DecalPro Pireps?

Time to letter my panel...or buy placards, or scribble with a sharpie, or something.

I've seen nice work using DecalPro (thanks Skylor). Any pireps out here? The website and the available links seem clear enough about label creation and application. How about durability, and whatever else hasn't come to mind?

http://www.pulsarprofx.com/DecalPRO/index.html

Any other suggestions?

panel stuff

Hey Dan,
you may ignore this as you wish, but consider the following:

after the panel is all done, and pretty and clear coated or whatever for durability, you add a gadget, and need another breaker.
I've decided to pencil in some V speeds that I am still trying to nail down around my ASI. I also found the fuel gauges almost meaningless ( when filling up with 72 litres of fuel, they show 14 gal each etc.,) so I've also marked the gauges with 'hours of fuel remaining to :30 reserve'

Just sayin', what'chagonnadew later ?

Dan,

I used the DecalPro on my panel because I used textured paint and it came out great. I did not cover the decales after they were on and they are holding up well.

The downside is there is a BIG learning curve. To help with that I posted some things on the panel page of my web site.

Dan,
I also used DecalPro. It is quite difficult, but doable with a few hours experimenting, realizing and applying small words.

It is more difficult to have more words applied at the same time and even more difficult to have a sentence included in a box.

Black colour (printer colour) is quite simple to work with. White colour is more difficult. On the other side, it is simple to have big images applied. Actually, the bigger and uniform (i.e.: without breaks) is the image, the simpler is the tecnique.

See my results at the "Pannello" page on my website.

I've used DecalPro on R/C models before and it works well for what it is. As others have said, there is a learning curve.

For my RV project, I considered and then rejected any decal approach - it's just too hard for me to get a large area lined up exactly unless you make one large decal which is (again for me) too unwieldy to use.

I went with Front Panel Express (http://www.frontpanelexpress.com/) instead - the result is an engraved, anodized plate that looks like a million bucks. The downside is that it isn't super cheap - figure $25-$45 depending on your design (tooling changes, coloring, etc.).

I had success with the Testors decal kit and some extra blank decal sheets. Found it at the local hobby shop. Do not use the program it comes with though. Do what you want in a word processing program them print on the blank decal sheets. I used my inkjet and they came out fine. The kit comes with a spray that coats over the printed decal sheet and seals the ink so it won't rub off.

I was also able to utilize a jpg of my infinity stick grip and add in the button labels. See here (RV Carol): http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=8495&page=7

Cheap, easy, and worked very well.

Data mining last night

Dan,
I have read some pireps on decalpro and they have veered me away from that product. The letters, even on the well done stuff, did not look crisp enough in the photos for my liking.

While at SnF, I met Paul Story of the Steinair crew and mentioned the lettering problem. He said they make waterslide decals (just like the modelbuilding days) and cut, soak, slide, dry, and then clearcoat (acrylic I think). He showed me an example on a painted panel. It looked great. You had to know where to look (at an angle too) to see any evidence of the clear base film. The clearcoating somewhat melded the base film into the painted panel.

Last night, I did some web mining and found waterslide paper for both inkjet and laserjet. Inkjet REQUIRES topcoating to protect the ink, Laserjet does not although this may be moot for our application. I got the impression that these filmed papers are available from hobby and art stores. (re: the testors comment previously). Probably shop this weekend.

I plan to test these waterslide decals in the coming weeks.

Now.....Here's the holy grail for me.. I may have found a way to make and apply phosphorescent inks. I'm trying to select the right color now because there is a difference in how long each color lasts after light exposure.

If this fails miserably, may just go to engraved plaques. Grrrrrr..

No experience with them but...

