nowhere near as black as the paint. This is after several coats of Future, but not as many as the ones shown in the previous post. Maybe I just need more.

You can also see that the color isn't very intense, and you can actually see the dither pattern of the dots in the design. Speaking of the latter, here are extreme close-ups of two transition decals, neither one on the rocket. First, an inkjet version:

That looks pretty good. Now, a laser version, photographed in the same light:

Fascinating. You can easily see the individual pixels in the grey areas, which are just not nearly as smooth as the inkjet. You can also see the black stripes not being as black, and most interesting of all (to me) is that you can actually see pixel patterns in the black, instead of a true solid. I don't see this nearly as easily when I print on plain paper; that tends to look really solid and black. I don't know the reason for the difference, although obviously decal paper is a *much* different print surface than copy paper.

You can see why folks don't generally use laser printers to print photos.

The conclusion here is that laser decals easily win for convenience, but inkjet decals look much better. When printing on a black background, doing a two-layer decal with solid white and then a clear inkjet decal on top will almost certainly produce the best results, *if* the circumstances allow for some safe border around the inkjet decal.

 

[mbeels]

The conclusion here is that laser decals easily win for convenience, but inkjet decals look much better.

Boy, that is quite a bit difference. I had it in my head the laser printers were just better, but clearly that isn't the case all the time. And I hadn't thought of it before, but it does seem that all the nice photo printers are inkjets of sorts.

 

[jqavins]

[SPECULATION] Laser printing is a much sharper process, but that can mean sharper appearance of the pixelation. Add to that that the decal material is less permeable than paper, so whatever little bit of pixel blending is caused by toner migration while it's being set by the laser is greatly reduced, and here we see the result.[/SPECULATION]

Years ago, my father was building a system for, um, something, which used a device to measure the height of water in a tank (for some purpose or other). The analog sensor value was digitized, giving limited resolution. The resolution might be improved by averaging readings over a period of time. It didn't work, because the readings were too stable. He deliberately added a little noise to the analog value, which caused a bit of dithering in the digitized value, which allowed the averaging to work and improve the result. So, the same idea here. The lower precision of the inkjet and the spreading of the ink on permeable paper, which seem to be negatives like noise, can actually improve the outcome by allowing a sort of averaging.

 

[neil_w]

That could be part of it... but I think the inkjet printers also print at much higher resolution. Mine prints color (which would include dye black) at 9600x2400... typical laser printer resolution might be something like 1200x1200 (don't know the specs of the one I'm using at the office.) That's a *huge* difference.

The inability to achieve a true black on the decal paper is most frustrating to me, when (by comparison) the same printer seems to produce beautiful dark black on regular paper. I'll have to do a print today at work and add it to the comparison.

 

[jqavins]

Wow, it's been a while since I shopped for printers. I didn't realize the inkjets had advanced so far. Probably you can toss out my last post. That leaves me with egg ink on my face.

How many inks does your printer use? I know some use yellow and pale yellow, magenta and pale magenta, but I've yet to see pale cyan or grey. Are they using eight colors these days? (And gosh how I'd love to get one that also has white. For use on clear media, and use on colored papers as well.)

 

[neil_w]

How many inks does your printer use? I know some use yellow and pale yellow, magenta and pale magenta, but I've yet to see pale cyan or grey. Are they using six colors these days? (And gosh how I'd love to get one that also has white. For use on clear media, and use on colored papers as well.)

Mine is a multi-function with four colors (CMYK) plus pigment black. It is not the finest photo printer but we don't print photos very often, so for spot use it is more than adequate. Decal sheets look very good coming out.

I don't know if there are multi-functions that use more colors than that. Once you get into dedicated printers, though, the sky's the limit. If you're willing to pony up for this Canon model you can get 11 colors. Interestingly, its resolution isn't as high, but I guess when you have that many ink colors to work with you don't need to do as much dithering.

 

[jqavins]

I have a six color-all-in-one. One of its all-in functions is photo printing.

 

[neil_w]

I have a six color-all-in-one. One of its all-in functions is photo printing.

Make and model?

 

[jqavins]

HP and Don't remember. I'll (try to remember to) check when I get home.

 

[neil_w]

Here's the laser printer on plain paper:

That, by contrast to the print on decal paper, looks fantastic. The surface texture of the paper seems to be smoothing out the print a bit, but in addition to that you can see how much blacker the black is.

Amazing what you can see with a cellphone camera nowadays.

 

[mbeels]

That does look much better than the decal paper. The inkjet on decal paper still looks the best. But yeah, this shows that the laser printer has a bit more trouble printing on the decal paper.

 

[jqavins]

Or revives my permeability hypothesis.

 

[David_Stack]

I'll need to get the details/specifics from him but my father is an avid (and skilled) photographer who prefers to shoot and print in B&W. He has 'hot-rodded' his Epson printer such that instead of a black ink and accompanying color ink cartridges, instead the printer is loaded with cartridges that are all degrees of black (think Ansel Adams Zone 6). With accompanying software, it is capable of turning out B&W prints that are far more refined from a tonal scale perspective than if the printer was simply limiting the quantity of 'pure black' ink/toner that it was laying down...

Admittedly, what Neil is seeking is a purer 'black', so this would likely not apply...

 

[lakeroadster]

The Plasma Dart is looking great Neil. Thanks for all your efforts in documenting the build.

 

[neil_w]

Here's how the crinkle zone ended up after the same billion coats of Future:

Satisfactory. As the successive coats filled in the area between the bumps somewhat, the edges softened and it is not only really visible directly in the reflection zone.