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What Direction Do You Weed Your Cut Vinyl?

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bannertime

Active Member
The only thing that I'd add is that I zig-zag from top to bottom while pulling to the left. I find pulling straight right to be annoying depending on the font and mix of numbers.

Also weed lines are amazing. For some reason the person I learned from didn't like them and always made his cuts by hand. Not anymore.
 
myront

myront

Dammit, make it faster!!
TimToad said:
Go figure. I'm left handed and have almost always weeded right to left because I like being able to pull the centers out with my left hand and dental pick while pulling off the excess with my right..
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I don't see how you describe is even possible. What hand holds the vinyl backer down.
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ikarasu

Active Member
AMGearhart said:
Thank you for the replies. We have a new employee and she insists that cut vinyl must be weeded left to right because the plotter blade is at a 45 degree angle. It sounded unusual to me, so I was curious if others were doing it that way too.
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Your new employee thinks 45 degree means it's at a 45 degree slant from left to right...

Show her this diagram and explain the degree isn't how much the blade is slanted... It's how much blade comes into contact with the vinyl.

https://www.averydennison.com/conte...ain/textimage/image.img.png/1522362427268.png

Whether cutting with a 30,45, or 60 degree blade, the vinyl cuts the same way.

This is a good test for a new employee. If she doubles down and keeps insisting she's right... You know she can't be trained. If shes at least open to the idea that she's wrong, it's a good sign!

Not saying she has to weed from right to left... Both ways work. But she should at least accept that her reasoning is wrong.
 
GAC05

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
myront said:
Could it be the difference between left or right handed person? I like going right to left because I'm right handed and I keep an xacto in my right hand while weeding. I'll sometimes just pull out the centers as I go along.
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I am left handed.
I always weed left to right, because you know politics .....
 
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iPrintStuff

Prints stuff
Naturally, if you cut vinyl with a 45 degree blade, you need to weed it at 45 degrees in the opposite direction.

Problem solved. I’ll take my cheque.
 
Rexerex

Rexerex

New Member
Upper right to lower left. I have tried left to right and didn't work as well for the reasons already given - open letter direction. Could there be some difference depending on the brand or type of media? I have limited experience with that.
 
kcollinsdesign

kcollinsdesign

Old member
myront said:
I don't see how you describe is even possible. What hand holds the vinyl backer down.
View attachment 142006
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I just rest the side of my right hand on the backer, giving me plenty of articulation range for the x-acto knife in my right hand fingers. Left hand holds the weeded vinyl, and I sort of "snap and wiggle" the vinyl as I go, paying close attention the upcoming letters as they all require a slightly different approach.

The trick to weeding (aside from good cutting) is anticipating which letters are coming up. An "A" will weed different than a "C", etc. I have found it is far better to have the same person that cut the vinyl to weed it, as they will have internalized the copy and can anticipate what's coming up better. Shoving a pile of cut vinyl to someone who has no clue what he or she is weeding results in a slower process and more errors.

Note: I was the slowest weeder in the shop. The other guys were able to just snap the vinyl off in seconds. The downside to their method is they would usually mess up a letter or two in the process, and would have to recut and position them. By that time my vinyl was applied and I was on to the next job.
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
I like weeding butter-smooth cut vinyl...it's satisfying. I hate the plucking out the insides of the P's A's O's and that stuff
 
A

Andy D

Active Member
The other thing that makes some weeding easier is short "snatching" pulls of the vinyl rather than evenly pulling.
 
James Burke

James Burke

Being a grandpa is more fun than working
We do thousands of engraved paver bricks so we pull only the letters instead of the background. Being left handed, I turn the stencil upside down and weed from right to left, pulling toward me as I go.

I use a Fiskars knife like the one shown below. Done correctly, I don't even need a separate tool to hold anything down.

For some reason, the letters separate easier that way...including the real funky ones like ampersands and some Greek letters.




IMG_4157_1024x1024_320aa3fa-5a47-45b5-af8e-bce742bec642_grande.png
 
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A

Andy D

Active Member
James Burke said:
We do thousands of engraved paver bricks so we pull only the letters instead of the background. Being left handed, I turn the stencil upside down and weed from right to left.

For some reason, the letters separate easier that way...including the real funky ones like ampersands and some Greek letters.


JB
Click to expand...

That's interesting, I would love to see some of your bricks.
How does vinyl play into engraving? Are they Sand blasted?
 
James Burke

James Burke

Being a grandpa is more fun than working
I especially like sign vinyl because it allows the freedom for much more detail than sandblast stencil. There's no way we could have done the spider web otherwise.

JB
 
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