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Hello, I'm a new member! I would like to get started in this hobby, but I'm sort of overwhelmed. I am a complete novice, so let me tell you what I understand, and what I want to accomplish.

My basic understanding of making vinyl stickers is to buy sticker paper and laminate paper. Make my jpeg template, print it out on the sticker paper, add the laminate and then freestyle cut out my decal with a scissor.

What I'm curious about is when I buy decals, the outline of the decal is obviously professionally cut, they are not cut by hand. So I started to wonder if there are machines out there for consumers to buy that would cut your logo in the outline that you need so you don't have to free-style using a scissor. That's when I googled around and I found this website. Yes, I've read around this website, even some of the tutorials, and I just need some questions clarify.

Can someone list the correct chronological steps in making a vinyl decal? Please assume I do not understand any software or equipment lingo because I don't. I would like to worry about one step at a time and learn from the first step. From designing to printing to cutting. I'm unclear about everything, but I'm especially unclear about printing. I see a section for printer support and a section for cutter support, so I'm assuming we I still need a traditional inkjet printer? I have questions like...Do I print out my designs from an inkjet printer, then re-load into a vinyl cutter to do the outline cutting? See, I'm a complete novice. Please point in the right direction. Thank you!

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Was reading the CRD pdf tutorial... There is a lot of lingo in there I do not understand, but I guess that pdf is a good starting point too. I'm curious since the word plotter is used over and over in the tutorial... Are the words Cutter and Plotter used interchangeably? Vinyl cutter same as vinyl plotter?

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Was reading the CRD pdf tutorial... There is a lot of lingo in there I do not understand, but I guess that pdf is a good starting point too. I'm curious since the word plotter is used over and over in the tutorial... Are the words Cutter and Plotter used interchangeably? Vinyl cutter same as vinyl plotter?

Same thing.  :)

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welcome to the world of vinyl,this is the hardest and most fun thing ive done in a while, ive been doing this for 2 years now and im still not very good at it but i can do the basics and a little more, i sell mostly block letter signs ,yard signs etc.there is lots of sign making videos on you tube and here,most of the language is vinyl specific ,cutter ,plotter is the same thing,you will need a cut program to command the cutter[plotter],if you buy a us cutter it will come with a good cutter program,for free, you might need to look at the sign blazer forum here to get some basic knowladge before you start.you will need to start with some vinyl,an exacto knife to weed with,weeding means to take the vinyl you dont want off of the decal you cut ,you will need some tape to transfer the decal to what your going to put it on, there is vidios to show you how to do that here and on you tube, when you make up your mind on what cutter to buy be sure to get a stand with it its much better with a stand .you will need to get computer literate also, the design part is what kicks my butt most of the time if you get much beyond the block letter stage ,you will need some design experiance from somewhere ,im slowly figureing it out ,be sure when you take a job on you give your self plenty of time and not to complicated at the start ,there are lots of sights to down load cuttable pictures and graphics from one of the best free places is right here on graphics help there is like 83 pages of vectosr these great people have loaded here [just be sure to think them when you down load stuff],any way read read all the stuff you can here look at all the videos several times each and you will get the hang of it good luck and happy cutting

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Hello, I'm a new member! I would like to get started in this hobby, but I'm sort of overwhelmed. I am a complete novice, so let me tell you what I understand, and what I want to accomplish.

My basic understanding of making vinyl stickers is to buy sticker paper and laminate paper. Make my jpeg template, print it out on the sticker paper, add the laminate and then freestyle cut out my decal with a scissor.

What I'm curious about is when I buy decals, the outline of the decal is obviously professionally cut, they are not cut by hand. So I started to wonder if there are machines out there for consumers to buy that would cut your logo in the outline that you need so you don't have to free-style using a scissor. That's when I googled around and I found this website. Yes, I've read around this website, even some of the tutorials, and I just need some questions clarify.

Can someone list the correct chronological steps in making a vinyl decal? Please assume I do not understand any software or equipment lingo because I don't. I would like to worry about one step at a time and learn from the first step. From designing to printing to cutting. I'm unclear about everything, but I'm especially unclear about printing. I see a section for printer support and a section for cutter support, so I'm assuming we I still need a traditional inkjet printer? I have questions like...Do I print out my designs from an inkjet printer, then re-load into a vinyl cutter to do the outline cutting? See, I'm a complete novice. Please point in the right direction. Thank you!

