SignMeUpGraphics
Super Active Member
Approx. $150k for a ProCut installed.
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Cutting down stickers
- Thread starter Thejaydogg
- Start date
Approx. $150k for a ProCut installed.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
We have a love/hate relationship with our IEcho flatbed cutter, its about 1/3rd the price of the Procut and Half the price of the Similar sized Summa and does a awesome job cutting out individual decals/labels/etc. Next to our flatbed application table it was the best purchase we made for efficiency of our shop, In the first 3 months of owning it we ran over $180,000 worth of work through it... previously we were subbing out $150,000/year in cutting/routing jobs.
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SignMeUpGraphics
Super Active Member
The ebay blade tools are awesome. I have like 4-5 of them. The blades are good too - They cut just as well as the official blades... They do dull a bit faster, but at $1.50 a blade, you can switch them out every week (Mine last months) and they'd still be cheaper.
The only issue I have with the ebay blades is they're all silver with a black bottom. Makes having different blades a pain in the ass, I wish they'd make different colored caps - I just use some nail polish or something on the cap to differenciate though.
I have 1 blade setup for regular vinyl, 1 for laminated, 1 for DG/EG, and 1 for perf cut. I never have to adjust the depths, and we use a huge variety of vinyls at work.
I do also run all my kiss cuts through, or at least 3-4 kiss cuts, then switch to perf and run them through. It takes a bit longer since it has to re-read all the registration marks... but you're only changing the blade once. So I much prefer summas way of doing it. I haven't tried using the channel to do a regular cut yet.I have a few perf cuts coming up, so Ill give it a try.
I definatelly recommend buying more blade holders / blades though! The holders are like $5 from china, blades like $1.50... or you can buy the knockoffs on Amazon for a bit more than that, but still a lot cheaper than originals.
I've been using the knockoff blades for about a year... I actually find they cut better quality / smaller letters, since theyre so cheap whenever I need to cut something REALLY detailed, I just throw the blade out and put a new one in.
Especially with all the perf cutting we've been doing... I could cut vinyl for years without the blade going dull, but when you do a perf cut and cut into paper... Paper just destroys the sharpness of blades.
You're welcome, also when i do perf cut i use a 60 degree blade that i leave in the 2nd holder
TomK
New Member
Wow, what a frustrating day. I spent the last 5 or 6 hours with the FC8600 testing perf cuts and such, and the only feedback I have at the moment is THANK GOD for my Summa.
I am getting inconsistent results. If I send a row of 3.5" x 5" boxes that have just a perf cut line around them, I'll get some lines that cut all the way through the material, elsewhere in the row I'll get a box or two that has a cut that only scored the vinyl and not the backing. If I send it again, same thing just on different boxes.
Any ideas what else I can try? I have it all working, 2nd holder with 60 degree blade, perf cuts sending just fine vs a contour cut, yada yada, just no consistency on the perf cuts through 3 different vinyls GF 202, Ora 3165, and Arlon 4500.
Possibly Blade depth, speed or a combination of both. the blade may need to be out a bit more i just perf cut 600 stickers today. also there are i think 7 different half cut path patterns that it will cut i forget which i use i think its #5 but id have to check
Hi,
I am planning to buy Royal Sovereign Trimmer what problems did you have with machine?
Nash
I have a couple ways of trimming that have been mentioned. A 53" challenge cutter, a 12", 24" and 39" manual guillotines and 2 plotters, but there is one other item that hasn't been mentioned. For short run stuff, I like to grab my Sooper straight edge with the cutter attachment. It does a nice job, and quick.
See Link Below
Sooper Edge The Ultimate Safety Ruler | Image1Impact
See Link Below
Sooper Edge The Ultimate Safety Ruler | Image1Impact
bob
It's better to have two hands than one glove.
The simplest way is this..
Here's 56 decals that can be cut out with 17 cuts. It requires a flat surface with a cutting mat and a sufficiently long straight edge. If you don't have a long straight edge hie yourself to the nearest drywall supply and get a 4', a 6', and if they have one, an 8' ruler. Endlessly handy.
Lay the media out and cut the red lines. I use an Xacto but most any knife will do., Note that you don't cut through to the edge of the media, just cut beyond the images. Being careful to lift the straight edge and set it down again, don't slide it, so as to not move anything, make all of the short cuts, vertical in this case, first. The starting tin the center and moving to each edge make all of the long cuts, horizontal in this case. If you're reasonably careful the media will stay put while you proceed. If it doesn't it's a trivial matter to straighten it out.