... I had great experiences working with a local trophy shop. They drew up my concepts from a sketch (they can take a CADD dwg file), we modified it, then made the labels. I used adhesive backed labels for items not held on by switches and non adhesive for the ones that where. They have a lot of products to choose from, material types, back filling, clear for your own backfill, metal, plastic, fonts, sizes, colors, etc.....
I chose black with white back fill. I like the look as it reminds me of the old days of the engraved phenolic. I wanted a traditional look to my panel even though it is a modern layout and has modern instrumentation (EFIS).
When I needed to add something or make a change, they had the originals on file. It was easy to modify and have a new label made. (warning - I have not tried to remove any that where self adhesive yet!) I have only added or modified the non adhesive labels.
They where cheap too...

Dan seeking advice from the forum........ He is mortal

It depends on what stage your panel is at as to what process you can use.

My wife is a Graphic Designer and can produce all sorts of things on her Mac. We had used Experimental Air to lay out the panel and produce the CAD file to get it water jet cut. So, by that fact, we knew what gauge and switch was going where. I used the file to create a TIFF which Andrea could bring into Quark or Illustrator and then she laid out the lettering for all our switches. The panel was sprayed at this point and before we mounted it, a local screen printer did all the labels direct onto the panel - very nice wok.

Upside - robust, professional etc

Downside - you trap your design fairly early.

I have to make a couple more labels for sub panels and I will be using a local pre print shop to produce some rub downs from a file I create. They are like custom Letraset and a internet search should find someone who can take typed copy and lay them out how you want. Application needs some care though to get them lined up - you may need water based fine OHP pens to lay out the base line.

Now, if you decide that a printed strip on an adhesive carrier is OK - look at the Dymo Rhino. We use that to print labels onto heat shrink for all the electrics - very good, a range of fonts and sizes, costs about $120 for the machine, will print black or white onto clear. for electrics it is fab and has been reported elsewhere on the forums.

Upside - easy, custom letters

Downside - careful application needed to prevent edge marks etc.

If your panel is together Dan, I would definitely look at rub downs if you want a clean, neat panel - just make sure you tell people to keep their fingers off of the panel !!

I haven't tried the DecalPro system yet, but it's currently my intention to give it a try, as it's the only DIY way to get white lettering that I'm aware of, and I'm going with a dark gray panel color. I currently make my own waterslide decals for models and they work great, as long as your lettering is any color but white. On a light colored panel, that's what I would go with.

Really good stuff gentlemen...keep it coming.

Hmmm. So far it looks like the ironclad reason to use the DecalPro system is a desire for white letters. Not cheap, nor easy per reports.

Clear coated water slide decals are interesting. Apparently they are often clearcoated with an acrylic spray. Anybody tried sealing them under a conventional solvent based automotive clearcoat?

Mike, can you bury rubdowns under solvent clearcoat?

I ask about automotive clear because you should be able to make the decal sheet disappear with a few spray and cut sessions. I was planning on spraying a matte clear anyway.

Front Panel Express looks like a good deal; CAD, cut, and engraved in one shot at one price.

I'm also looking at reverse engraved lexan, a variation on traditional placards. Seems you can paint the backside of the lexan with a color, then reverse engrave through it from the back, then apply a contrasting letter color. The face surface remains smooth, uncoated lexan, so it should be durable in service.

DanH said:

Clear coated water slide decals are interesting. Apparently they are often clearcoated with an acrylic spray. Anybody tried sealing them under a conventional solvent based automotive clearcoat?

Click to expand...

Haven't tried the auto clearcoat, but many of the rattlecan clear acrylics will attack the bare decal and wrinkle it up. One popular technique is to put on a couple of very dry mist coats first, but I use this to protect them before shooting the clear. The Microsol and Microset products are great as well, and really make the decals lie down.

Yup...

DanH said:

Really good stuff gentlemen...keep it coming.


I'm also looking at reverse engraved lexan, a variation on traditional placards. Seems you can paint the backside of the lexan with a color, then reverse engrave through it from the back, then apply a contrasting letter color. The face surface remains smooth, uncoated lexan, so it should be durable in service.

Click to expand...

