Vinyl cutter what is

The only problem that the Vinyl cutter has is that it can only cut out shapes or letters on strong colored Vinyl. If you were to design a project of many colors, the Vinyl cutter will have to cut each color one after the other and then placed on top of the other before sticking it on the substrate. Even with these limiting factors that are affecting the Vinyl cutter, it still produces long lasting and solid designs that are resistant to wear or fading. The Vinyl cutter machine is built with the following specifications which help it to perform greatly.

They are as follows;. A novice in this field may not understand how the Vinyl cutter machine works if not properly guided. That is why this article is written to enable you to know to understand perfectly the workings of the Vinyl Cutter machine.

This equipment makes use of a little knife to accurately cut out the lines of the figures you designed into the sheet or pieces of Vinyl material you are using while still holding onto the liner. The blade is known to move and turn from the X to the Y axis of the Vinyl while it is moved under the knife. This procedure ensures that the image of your design is cut into the Vinyl material.

After the machine finishes with the cutting of the image, the next thing to do is to weed the material. This weeding process removes the unwanted parts of the figures from the offloading liner.

The weeding process is quite complicated. During weeding, if the positive side is released, the resultant effect a negative sticker but when the negative side is released, it will be a positive sticker. The transfer tape sheet that has an adhesive back and is placed on the Vinyl already weeded.

When a roller is placed on the tape, the Vinyl will stick properly. Both machines include vinyl cutter software to help you get started. Users can also download the mobile app to use and connect their machine via Bluetooth. Although the Silhouette software has more graphic design tools and capabilities that allow for more advanced design creation, it has a bigger learning curve.

Both machines offer the same level of cutting force — grams. This means either vinyl cutter will be able to handle thicker and special effect HTV; however, the Silhouette Cameo can handle up to 3mm g of force thick materials while the Cricut Explore will only cut up to 2mm g of force thick.

The cutting width and length is the most glaring difference between the machines. Either cutter is perfectly fine for cutting designs large enough to heat press to a T-shirt or blank apparel, but the Silhouette will allow you to run more continuous jobs if desired. This type of cutters is perfect for small designs and are usually small in size, so they do not occupy too much space.

Also, the type and amount of materials they support are limited. This type of vinyl cutters can work on larger surfaces and supports more materials than those designed for home use, little wonder why mid professional uses them in small shops and workshops.

Mid-pro vinyl cutters can provide the precise cutting required by many businesses and can cut through tougher and thicker materials. However, they are usually costlier and come with more innovative features than those designed for hobbyists and home use.

This cutter can handle all vinyl projects as well as many other craft cutting tasks you can think of especially the cutting tasks required by craft cutting businesses. They can make precision cuts for complex and intricate designs and can work on larger printing surfaces.

Professional cutters come with specialized options and features that are not available on other cutters. They have higher cutting force, deliver fine detail on small graphics and text, and have higher cutting speed. They also have superior tracking and can cut through tougher and thicker media and usually support different software and operating systems.

However, they are costly even more than the mid-pro vinyl cutters. This vinyl cutting machine gives you the benefit of craft cutting from a roll of materials, which saves money than using sheets of materials. They require loading or feeding the media through its push rollers, which also help to push the media along the pen or blade to print or cut out the design. Roll feed vinyl cutters continuously roll and cut media and usually come with media guides or media catch basket to hold the media roll and catch the cut media.

Their design allows for easy operation and saves valuable production space. Roll feed vinyl cutters come in different sizes and support a long roll of media up to 50 ft long for long length cut or print applications.

Flatbed vinyl cutter as its name implies, makes use of a table or a flatbed platform to complete different cutting or plotting tasks. The media is placed and secured on its working table while the machine moves the pen or blade over the material to carry out different cutting, drawing, and embossing tasks instead or rolling and cutting the media like the roll feed and desktop designs.

Flatbed vinyl cutters come in different sizes. Just like the roll feed vinyl cutters, desktop vinyl cutters come with rollers with which the materials are friction-feed into the machine for plotting and cutting tasks. Cutters with this type of design require no stand as they can be placed and operated on a desk. They can cut through different sheets of materials, while some models can cut through a long roll of media. Desktop vinyl cutters are available in different sizes.

They are cheaper and are usually not as bulky as the roll feed and the flatbed models. Selecting a vinyl cutting machine that is perfect for your crafting needs may be overwhelming, especially if you do not understand the specifications of vinyl cutters and the basic terms used in craft cutting.

Firstly, the amount of space you have in your home or workshop will determine the size of the machine you can buy. This is not the right option if you need precision. Likewise, when a machine is advertised as Cutter XYZ 24 Inches , this is usually to indicate the maximum media size i.

Generally what we are looking for, quality-wise, is reliability, decent software, and a good motor. Great cuts are also the result of great blades. Older, less sophisticated machines made their users adjust the settings manually which resulted in a lot of errors, off cuts and ultimately waste — in both time and materials. Regardless of what type of cutter you go for, your expectations play a big part. Many people assume that having access to the most expensive machine will dramatically improve their work, and in doing so they neglect the software where they actually create the work.

The fastest way to improve your creations is to improve the design before it gets sent to the machine — i. This involves practicing your design skills and making use of increasingly sophisticated software. Take a look at this video on how to use Adobe Illustrator to create vinyl decals, for example:. Photoshop is great for most design work.

The problem is that it relies on pixels and dots to create what is known as raster graphics. These can be of exceptionally high quality, which gives a hint as to why Photoshop is so damn popular. They rely on lines — vectors — to define a path. There are methods of converting raster graphics from Photoshop in to vectors, but these can be pretty crude and we generally recommend you save yourself the bother.