Hi there.

You came to the right place for answers. U.S. cutter sells great products but also has a helpful forum.

There are two basic types of cutting you'll commonly want to do: Regular vinyl cutting and contour-cutting (a more advanced technique which is better to do once you're familiar with regular cutting).

Vinyl Cutting:

With regular vinyl cutting, you basically send your vector design to your cutter from your cutting software.

Vector designs are basically mathematical representations of shapes so you can zoom in infinitely and the edges stay sharp, and this is what is used with your cutter. Bitmaps (most images you see on the web and such) are mapped to a pixel grid and lose fidelity when you zoom in, depending on resolution this will be more or less noticeable. You can convert bitmap to vector with free programs such as Inkscape. Download that at your earliest convenience and check it out.

Once you have a vector design made from scratch or converted from a bitmap, you can send it to your cutter from a cutting software package of your choice. I've tried a few and really like SignCut Production Pro, which is linked to Adobe Illustrator CS3 when you install SignCut. Others will have their own suggestions. I tried the free 'Signblazer Elements' but I think it's a steaming pile of junk and I don't recommend it.

On your cutter, you place your vinyl, set your origin point near the end of the sheet (nearest you) and then send your design from your cutting software and watch the blade cut. Usually, you will need to make sure your blade offset is correct for the type of cutter blade you have. You can adjust pressure on the cutter too for thicker vinyls. Some of this is just experimentation but there are basic settings which tend to be good to start from, depending on your cutter.

Once done cutting, just weed the decal (remove excess vinyl) and you're done. For complex designs, you can even add extra cuts to make 'weeding' easier, otherwise there will be too many connected portions and weeding can get tricky.

If you haven't bought a cutter yet and you want to do contour-cutting later, check out the Laserpoint 24 by U.S. Cutter. It's reasonably-priced and will allow contour cutting.

Contour Cutting:

Summed up, this is generally a contour-cut of a printed image on vinyl (the vinyl of course has an adhesive backing). Papilio sells a wide-variety of vinyl sheets which will go right into your vinyl-printing compatible printer.

For this you'll need an inkjet printer with quality pigment ink. The ink needs to be quality pigment ink which will properly adhere to vinyl (which has its own adhesive backing already). I have the Epson Workforce 30, which is a good starting printer with Epson's 'Durabrite' pigment ink, which sets fast and is great for vinyl. This printer is good for letter-sized printing and smaller.

There's also the larger Epson Workforce 1100 large format printer, but the best option for these printers is a Cobra Ink Systems printer with Continuous Ink System (CIS) that has pigment ink in bottles you can refill. They sell pre-converted WF30, WF1100 and other printers for reasonable prices. Your savings on replacement ink will be substantial over cartridges sold by Epson. They can even convert an existing Epson Workforce printer to use the Continuous Ink System as well.

Once you've printed your design on inkjet vinyl from your printer, you will generally have a 'cut' layer outline in your vector program (Illustrator, Corel Draw, etc.) so your cutter knows where to cut. This is more or less just a a top layer vector outline, and I usually put these on their own layer and in Magenta (since some higher-end printers use Magenta for the contour layer and I got into this habit). At this point, you'd feed in your printed design to the cutter, align registration marks (this is the tricky bit) and send the cut layer to your cutter (you'll need a cutter which has reg-mark recognition or a laser sight you can align manually). The contour-cutting process is a little more of an advanced technique, but there are tutorials online based on your cutting software, cutter and vector program. I use a U.S. Cutter LP24, SignCut Productivity Pro and an Epson WF30 for contour cutting, and I do a lot of contour-cutting.

The main thing is, ask questions like this here and you'll get the help you need. Consider everything you want to do with your setup before buying. If you want to do t-shirts later, you might want the larger Epson 1100 printer right out of the gate.

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Nukleon, thank you so much for taking the time! I left for awhile feeling overwhelmed and that maybe this isn't for me. But that was exactly what I wanted to read. I just wanted to know the basic process.

