Flexi-8 Vinyl cut job with inserted Printed/Contour cut image..

[lodcomm]

Hello Folks,


I am printing and plotting on a hybrid roland sc500

I need a hand on how to lay out and send this job to production manager for printing and cutting.

I am making a business sign for a customer. I want the basic sign border & Lettering simply plot-cut directly out of white vinyl only - no ink whatsoever on this area. I also wish to insert a black printed car image with a contour cut around the outside.

Here is the basic outline:



basically I am trying to send the job to the production manager to simply print the Car image, and then, after drying.. cut the sign border, letters, and the contour cut around the printed vette image.

If I set the sign border and letters to not printable in the layers palette & send the job, production manager simply prints the car image in the lower left corner of the media losing it's relative position in the sign overall as in:



What I wish to accomplish is this at the production manager, but only printing black ink on the car image itself, and no ink on the letters.





hopefully I am making sense!

thanks in advance

-todd

 

[John in Cali]

I have never used layers in Flexi. I would make the border and letters white with a contour cut and send it that way.

 

[bob]

Why all the layers? Is it some sort of fetish or something?

Do this...

Lay the entire thing out on one layer. Car, text, border, everything.

Then select everything you want to cut, the text, the border, etc. and do Arrange->Contour Cut->Make Contour Cut. You may or may not have to convert the text to curves beforehand, my memory fails me. When you do this the text and all of the other objects you have selected turn into a gray outline. At least gray is the default for a contour cut line, if you haven't changed it. Regardless of the color of the contour cut line, all of those objects will cease having a fill color. It doesn't matter what color something might be when you set it to be a contour cut.

Or select each object separately and make it a contour cut. Contour cut lines are collective, you can have lots of them.

Print it. Only the car will print.

Contour cut it. All of the text, the border, and whatever else you selected will be cut.

This advice is not theoretical, I do this all the time.

 

[DizzyMarkus]

Why not just print the car, and cut the lettering seperate, youll have to install it onto something. Align it then :0)

can't do it one way,do it another

Markus

 

[Allied Digital]

what Bob says. I had a yard signs for Worthington Bank. Used his proceedure, like he said - the W was the only color and did a contour cut for all the other text. Weeded, taped and applied to black coro.
I too, have never used layers in flexi -- didn't even know you could...

 

[lodcomm]

Why not just print the car, and cut the lettering seperate, youll have to install it onto something. Align it then :0)

can't do it one way,do it another

Markus

Thanks Folks,

The problem with aligning it on the install is that I am sending the business sign to the customer in the mail for him to install.

Thanks for the Ideas though!

-todd

 

[lodcomm]

Why all the layers? Is it some sort of fetish or something?

Do this...

Lay the entire thing out on one layer. Car, text, border, everything.

Then select everything you want to cut, the text, the border, etc. and do Arrange->Contour Cut->Make Contour Cut. You may or may not have to convert the text to curves beforehand, my memory fails me. When you do this the text and all of the other objects you have selected turn into a gray outline. At least gray is the default for a contour cut line, if you haven't changed it. Regardless of the color of the contour cut line, all of those objects will cease having a fill color. It doesn't matter what color something might be when you set it to be a contour cut.

Or select each object separately and make it a contour cut. Contour cut lines are collective, you can have lots of them.

Print it. Only the car will print.

Contour cut it. All of the text, the border, and whatever else you selected will be cut.

This advice is not theoretical, I do this all the time.

I have only a slight fetish with the layers Actually I really dont care about them one way or the other. I am relatively new to flexi, and dont have an great understanding of it yet. I created the layers in an attempt to print and cut them separately while maintaining the registration. The Sign template (everything but the printed car) is one I have used 100's of times and I simply just fill in the basic information as provided by the customer and send it as a cut job directly to my roland. When I got the request to add a printed image to the basic sign I just added it into the layout on a different layer thinking I could turn off the "Printability" of the layers I wanted to cut only (ie: the text and border).. Anyhow It was simply my lack of experience with Flexi that led me to futilely turn to layers I will do exactly as you suggest and learn from there.

thanks a ton!

-todd

 

[strypguy]

On those types of jobs I print and cut my image. I then create an outline of the contour cut image and also cut that along with the vinyl lettering so everything is where it needs to be in your layout. Then remove the outline vinyl and usually you will see where your blade made the cut. Then peel the printed image and lay it in that area and your cut vinyl and the printed image will be where you want them in the layout and can then be pre-masked and installed as one piece. Hope this helps, I suck at explaining things like this.

 

[DizzyMarkus]

If you have layered colored vinyl, then you should be able to do them seperate and combine with the transfer tape to make them one :0) Use reggie marks if needed.

Markus

 

[lodcomm]

Hello All,

Thanks to everyone for the help - I got it to work perfectly by following Bobs procedure.. I layed out everything on one layer, then simply selected the text & Border(s) and then selected "Arrange-->Convert to outlines", then "Arrange-->Contour--->Make Contour Cut" - then Imported the Corvette as a b/w bitmap, placed it in its spot, selected it and used the "effects-->Countour cut" and created a .010 contour around the car. Sent the whole thing to production manager using rip+print. All worked out well in one single procedure.. The car was printed in black, rested 5 mins for the ink to dry & then plotted the contours.

Here is the door sign with the transfer tape on, ready to send:





Thanks again to everyone for helping a newbie along!

-t