pete8314

How to cut the backing paper on Vinyl

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This might be a silly question, or I'm not sure of the right search terms. I'm using a Graphtec FC8600 for cutting 3M 1080 vinyl, typically a lot of fairly small shapes. Then I go to my cutting table, weed, pull a layer of TransferRite over everything, then cut out (freehand) what's left into individual pieces using a Martelli rotary cutter. The process works fine, but the cutting is tedious and time-consuming, and since i do it all freehand, the straight cuts are not perfectly straight.

Today I received a sample from another company, and their cuts are clearly done by machine, I've attached an example. It's a vinyl decal with the TransferRite over it, but as you can see, the cut around the piece is perfect. How are they doing this? 

 

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No, at least, I very much doubt it. There's a lot of shapes, so that would mean a lot of dies, and the cost would be disproportionate. 

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1 hour ago, pete8314 said:

Does the mask go to outer edges of decal, or edges of backing paper? 

Today I received a sample from another company, and their cuts are clearly done by machine, I've attached an example. It's a vinyl decal with the TransferRite over it, but as you can see, the cut around the piece is perfect. How are they doing this? 

 

 

 

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The example you show is just a simple rectangle so I I would guess they most likely used a paper cutter, or even a straight edge and a good knife.

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That's certainly possible, but I have 50 examples like that are they're all identical, so would require an awful lot of precision using a paper cutter?

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If you use a straight edge and an exact-o it's not that hard to cut right on the edge of the weedbox.  If you are gang cutting  a handful of the same design all of the weedboxes will be the same size. 

If you are cutting a bunch of different decals at once, I'll sometimes create my own weedbox making all of the decals the same size (or maybe just the same width, depending on what I'm cutting).  It's simple to line them up in the cutfile, then I can lay my 36" straight edge down and cut one side of a dozen pieces at once. Repeat for the opposite side and then just cut between each one to separate.

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