TaterNuts

Direct to Coroplast with Sharpie and US Refine MH721

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I have modified the friction rollers on my US Cutter Refine MH721 to allow direct to coroplast 'printing' with a sharpie.

I have often lost sales due to temporary signs for Garage Sales, Baby Showers, Birthday Parties Etc because I could not offer a 'cheap temporary sign'

Now I may offer these signs without any cost of vinyl, or transfer paper...

I have made the machine to be able to accept the standard friction rollers or the modified ones...  I had spare rollers laying around from a Master machine that I no longer use, however the rollers are interchangeable.

This may hold up longer then expected, however I plan on continuing testing...

Video Coming soon!

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I've used sharpies on white vinyl to do bumper stickers fast and cheap. Coroplast is an interesting idea.

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Guest round2racing

How do you use a sharpie on vinyl?

Do you put it in the pen plotter?

Does it make a smooth line?

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How do you use a sharpie on vinyl?

Do you put it in the pen plotter?

Does it make a smooth line?

Take blade holder out of the carriage, insert sharpie in its place. be sure its up off the vinyl or paper a bit, like the blade holder is...

Put vinyl or paper in, cut as normal.

Smooth somewhat... You have to slow the machine down a bit or else you will dry out the pen before ink flows down to the tip.  Practice makes perfect.

Lines look pretty good from a distance,  you can see faint lines if you 'fill plot' (ie coloring it in), however from 2 or 3 feet away, looks very good.

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Guest fivestar

Very nice Tater........Looks great.

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SWWEEETTTTT...Looks good.Now how would you fill in a color. Say you need just a solid red 2" circle.....Just draw the circle and then put about 30 lines going through it???

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Guest round2racing

Hey BannerJohn,

How would you go about doing something like this in Signblazer?

Is it possible?

I have some great ideas for this if it works in SBE......

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Guest round2racing

By the way....

Tater, you are a genius.

That was amazing.

Excellent job my man!! :thumbsup:;D:D;D

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Guest kenya

Pretty cool............. great mod  :thumbsup:.

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Pretty cool.  One question, how do you tell it to fill in the letters with the pen?  When you normaly cut it just cuts the outline of the letters.  Is the sharpie wide enough that it fills it in?

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Tater, great video!!!  That's amazing.  Now will it work on the Copam also?

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Pretty cool.  One question, how do you tell it to fill in the letters with the pen?  When you normaly cut it just cuts the outline of the letters.  Is the sharpie wide enough that it fills it in?

In Flexi, there is a prompt for you to 'fill plot', you just set the pen width and it fills it in with colors.

I suppose in other programs that do not have this option, like winpcsign, for example, you could keep adding 'inlines' instead of outlines... Of course, you would have to make them pretty close together.

I will be attempting a multicolor sign soon, and of course, Ill video tape it.

The video was shot first run, I didnt even think to record it till it was almost done.

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would you care to share how you modified the rollers

It involves taking the rollers completely apart... I added no new hardware, I only had to drill some holes into the top of the machine, and notch the plastic with a utility knife.  I can take the rollers back off from the modified design, and put them back to the original design at any time if i would like, however, i have some spare friction feed rollers, so if you were to do this mod, i would reccomened you get 2 additional rollers.

It takes about five mins to convert the machine from original to the modified, Ill take pictures later today or tomarrow to show you.

The only down fall to the modified version is that you cannot 'flip the switch' to take tension off from the rollers, however, it does not work bad with coroplast.  A video will show you alot better then me trying to explain it to you, which I can try to get up this weekend.

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Tater, great video!!!  That's amazing.  Now will it work on the Copam also?

Im not sure... The I only own the refine from US cutter, and some other chineese plotters.

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Guest round2racing

Tater,

Can this be done with SBE?  Is there a fill in option?

Also, would you select cut or print?

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It would probably be faster and easier to just fill in by hand.

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