pete8314

I'm wanting to cut my own vinyl in-house, recommendations?

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Hi all

Sorry for yet another 'recommendations' post, but from reading others, I definitely need your advice, as I'm totally new to this.

Quick background: I have an eCommerce business making and selling accessories for Tesla vehicles.  It's going ok, and one of my ranges are Carbon Fiber (3M 1080 film) decals, like these. Until now, I've traced the outline of whatever's needed, sent it off to another company (that specializes in cellphone skins), and after a few proofs we eventually land on a good design. It's a slow process though, and limits my ability to scale and move quickly.  As you can see, the designs aren't particularly intricate, but there's plenty of curves that need to be smooth. Most designs are small, although a couple that I have in mind will be up to 66" long (just a few inches wide).

So with all of this said, I think I'm ready to set up my own vinyl workshop, and I'm looking for recommendations for the best cutter.  Quality, speed, reliability and ease of use are more important that price. As I mentioned, my typical process will be to trace the design, so I'm clueless when it comes to the best way to feed that in, to get a cut vinyl shape coming out.  I'm competent, but not great, with Photoshop, Illustrator etc. I'd rather not spend weeks learning new software, so I'm hoping there's something relatively easy to pick up. This won't be very high-volume, but when I push the 'go' button, I'd like it to be something I don''t have to keep an eye on once it gets going.

Assuming I'm not being naive, I'd love to hear your recommendations, or any other questions you might have.

Thanks!

Pete

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being you are already familiar with illustrator and looking for a very solid machine - look at the graphtecs - with the plug in you can cut directly from Illy  - if price is no object then look at the graphtec fc-8600 - or a more cost effective might be the ce6000-60 that I have used for the past 3 years.

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There is a post in the Illustrator section of the forum that will help you fine tune a few details that are helpful when designing to cut. AI is a large and complicated program as I'm sure you are aware but the tools/skills needed to design for cut vinyl work are relatively simple.  No strokes or gradients and always need to weld (Unite) any touching objects. I took some time a while back and tried to lay it all out for those new to cutters.

I second the Graphtec and if money is not a large consideration would lean toward the FC series due to the added downforce and overall rugged build strength. You are going to want a cutter than can handle long cuts (this is known as tracking) I personally run a SummaCut D75R and have loved it although they are a less publicized brand and only sold through 1 dealer inside the US. 

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Thanks!  I might have over-stated my Illustrator skills, if I'm forced to use the Adobe suite, Photoshop is my strength (relative term, I've learnt skills very specific to what I need, i.e. making images pretty for the web), Illustrator is a fairly distant second, but if there's a need, I can probably pick it up.  

The FC-8600 is probably overkill for my needs, but the CE6000 or SummaCut are probably closer to the right ballpark. 

I know I need to do more research too, but your suggestions are very helpful.

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