Motor label restoration

[R Cane]

Yet again, I woke up after only 2 hours of sleep, and was wide awake. This sucks.
At least it's an excuse to sit and stare at the computer screen for another 5 hours until the family gets up.

I have multiple motors that are in decent shape except for the labels, being stained, faded, scraped, etc.
Occasionally you see repro labels on the Bay or something like that, but they are never the ones I need. After talking to several people that have done them in the past and looking elsewhere online, I couldn't find anyone that wanted to do labels.
So I decided to do my own. I've been an amateur artist for about 30 years now, so it's mainly a matter of finding the time to do it...I guess 2 AM is as good of a time as any...
I started by carefully removing the labels from a Tri Sonic and green label Sonic. Then I scanned them at a stupid high resolution and imported them into the graphic editing program I use. The labels looked a lot worse off after scanning than I realized.
The Tri Sonic was the first one I worked on. I do almost everything freehand, redrawing lines, replacing missing parts, etc. The only exception - that you can see on the green Sonic, is when I can use geometric tools to make perfect circles, etc.
The colors on the original scans look a lot more faded than they really are...but that's easy to fix in the program.

The Tri Sonic...before and after ... and remember they are in much higher resolution on my pc for printing. This label, start to finish, took about 16 hours of work over the last month or so to get it tweaked just the way I wanted it...zoomed in to go pixel by pixel to get it right. The only issue left is that my printer color is way off from the graphic program color, so I'll have to print a bunch in different hues until I find the right one.

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sm_trisonic1.jpg (29.02 KiB) Viewed 3095 times

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sm_trisonic2.jpg (34.95 KiB) Viewed 3095 times

The green Sonic is what I was working on in the middle of the night (and WAY too early morning). It's about half way done.

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sm_sonic1.jpg (30.11 KiB) Viewed 3095 times

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sm_sonic2.jpg (74.85 KiB) Viewed 3095 times

[jwscab]

nice job!

[RC10resto]

Wow
I am sending you more Caffeine

[RichieRich]

That looks pretty damn good. Nice work!

[R Cane]

Thanks guys. At least I'm getting something done with my insomnia time.

I wonder if they make a foil type paper for a laser printer so I can do a couple Monster Horsepower labels...

[skunk.werkz]

Someone on ebay has done Monster HP labels, I have not looked too closely to see how chrome they are. Ultrahive here was making really nice labels but he bounced. I would love to see you continue work. I have some Reedy Mr series and Sonics I could use new labels

[R Cane]

There's a set of Mr. series labels that have been on the Bay for a couple months. There are 3 different Mr's that I need too, but are not among the ones in this lot.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251723979012

They also have some repro yellow Cadnica 1700SCE labels

http://www.ebay.com/itm/361521542058

I contacted the guy that designed them about making others, he said he only works for that hobby shop - contact them. So I did, and they asked what labels I wanted. I sent a list and asked if they were willing to commission other ones from their design guy, and never got any response. That was a couple months ago.
I talked to Ultrahive also. He has a little leftover misc stock, but isn't interested in making any others, he's onto other things.

I might consider doing more of these, but it's a lot of work, and takes a good amount of time to do it right. So I'd probably only be adding one or two labels a month...but I will consider it. Plus the issue of printing them. I still need to experiment with home printing options to see if it's feasible, or if I have to send them out to get done on a proper vinyl printer. These that I'm making for me are just for shelfers that I'll never run, so it's not so much of an issue. My main concern is using them on a motor that someone will run...will the glue on the back of anything I can print at home still stick when the motor gets super hot? Or will the glue turn into a gooey mess and the label falls off, or sticks to something else...etc? Things to think about...

[R Cane]

Sonic is done. Well, I need to tweak the color a little, but that's easy.

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sm_green.jpg (39.15 KiB) Viewed 3019 times

[a01butal]

Sonic is done. Well, I need to tweak the color a little, but that's easy.

sm_green.jpg

That's really sweet, when you're ready will they be for sale?

[R Cane]

Possibly, but as I said, I want to do some testing first. I'm really anal about taking money for something that isn't as good as it should be...

[tamiyadan]

.

[slotcarrod]

Looks like MCI has the Sonic ones already! But no letters!

[R Cane]

I saw that...after I had done mine, of course.
As far as the letters, all of the green Sonics and the Tri-Sonics that I've had all had the letter as a very small sticker on top of the label.
There are lots of places to get little letter stickers, so I wasn't overly concerned about that part.
I'm still researching different sources for printing the labels, and how I'd like them done.
Hopefully not too much longer.

[USA-1]

I got tired of looking at my naked label Reedy Ultra series motors on my Lazer's. These labels are thick, really high quality. I only had one Mr T, Mr M transfer the small beat up label and a Mr X. Maybe make a small label like Mr M and placed them over..

This one label was missing, no info except 19 Q, no info on 19 Quad Ultra series..

[WebSteve]

These are several strips right off the printing press, from first run. Still had them! I designed these.

Steve Husting