I do this all the time and it's the fastest and most accurate way I've found in many years of doing this,.
Here's 56 decals that can be cut out with 17 cuts. It requires a flat surface with a cutting mat and a sufficiently long straight edge. If you don't have a long straight edge hie yourself to the nearest drywall supply and get a 4', a 6', and if they have one, an 8' ruler. Endlessly handy.
Lay the media out and cut the red lines. I use an Xacto but most any knife will do., Note that you don't cut through to the edge of the media, just cut beyond the images. Being careful to lift the straight edge and set it down again, don't slide it, so as to not move anything, make all of the short cuts, vertical in this case, first. The starting tin the center and moving to each edge make all of the long cuts, horizontal in this case. If you're reasonably careful the media will stay put while you proceed. If it doesn't it's a trivial matter to straighten it out.
I do this all the time and it's the fastest and most accurate way I've found in many years of doing this,.
sardocs
New Member
Bob's method is precisely the way we've done it at our shop since the printer arrived way back in the early '90s. I stack up the sheets sometimes 4 deep using a pin in the outside corners to align the layers. A steel rule of appropriate length and an olfa cutter get it done pretty quickly and very accurately. On occasion I remove the tip of a finger, but that's part of the game...
In our summa, when that happens we replace the teflón line where the summa cuts. Its not usually a problem with the Blade
Enviado desde mi Nexus 6 mediante Tapatalk
No in the plotters that do this you have to change the blade to a different part of the holder and it cuts it out over a gully so it never comes into contact with anything on the other side of the material. Graphtec has some videos for this process.
Summa perf cuts right over the strip. It does chew it up, but from what I heard it doesn't chew it up so much that it's a problem, though I only have a graphtec so I can't comment on it.
I just did 22,000 decals, all various sizes perf cut on the graphtec. Everything cut perfectly... Took a few hours, and it did it while I was printing / laminating and flatbed printing... So took no effort out of me, except every 30 minutes I went and hit send in onyx to cut the next set.
Much, much better than a straight edge. I'd say maybe 100 of the smaller ones went out of alignment, sounds like a lot... But out of 22,000 , the hours it saved me is worth the $20 in extra material used.
DropZoneSpec
New Member
I use a Graphtec as well as a Mimaki CG (for my wider jobs), I've never been able to get either to cut PERF cuts well...what's your secret? Mine will generally track off somewhere or some will perf cut properly and others not all the way through...0.o
How long are your cut jobs? For perf cuts I try to group them under 5 ft.
Once I go downstairs near my machine I'll post my settings, on my phone right now! There was a setting I started to use that made the perf cuts perfect. Before I turned it on, and learned the proper way of doing the blade adjustment I had rough cuts / not all the way through. After doing a couple hundred thousand you get the hang of it / figure out the best settings. So once I get near my machine I'll post back.
Here's a sample of a job I recently did - usually our decals are square/rectangle shape, so it's easier. This job was a weirder shape, and it turned out perfect. Ignore the non - equal border, that's the way the sticker was designed.
I once printed some decals with the cut line printed, then proceeded to cut it just to see how accurate it was... 100ish decals were all within a mm or two. They only time it goes off track for me is if I'm cutting from a big roll, and it thanks the roll and it unaligns itself because of it.
Attachments
Ok, under cut line pattern I use -
Up Mode = 2. This is the setting I found to be the best, and what really made a difference for me in smooth cuts.
Cutting Pattern is 0. Depending on the media, you'll want to change it out.
I also find if you're cutting uniform shapes, like rectangles, it's best to set them up as full lines rather than squares - It makes the plotter move less, which leaves less chance for it going off skew. I'll upload a sample file -
Uploadfiles.io - Sample cut file.eps
For any long lengthwise lines, I seperate into incremental lines, it seems to help. So It'll cut all the vertical lines, then once it's done it'll go back to the beginning and cut all the horizontal lines (Horizontals are setup in 1 full line). I do it this way with 3-400 1-2 inch squares at a time, and it never tracks off.
For non uniform shapes, like the turtle... I generally leave a quarter inch of space inbetween. Everything is setup as a single cut, and I haven't had many problems with them. Usually I don't do diecuts that arent shaped like a rectangle though - So I follow the above approach, and its easy.
