swampwiz
New Member
I have a rather nice collection of pinball machines and I plan to do a lot of 2-D printing of various items, most notably the plastic shields (pinball players will know what I am talking about.) Anyway there is a guy on Youtube who shows how to make replacements for these shields, and I am interested in making some myself, as well as a few plastic stickers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUtJQC_Glww
Anyway, I am very confused about what type of printer to get, and what the ink color situation is. Maybe I've always had dirt cheap printers, but the quality always seemed very bad - certainly much worse than what would be needed to do a good reproduction like he shows here. As for the ink, yes, I understand the CYMK system, but it seems to me that since my prints will only have a few colors, it would be better for me to get small batches of the *exact* color to use for the ink; is this the standard industry procedure? I would be printing from some bitmapped file, such as a GIF that has only a few colors.
I suppose that if the cost were prohibitive, I would turn to a commercial print shop. As the video stated, I would have some type of bitmapped file for a printer to print on a particular style of paper. I am wondering what the cost would be for that; as part of the reproduction requires putting on metal pieces on plastic, I can envision me screwing up enough so that I could be printing out a lot.
Anyway, like I said, I am virtually a complete newbie, and I welcome any advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUtJQC_Glww
Anyway, I am very confused about what type of printer to get, and what the ink color situation is. Maybe I've always had dirt cheap printers, but the quality always seemed very bad - certainly much worse than what would be needed to do a good reproduction like he shows here. As for the ink, yes, I understand the CYMK system, but it seems to me that since my prints will only have a few colors, it would be better for me to get small batches of the *exact* color to use for the ink; is this the standard industry procedure? I would be printing from some bitmapped file, such as a GIF that has only a few colors.
I suppose that if the cost were prohibitive, I would turn to a commercial print shop. As the video stated, I would have some type of bitmapped file for a printer to print on a particular style of paper. I am wondering what the cost would be for that; as part of the reproduction requires putting on metal pieces on plastic, I can envision me screwing up enough so that I could be printing out a lot.
Anyway, like I said, I am virtually a complete newbie, and I welcome any advice.
