vinyl stickers

[monkeymark]

I remember a member on here mentioned he made vinyl stickers in the side but can't remember who it was.

Anyway, im looking into how these are made and the equipment needed to do so.

If that person, or anyone for that matter, can point me.in the direction of info on these id greatly appreciate it.

cheers, mark

 

[cumbriasteve]

Fairly costly to set up with all the gear etc.

here's a firm who sells printers and cutters etc.

http://www.signwizard.co.uk/sign-making-systems

Youtube may be handy for studying, bound to be something there.

 

[ibrooks]

Lots of different methods but they tend to fall into two main categories - cutters and printers.

I have a cutter. It's pretty much a plotter but instead of a pen it's got a head that holds a blade in a bearing. Where a plotter would drop a pen down onto paper to draw lines this thing drops the knife down and drags it along the surface of the vinyl. The weight setting is tweaked so that you are cutting through the vinyl but not the backing paper. Once it's done it's stuff you weed the waste vinyl out leaving your desired design on the backing paper. You then use transfer tape which looks like wide masking tape but is only as tacky as a post-it note. The transfer tape is tacky enough to lift the vinyl off the backing paper whilst keeping it all aligned and in place but once applied to a suitable surface the vinyl's adhesive has the stronger grip so the transfer tape peels off and leaves it behind.

What you can make with it is sort of limited. You can make solid shapes down to about 5mm across (smaller and the knife tends to drag the vinyl off rather than cut). Writing Joe Bloggs and Co. down the side of a van or across a shop window would be no probs and a picture is easy enough so long as it's a silhouette but pictures involving more than one colour need to be made in several parts that then need to be stuck on accurately either butting together or overlapping in the right order. You can use the background colour as part of your design, in my opinion that's where the skill/art comes into it - breaking your picture down into solid blocks of colour and working out the layers. Software can help to an extent but only so far.

Later cutters use a laser so no friction and you can cut more intricate shapes but still only solid blocks of whatever colour vinyl you can get hold of.

Printers obviously print a design onto a sheet of vinyl that's applied more like a wrap (depending on what you are applying them to). You can make far more complex pictures with these as they are pretty much photo quality nowadays. The trick is getting the ink to stand up to whatever environment it's going to be used in but the technology is there and getting better.

I tend to buy vinyl from Dorotape. You can get an idea of a lot of what's possible by browsing around their site at what's available and seeing the examples.

Iain

 

[J_K]

I've got a cutter too.
As ibrooks says, Fine for simple stuff thats large. Not so good for intricate stuff or lots of colours.
That said, I've done a couple of over lays and the reason for buying it in the first place was for doing a logo that has 2 colours. I make the stickers on these things all the time.
The logo part at the top was the reason for buying the machine in the first place.

 

[500e]

What make model cutters are you using? have been looking for one but as big a choice at TIG sets, just getting confused now

 

[ibrooks]

Mine is a Roland Camm-1 PNC1000 I doubt you'll be finding one of those for sale as it's a fairly old beast.

Iain

 

[J_K]

Mine is an older version of this one.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Good-Qual...797?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3f1e5a579d
The link is just to show the make and model and give you somewhere to start looking. I don;t know the seller or have any ties to them. It was just the first one that came up.

Software wise, I use signcut and pay the license. It's not cheap but the backup they provide is truly incredibly.
I was having some problems getting something to cut and at 8pm at night emailed them. Had a reply in 10 minutes. Sent them files.
30 minutes later I get a link to a video where a guy explains whats wrong and why the files I sent over wouldn;t work. And how to fix it.
VERY impressed.