I assume a vinyl cutter can also cut paper, right? A simple project that I would like for it to do is this:

I want to cut oval/ellipse shapes at a very specific size, 4.50 inch by 2.90 inch to be exact. Pictures, graphics, etc. are inside the ellipse. Each ellipse is printed out on a 4x6 print from Snapfish. Because Snapfish crops/stretches everything, I have to fool it by creating blank 4x6 images and then pasting my 4.50 x 2.90 inside it. So the final results look something like the attached template jpeg, just imagine family pictures and stuff inside the borders of the elipse. templatef.jpg

To not waste any adhesive, I use a straight edge to cut off the red border part. I then run my final 4.50 x 2.90 prints through a Xyron sticker maker to laminate one side and adhesive on the other. Finally, I cut the ellipse out free-hand. So.. what I'm getting at is... is there a machine that can cut this ellipse for me? As in the ability to load my already made prints in the cutter and tell it to cut exactly at the place I need it to cut?

Right now I'm imagining that I can create this same 4x6 template in the cutting software. Then load my already made prints from snapfish, and it will cut it? Would that work?

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Here's my video I made on contour cutting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq5aiZ-2KhM

Cool. From watching that whole video, I gather what I'm trying to do is possible? 4 questions:

1. Can you load smaller paper that's more specific to my scenario, which is 4x6?

2. Will It cut the oval at the exact location, provided I design the template in the software?

3. Would the cutting machine still know where to cut, if you didn't send the picture to your epson printer? I'm assuming yes, right? Because for 4x6, I rather send to snapfish.

4. Which machines can do this?

I was at the cricut forum discussing the "Cricut Personal" and from what I gather, it's not possible with that machine.

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Also if anybody can answer this. I've been looking at the Cricut Personal for $98 bucks and reading up on all the various cartridges they have. I know this is a stupid question, but is that product even comparable to Laserpoint 24 or any of the USCutter offerings? Do I have to worry about cartridges? Logically, this is my guess and please let me know if I'm right or wrong:

"The cricut and their various cartridges are for people who don't want to deal with a PC and designing, so they are limited to what each cartridge offers. UScutter machines, there is no need to worry about cartridges, but you have to be comfortable with your pc in order to design whatever you want to cut. But this way, you are only limited by your imagination."

Is that a correct assumption? Please let me know, I'm trying to understand the various products on the market.

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On Amazon it says USCUTTER sells this: Silhouette SD Digital Craft Cutting Tool

As a biginer, Is this another machine I should consider to start off with?

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Nukleon, thank you so much for taking the time! I left for awhile feeling overwhelmed and that maybe this isn't for me. But that was exactly what I wanted to read. I just wanted to know the basic process.

I assume a vinyl cutter can also cut paper, right? A simple project that I would like for it to do is this:

I want to cut oval/ellipse shapes at a very specific size, 4.50 inch by 2.90 inch to be exact. Pictures, graphics, etc. are inside the ellipse. Each ellipse is printed out on a 4x6 print from Snapfish. Because Snapfish crops/stretches everything, I have to fool it by creating blank 4x6 images and then pasting my 4.50 x 2.90 inside it. So the final results look something like the attached template jpeg, just imagine family pictures and stuff inside the borders of the elipse. templatef.jpg

To not waste any adhesive, I use a straight edge to cut off the red border part. I then run my final 4.50 x 2.90 prints through a Xyron sticker maker to laminate one side and adhesive on the other. Finally, I cut the ellipse out free-hand. So.. what I'm getting at is... is there a machine that can cut this ellipse for me? As in the ability to load my already made prints in the cutter and tell it to cut exactly at the place I need it to cut?

Right now I'm imagining that I can create this same 4x6 template in the cutting software. Then load my already made prints from snapfish, and it will cut it? Would that work?

You're welcome!

For your ellipse with graphics inside, the best way to do this (if the graphics are full-color) is with contour cutting, and you can cut several in a sheet of vinyl paper with adhesive backing.

So, if you need a few of these, I would do all your design work first in Photoshop or some similar software. Then, make your borders (for contour cutting) in Illustrator or Corel Draw. You would print your oval images and when it's time to contour-cut, send your contours from your cutting software (I use SignCut Prod Pro) to the cutter and it would cut ovals as you specified around each image.