... That's what the trophy shop did for me. I backfilled the letters and color coded them to function.
They had the base material in some 20 odd colors. You backfill with whatever color paint you want.
They can also make them any size and shape, within certain limits, so it is really easy to customize. I even had a round placard made for my manual trim knob indication.
Like you mention, it is a placarded look.
Of all the products for custom labeling I never found one that looked close to silk screening. Silk screening has a certain depth to the lettering that labeling simply can not match, not to say that some of the labeling systems dont do a good job, they just dont have that silk screening look in my opinion.
The "modern" placard method seemed most appropriate for me. Cheap, professional classic look, easy to customize, easy to change down the road.
Good luck.

Durable

I did clear coat over mine, but once a few weeks go by I think the decals become pretty tough even without the clear coat. I put a practice decal on the back of a console part, I have handled and messed with that part putting in switches and wires and never a scratch.

I can attest to the fact that the white seems more difficult, but once the learning curve is developed you get the hang of it, I think the key is don't let it in the water bath too long.

Here are some pictures of my white and black, not perfect but heck it is amateur built.





Cheers

JonJay said:

The "modern" placard method seemed most appropriate for me. Cheap, professional classic look, easy to customize, easy to change down the road.

Click to expand...

Jon, got any pictures?

Mike, that looks great.

Follow this link....

DanH said:

Jon, got any pictures?

Mike, that looks great.

Click to expand...

Only limited by your imagination. I kept mine very basic. The main switch bank is the lexan back fillled. Many of the other labels are etched metal self adhesive type.
On the lexan, since it is clear with a top color and back filled, at certain angles you can see a little color bleed through the clear edge. One could paint the edge and avoid this.

Frankly, I think Mike's are as nice as I have seen and is a better looking cleaner approach. However, it is tough to make changes later. I see a lot of really nicely labeled panels, most have a few P-touch labels added here and there.
When I did my Dynon upgrade, the main switch bank was changed and is now all white back filled (the trophy shop forgot I wanted to back fill myself). Frankly, I was not in love with the color coding and find white to be better. The nice thing is that the labeling change was an easy swap out, the shop had the layout, and it was $20. Adding labels was also easily done.

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=51047&highlight=dynon+upgrade

DecalPro techniques, learning curve

I'm surprised Bill Wightman has not weighed in here.
He is a big fan of DecalPro. He did his whole airplane in white letters, and spent some time working out the best techniques.

He made a very informative 30-minute CD showing the step-by-step process with lots of hints and tidbits of useful knowledge.
He sent me the CD, I watched it, I practiced once or twice, and dove in. I did all my panel and switch panel lettering in a few sessions with very little frustration. I figure Bill saved me many hours of frustrating trials with his good tidbits.

The most difficult part for me is getting good positioning of the decal - and this would be true for any labeling method. There is a trick in the tutorial from DecalPro that shows how to make a mask that enables better positioning, but this is hard on a completed airplane in tight spots. Best advise, plan, paint, and label all your panels before you install them.

Maybe he would be willing to send copies of the CD to others that ask? The only thing you will have to get used to is that he keeps addressing his audience as "Steve".

I did not clear-coat any of the decals. There are a couple of labels near switches that are showing some minor wear after 60 hrs. But as an example of the durability of the DecalPro decals with no protection, I put "21 gal. 100 LL only" next to each fuel cap, figuring that with fuel spills, wipes, and washing, they would not last long. After 60 hrs, they look fine - good as new.

DecalPro DVD

Sorry, been out flying so I missed this thread.

I made a DVD for Steve a while back and demo'ed the whole process. I did my 8's panel in black and the CB subpanel in white. In short the DecalPro system can produce superb results but there are quite a few pitfalls to getting perfect results. My DVD runs through the process and I talk about the problems I ran into and I show how to avoid them.

If you want a copy of the DVD just pm me and I'll fix you up.

Edit: for a few pics of my work click the "RV8 Under Construction" link below

Decalpro...

I tried the system. Bought everything you need, including lots of extra white foil. Then I spent may hours making my panel. The result were wonderful.

However, when I tried to install the panel, all the clear coat started chiping away.

