Newbie Note: Weeding Can Make You Lose Your Mind!

[painperdu 3]

I'm practicing on very fine cut lines. My Titan 2 is doing a great job of cutting but there is a point where the lines are so tiny that weeding is impossible. I was trying to weed lines that were about  0.10 inch height.

 

Is there a common size below which you avoid even trying to weed?

[101LEDs 100]

Nothing smaller than a human hair. J/K. Once it gets tiny, there isn't much adhesive left to hold it in place.

[jaybyrd 3,770]

.1" isn't as small as you'd think. I do thinner lines than that regularly but weeding takes practice.

[painperdu 3]

The part that gave me trouble was actually smaller than 0.1". It was the middle part of a serif 'a' <-close to the size of this a.

 

Maybe longer lines aren't as troublesome. Also, I'm just practicing on small items and what I plan to cut will be much larger than this.

[knucklehead 530]

I just don't do that small stuff anymore.

[Wildgoose 4,200]

Real small = Real tricky. I usually make a few extra if things are small. Hopefully you aren't having to do 100 of something small.

 

Sometimes you can grab a corner and just rip it off in one quick pull like taking a band-aid off a harry arm. Then you just have to pick out the inner pieces. Has to be cut perfectly though. 

[randalle 50]

I've also found that every design generally has a better weed approach.  One design, may work best pulling from the bottom right... while a different design weeds easier from a completely different location and direction.  Practice.  I've weeded thousands of designs and still... each one is a new challenge to figure out which 'way' is the cleanest / best / fastest.  This is obviously much more important on detailed designs.

 

and I agree with WildGoose... sometimes the bandaid method is surprisingly effective.

[OWJones 1,981]

You can also plan ahead and add additional cuts/weed lines to make it easier.   If I'm going to do a whole bunch of one design, I'll cut just a few - weed those and find where the troublesome spots are, then add/move extra cuts to eliminate the trouble spots and cut the rest of the batch.

 

The more you do, the more you'll be able to spot where the tricky parts will be and you'll be able to try and eliminate those issues before you even begin cutting...