Is anyone making replacement clear labels for DEC gear?

[Fritz Mueller]

Hi Ethan,

On my 11/45, the big power supply regulator stickers on the back of the CPU cabinet were also badly damaged.  As part of my restore, I went to some effort to make suitable replacements.  The originals were white on clear.

I found that stickeryou.com did a nice job with white on clear (look under their “Clear Stickers” category).  It’s a little pricey at $18 for a single page, but the two big power supply stickers I needed were most of a page so I went for it, and was pleased with the results.  I’ll put a pic of this up on my blog soon in case others are interested in how this turned out.

I would still like to replace the exact sticker you linked to below, but couldn’t justify a whole page to get just that one small sticker…. Please let me know if you would like to put together a full page of various smaller stickers and split the cost, though!

A black on white vinyl process would probably also look okay for some of the smaller stickers, I think, if you could get a laser print with a suitably dense and uniform black field.  Interested in hearing if some of the other restorers here have different/better suggestions for this.

For the smallest stickers in my restore (connector/plug labels where I was not particularly concerned with matching artwork/fonts) I have been using a Brother P-touch labeler with black-on-clear and white-on-black tape cartridges.

	cheers,
	   —FritzM.

> On Sep 28, 2016, at 2:46 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi, All,
> 
> I'm restoring some stuff from the mid 1970s and a recent acquisition
> was previously cleaned of mouse damage but needs to be sanded and
> repainted by me.  One aspect of it is that some of the labels are
> damaged (but some can probably be masked and painted around).  The
> level of damage I'm talking about looks a bit like this...
> 
> http://fritzm.github.io/images/pdp11/h742-corrosion.jpg
> 
> Most of the item intact, but rust and scale to be cleaned, sanded,
> primed and painted.  The damage to the label in that pic is
> representative.
> 
> I have access to all the modern tools, so it's easy to print black on
> clear adhesive sheet, but not so much with white.  Before embarking on
> spinning up a process, I thought I'd ask if anyone has already done
> so.  In particular interest to me is the era from about 1965-1980,
> from PDP-8s through PDP-11s and VAX-11 machines, both CPUs and
> peripherals.  I would like to get close matches and I already know in
> some cases, there just aren't close matches with modern TrueType font
> files.  I can, of course, just take photos of the label areas now,
> restore the damage, and put on stickers some time in the future, but
> doing it all at once has its own appeal
> 
> -ethan