Lessen learned. I ended up using an engraved name plate material. It's only .020 thick plastic, and glued on to the panel. I used the same pdf files I created for Decal Pro, and sent then to the name plate shop

Decalpro

I used this also. It is frustrating, but I think worth the trouble. I am doing all white, which is the hardest. I have spent many of late nights trying to get it just right, and it's doable.

Then I had issues with the clear coat. It was because it was applied wrong. The correct way is to almost mist the first two coats (tack coat) 10 minutes apart. Then the third coat (after another 10 minutes), can be applied normally. This is very important and will cost you a lot of time if you don't follow this step -- ask me how I know -- had to REPAINT THE WHOLE PANEL -- THEN DO THE DECALS ALL OVER AGAIN :-(

For the interior parts where panels could not be taken out, the same three coat method was used with a clear acrylic door jamb paint from PPG ($19/can). It worked nice, as this was done over PPG Delfleet singlestage on the interior.

Dan (or anybody else), I strongly feel if you are doing white, you must clear over it. Black....you might get away with not doing it (a friend has done both the white and black and says the same thing). Hope this helps. Dave

Sample

Dan, I had pretty much the same experience with DecalPro as others. Like many tasks in this airplane building project, there's a learning curve but I'm pretty happy with the end result. I liked the ability to create icons to use instead of text for some things.

I wanted a satin finish on my panel and preferred no clear coat if possible. I also felt white letters would look better on the dark gray paint (and be easier for older eyes to see). Even so, my first attempt was laser water slide decals. They looked okay but were black and did not stick to the finish I had sprayed. Maybe not all water slide decal papers are created equal. If they had stuck, I would have had to clear coat them anyway.

I still have a piece of scrap aluminum, with paint, and with one of my practice decals. I'll drop it in the mail if you want to see what they look like. You can take a fingernail or whatever to the letters to get an idea of how well they stick.

Send me a PM if interested.

Russ

Dan,

I went a slightly different route, though gotta agree with you that "Nemo"'s work sure does look nice!

Not sure if you still have bare metal or have already painted the base coat, and the method I used may work with paint or powdercoating, so FWIW...

I was doing a panel upgrade and making overlays on the old panel skeleton, so I had 3 flat sheets of .090 AL to work with. After cutting, we had them powdercoated light gray, then had the letters laser etched by a woman that does trophy and award placards. She taped the area with blue masking tape, then cut the letters through the tape. We then masked off the rest of the panel, leaving the blue tape on and leaving only the letters exposed, and we used rattle can black for the letters. Same could be done with white letters on gray or dark panels. Pics:





Pros: Professional look, durable (letter paint is down in the etching, won't rub off).

Cons: Changes not easy. I'd either have to cover the current lettering with a placard overlay (similar material to the N# placard in the first photo) or cut new metal and do it over. I figure if I'm gonna change things its gonna be bigger stuff, ie, to add a Dynon EMS to the right side or similar, so it'll be new metal on that side. I've added a couple cbs to a drop-down subpanel (for the new EI, etc), so I've been able to avoid changes to the panel so far (1.5 yrs). But that's why I did three panel overlays (left, right and switches)...just in case! If your panel is one piece, more flexibility may be important, but this could still work.

A couple guys on the field are using the same guy I did, but are doing removable/replaceable placards to go over the powdercoated base. They are not done yet, so no pics to share. However, I'll bet a good trophy shop or engraver could use anodized AL in just about any color that would complement your panel color.

Good luck, and looking forward to seeing how it turns out (my guess is many of us will be jealous!! )

Cheers,
Bob

Dan, here's the best pic I have showing my DecalPro markings. Note the CB subpanel mounted on the bottom of the main instrument panel is done in white. I cleared over that, because the white markings didn't seem as durable as the black ones did:



The DecalPro markings are sharp as a tack, but probably lack the durability of anything laser etched, or routed in plastic. At any rate, they seem good enough for use where repeated handling isn't expected.

