Everything you need to know about decal printing

The word decal refers to a design prepared on a special paper that is made to transfer it to another object like glass or porcelain. The material used can be plastic, paper or vinyl. It can also be applied to an extensive range of materials like glass, plastic, metal, rubber, wood, leather etc

A 4 colour inkjet printer with 1200 dpi print resolution and lessor printer will be best for decal printing.

You can design any object using your computer on your own even. You can use paid software like photoshop and illustrator. But if you don’t have any paid software, you can use a free editing application like GIMP. You can use this software easily even if you don’t have experience.

In this article, we will be having a brief discussion on decal printings.

On which item can you apply decals?

Decals can be used on various items; some of the things are listed below:

1. Decals can be used for advertisements. You can apply a decal sticker on a car, truck or any vehicle, and that vehicle can be used as a mobile billboard to advertise your product.
2. You can also use a decal to print some kind of information on it. As you can use a decal for car identification purposes that is also called fleet marking
3. Decals can also be used to decorate any product like guitar, toys, model aeroplanes or cars.
4. Decals can also be used to customize any product like a car, motorbike, etc.
5. Ceramic decals can be used to decorate your house too. It can be used to design tables, tile and decoration pieces.

Types of decal printing:

In decal printing, the design can be transferred to the object using 3 different methods:

• Heat transfer decal: to paste decal on any object hot stamping machine is used. Due to heat, decals become more long-lasting and permanent. In-home you can use iron to paste any sticker on cloth or paper.

• Waterslide decal: The glue on the back of the decal starts losing when the water is applied to it. You should not use so much water that the glue starts dissolving. Once the decal is wet, it can dry again if you want to restore it to its previous condition. When it is in perfect condition to be applied so you by using a squeegee, apply it permanently on anything. It is suitable for large graphics that can be used to apply stickers on vehicles.

• Vinyl cut decals: These types of decals are dry ones. It has sticky content on the back of the paper. For this type of decal, it’s recommended that you should use vinyl printing paper. After completing the printing process, now paste the overlaminate sheet. Make sure that it is smooth enough that no bubble is left. Now cut the extra paper off. after it has covered your sheet. Now slowly peel off the laminating paper and apply your sticker on anything you want. This technique is also called the peel and stick process.