It's a bit more involved to actually do it, but that's the concept. It seems some of your steps are perhaps unnecessary because you've been hand-cutting these? You can fit several to a page and just spit them out once you get going.

You would need a proper printer for this too, something with pigment ink like Durabrite from Epson. The CIS (Continuous Ink System) kits from Cobra are nice too, with tanks fitted to various Epson Workforce printers such as the Epson WF30 or WF1100.

The short answer is yes, you can contour-cut these ovals with graphics inside allllll day long. Of course you need a cutter with contour-cutting, such as the LP24 or Graphtec.

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Nukleon, it seems a lot of people who spend the big bucks, make it back somehow because it's their business or part-time job. This is only a hobby for me, and currently I only have this oval cutting project I wanna do. Do I need to spend $400 on the Laserpoint? Will the $179 Silhouette SD do the same for me?

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With the Sihouette, you're limited by size. If all you do are just standard letter sized paper/vinyl/etc, then you'll be fine. But if you ever want to start making signs and more, then you'll need to upgrade to at least a 24" cutter.

However, with the Laswerpoint, the contour cutting feature is manual. So, if you're doing mainly contour cuttings, it'll be a pita. The Sihouette is made by Graphtec and comes with its own cutting software (not sure but I think you may be able to design in it too). It also features auto registration mark, so the contour cutting is a cinch.

In the end, it's up to you how much you want to spend and whether size is important to you, and whether or not you envision this to be more than just a hobby down the road.

Good Luck

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With the Sihouette, you're limited by size. If all you do are just standard letter sized paper/vinyl/etc, then you'll be fine. But if you ever want to start making signs and more, then you'll need to upgrade to at least a 24" cutter.

However, with the Laswerpoint, the contour cutting feature is manual. So, if you're doing mainly contour cuttings, it'll be a pita. The Sihouette is made by Graphtec and comes with its own cutting software (not sure but I think you may be able to design in it too). It also features auto registration mark, so the contour cutting is a cinch.

In the end, it's up to you how much you want to spend and whether size is important to you, and whether or not you envision this to be more than just a hobby down the road.

Good Luck

Well, I'm a long ways from anything serious since I'm a novice as well in terms of designing programs. Just barely learning adobe illustrator. I think you answered my question, the Sihouette SD fits my needs right now. But I'm curious what "manual contour cutting" in relations to a machine means? Cause technically, you can say using a pair of scissors is manual contour cutting.

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Well, I'm a long ways from anything serious since I'm a novice as well in terms of designing programs. Just barely learning adobe illustrator. I think you answered my question, the Sihouette SD fits my needs right now. But I'm curious what "manual contour cutting" in relations to a machine means? Cause technically, you can say using a pair of scissors is manual contour cutting.

The LP24 is manual only in the sense that you have to manually align the laser point (the red dot on the vinyl) with three of your registration marks. Once you do that for 3 points, boom, the LP24 just cuts your outline and from there it's automated, and awesome (if you got your alignment right). This method works very well for low-contrast registration marks that the Graphtec would probably struggle to see, such as marks on reflective silver or gold vinyl, holographic and other exotic vinyls sold by Papilio. I still don't know if the Graphtec can sense marks on these types of paper, but if it can that's awesome!

The Graphtec will sense reg-marks on its own, which is great, IF you align your paper exactly right (assuming letter-sized 8.5x11) and if your registration marks aren't too close to the edges of the paper (but this is true with any registration marks, or your paper could fly right out of the cutter if it comes off the rollers).

So, the Graphtec is better with automated registration-mark sensing, but I am not convinced it will sense marks on all types of paper (I use a lot of reflective silver) and I wonder if the paper not being exactly aligned causes issues with the contour being off. I like the control I get from manual laser alignment.

You will always do more with a cutter than you think. Why would you buy a cutter for one project? Chances are you won't. I surprised myself spending a good chunk of change on an LP24, but making triple my money back with jobs, not to mention cutting my own decals for my car, website, etc. for fun or to give away.

I would recommend at least a 24" wide cutter, and the LP24 is a solid choice for contour-cutting. I do hear great things about the Graphtec's build quality and have no doubts about this, but I question how robust the contour-cutting is with specialty vinyls.

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