Another experiment I'm going to try is to mark my Infinity stick grips with the DecalPro system - in white - and spray a clear epoxy layer over them. If the epoxy hangs on, I'll have some very neat markings for the stick grips. We'll see...

Boy oh boy.....some beautiful panels out there. All of you should be proud.

I've decided to go with water slide decals under automotive clear. The panel is an off-white so dark lettering is fine, and I have no graphics. Actually I don't have much of anything. This is a simple VFR glass setup with fuse blocks, so the main panel only has eight switches and three buttons to label.

I'm told the decals work fine with PPG clear, so here's the plan. I'll shoot base, apply the decals, then shoot three coats of 2021 to bury them. When cured I'll wet sand to flatten any trace of the decal outline and shoot another coat of PPG matte clear. The result should have depth matching the rest of the airplane (which is also base/clear) and be very durable. We'll see.

DanH said:

I've decided to go with water slide decals under automotive clear.

Click to expand...

Order the Microscale MicroSet and MicroSol products. You won't be disappointed.

did mine today...

the decalpro system is okay... the results are pretty good but as others have said, the learning curve is high, the frustration is high, and the amount of time to produce and place acceptable results is high... yikes.

Would provide my DecalPro kit free

I tried the DecalPro labeling for the RV-10, but my level of "patience" is quite low (ask my hangar partner). Anyway, would be willing to send my kit (films, etc.) to anyone who would want them, free --- I will hang on to the laminator and heat gun, but the film package was about $80.00. Just send me your shipping address and I will get it in the mail to you.

Ron Simonton

RONSIM said:

I tried the DecalPro labeling for the RV-10, but my level of "patience" is quite low (ask my hangar partner). Anyway, would be willing to send my kit (films, etc.) to anyone who would want them, free --- I will hang on to the laminator and heat gun, but the film package was about $80.00. Just send me your shipping address and I will get it in the mail to you.

Ron Simonton

Click to expand...

PM Sent Ron...

Some followup....

Stein can print a decal sheet in any color using your artwork, meaning you can control font, size, spacing and design. Just send a file with an exact representation of what you want on the decal page.

The panel was primed, shot with the PPG DBC, then one good coat of standard DCU2021 clear. When cured it was block sanded with 800 wet to flatten the surface and eliminate any trash.

After applying the decals I sprayed 5 light coats of PPG DCU2060, a flat clear, just the thing for a non-glare panel:

https://buyat.ppg.com/refinishProdu...x?FileID=62813cfa-edb9-4fbb-a1fb-cb8b9da7f393

The idea is to bury the decals in clearcoat. No hardship shooting flat clear at 30 minute intervals since I was spraying base and gloss clear on wingtips that day anyway....just mixed some and shot it through an extra trim gun.

The cured 2060 was blocked with 800 to thin the clear over the decals and blend in any "raised" look, then it got one more good coat of flat clear.

Looking for an easy CAD program

I am at that point and have decided to label my panel using the DecalPro. Can anyone recommend a simple CAD program to use for this or is word processing the way to go? I am somewhat computer challenged so it needs to be EZ. Thanks!

No need to use any fancy program.
Use what you are most familiar with, Word or Publisher or something simple like that.
Remember to keep the decals small and not a 10 inch string of words and spaces. Making them is easy but applying them where you want them gets increasingly difficult with size.
DecalPro looks very professional, good luck.

Panel letteing

Producing labels is quite easy using the Dymo Rhino 5200 labling system (http://www.labelcity.com/DYMO-RHINO-5200-LABEL-PRINTER-1755749.html?gclid=CI2RmrDHsrACFegbQgod1VynTA). The results are not as perfect as some of the panels pictured above, but are easy to make, remove, and change as your ideas change. A big advantage of the Rhino is that it can also produce heat-shrink wire labels that look really great. The price is reasonable, too. The system can be used for many other purposes (I labeled all of my household wiring when I put in a new circuit breaker panal. It even has a program for labeling the circuit breakers themselves). Note: I managed to apply the cost of the Rhino to "House Maintenance" rather than RV budget!