This picture is about 1000 4 inch square decals with rounded corners. You can see the clean cut on it.
It takes a lot of experimenting - Grab some scrap material of whatever your cutting and play with it. Change the up / down distance, change the blade length... etc. The first 12,000 decals I did were hell. It took 3-4 people to pop them out over a few days... I didnt quite cut through the backing. It took some experimenting to get the settings perfect... But now with zero waste since I gang them all up, it does half as many cuts since theres no space, Theyre usually grouped in 50/100 sections so I can pop a section out, tear all the stickers apart and elastic it without the need to count... And it takes me maybe 30 seconds to pop out 100 decals, since I just tear it in half, put them together, tear in half.. put together, tear in half... until its down to 1 decal. Really easy and simple. And the customer loves how accurate it is, and pretty much trippled their order since we stared doing it this way. Before we used a guillotine and the operator would mess some up, and they'd never be perfectly even.
Also.. for blade depth, Fold the vinyl into an S shape. So it's 3 layers, run your blade over it so it cuts through the first layer, and just knicks the second layer... Then the blade depth is good. I find after that, you only need to make slight turns to ensure it's perfect.
I also change the blade for every batch we do... Cutting through paper dulls the blade. I'm sure it'd be fine to keep going... But we buy packs of blades for $.50-1 per blade. So I switch it out after every huge order. If youre only cutting a couple hundred you should be fine... But once you get into the 10-20,000 orders, spend the buck and put a new blade in.. it'll make for a cleaner cut.
Up Mode = 2. This is the setting I found to be the best, and what really made a difference for me in smooth cuts.
Cutting Pattern is 0. Depending on the media, you'll want to change it out.
I also find if you're cutting uniform shapes, like rectangles, it's best to set them up as full lines rather than squares - It makes the plotter move less, which leaves less chance for it going off skew. I'll upload a sample file -
Uploadfiles.io - Sample cut file.eps
For any long lengthwise lines, I seperate into incremental lines, it seems to help. So It'll cut all the vertical lines, then once it's done it'll go back to the beginning and cut all the horizontal lines (Horizontals are setup in 1 full line). I do it this way with 3-400 1-2 inch squares at a time, and it never tracks off.
For non uniform shapes, like the turtle... I generally leave a quarter inch of space inbetween. Everything is setup as a single cut, and I haven't had many problems with them. Usually I don't do diecuts that arent shaped like a rectangle though - So I follow the above approach, and its easy.
This picture is about 1000 4 inch square decals with rounded corners. You can see the clean cut on it.
It takes a lot of experimenting - Grab some scrap material of whatever your cutting and play with it. Change the up / down distance, change the blade length... etc. The first 12,000 decals I did were hell. It took 3-4 people to pop them out over a few days... I didnt quite cut through the backing. It took some experimenting to get the settings perfect... But now with zero waste since I gang them all up, it does half as many cuts since theres no space, Theyre usually grouped in 50/100 sections so I can pop a section out, tear all the stickers apart and elastic it without the need to count... And it takes me maybe 30 seconds to pop out 100 decals, since I just tear it in half, put them together, tear in half.. put together, tear in half... until its down to 1 decal. Really easy and simple. And the customer loves how accurate it is, and pretty much trippled their order since we stared doing it this way. Before we used a guillotine and the operator would mess some up, and they'd never be perfectly even.
Also.. for blade depth, Fold the vinyl into an S shape. So it's 3 layers, run your blade over it so it cuts through the first layer, and just knicks the second layer... Then the blade depth is good. I find after that, you only need to make slight turns to ensure it's perfect.
I also change the blade for every batch we do... Cutting through paper dulls the blade. I'm sure it'd be fine to keep going... But we buy packs of blades for $.50-1 per blade. So I switch it out after every huge order. If youre only cutting a couple hundred you should be fine... But once you get into the 10-20,000 orders, spend the buck and put a new blade in.. it'll make for a cleaner cut.
Attachments
Jester1167
Premium Subscriber
DropZoneSpec
New Member
Awesome man, thank you for all that; especially setting the blade depth with folded vinyl...excellent idea!
Soon as I get back to work, I'll give it a go!
Btw, I usually do smaller orders of 100-500, anything over that I generally source out, not always.
Soon as I get back to work, I'll give it a go!
Btw, I usually do smaller orders of 100-500, anything over that I generally source out, not always.