The first vinyl cutters?

[Robert Lambie]

I think the gerber 4b was the first in the uk and was distributed by Spandex around 24 years ago.
we actually bought the first one in scotland. because of this and because we were located in central belt, glasgow city at the time, our machine was used for some time as a demo machine for potential sales of the machine in scotland.

from memory the machine held about 8 fonts. each font costing anything from £100 up into thousands "each" the module just to put an outline around the text was £1000 on its own. however you could rent fonts at about £15 per day from spandex.

back then the only vinyl you could buy was CAST and cost about £5 per metre at 13inches wide with cutting width only 12 inches.

digitising was done on a large graphics tablet using a puck and cross hair mouse.

there was NO designing of the sign onscreen. you typed in the text, picked a font. set the size and only after it was cut did you know if there was any mistakes.

no internet access for help! no training books etc you where truelly on your own!

and folk think they have it hard today! 🙄

[Adrian Yeo]

Wonder what they made first???? The vinyl or the plotter? 😮 😮

[Peter Normington]

Was there a 4a or even a gerber 1,2and 3 before it?

Peter

[Brian Little]

that is intresting the thought of not seeing what your cuting before it does it i can do all these mistakes nowdays and i can see whats on the screen .That machine looks as if its got valves in it rob

[Gareth.Lewis]

Adrian,

I remember a bloke coming to ‘do’ the sign for my dad’s shop years ago. He used self adhesive vinyl on a roll but had no cutter or computer.He traced the letters from a letraset book and used an overhead projector to show the blown up stencil’s shape on a wall, then proceeded to offer up the vinyl and drew round the shape. He did this for every letter and then cut round each one with a knife and scissors. Then he positioned every freshly cut letter onto a signboard, lined it all up by hand and used the time honoured method to apply the vinyl to the board.

I actually, to this day, remember that he was using ‘bounce’ font which must have made lining them up very very difficult indeed. Telephone number, address, bullet points, shop name, the lot. All done as above.

Thank god for flexi, signlab etc…..

[Brian Little]

quote Gareth Lewis:

Adrian,

I remember a bloke coming to ‘do’ the sign for my dad’s shop years ago. He used self adhesive vinyl on a roll but had no cutter or computer.He traced the letters from a letraset book and used an overhead projector to show the blown up stencil’s shape on a wall, then proceeded to offer up the vinyl and drew round the shape. He did this for every letter and then cut round each one with a knife and scissors. Then he positioned every freshly cut letter onto a signboard, lined it all up by hand and used the time honoured method to apply the vinyl to the board.

I actually, to this day, remember that he was using ‘bounce’ font which must have made lining them up very very difficult indeed. Telephone number, address, bullet points, shop name, the lot. All done as above.

Thank god for flexi, signlab etc…..

what a nightmare gareth …..but id rather cut out bounce than times roman

[Adrian Yeo]

quote Gareth Lewis:

Adrian,

I remember a bloke coming to ‘do’ the sign for my dad’s shop years ago. He used self adhesive vinyl on a roll but had no cutter or computer.He traced the letters from a letraset book and used an overhead projector to show the blown up stencil’s shape on a wall, then proceeded to offer up the vinyl and drew round the shape. He did this for every letter and then cut round each one with a knife and scissors. Then he positioned every freshly cut letter onto a signboard, lined it all up by hand and used the time honoured method to apply the vinyl to the board.

I actually, to this day, remember that he was using ‘bounce’ font which must have made lining them up very very difficult indeed. Telephone number, address, bullet points, shop name, the lot. All done as above.

Thank god for flexi, signlab etc…..

Bloody hell!!! We do take the old box and keyboard in the corner a bit for granted these days 😀 😀

[Robert Lambie]

peter, I’m sure there was a gerber 4a but i "think" might be wrong of course… that it was in the U.S. the 4a was released but upgraded to the 4b when launched to in the UK. that’s a rough guess though… 😀 after the 4b there was the gerber sprint which was much faster but would appear steam driven by today’s standards!

[David Rowland]

here is Gerber’s timeline
http://www.gspinc.com/default.asp?contentID=79

[Chris Wool]

quote Gareth Lewis:

Adrian,

I remember a bloke coming to ‘do’ the sign for my dad’s shop years ago. He used self adhesive vinyl on a roll but had no cutter or computer.He traced the letters from a letraset book and used an overhead projector to show the blown up stencil’s shape on a wall, then proceeded to offer up the vinyl and drew round the shape. He did this for every letter and then cut round each one with a knife and scissors. Then he positioned every freshly cut letter onto a signboard, lined it all up by hand and used the time honoured method to apply the vinyl to the board.

I actually, to this day, remember that he was using ‘bounce’ font which must have made lining them up very very difficult indeed. Telephone number, address, bullet points, shop name, the lot. All done as above.

Thank god for flexi, signlab etc…..

thats how i started a hobby that went stupid.
my first cutter was a A3 graphtec flat bed about 1987 amstrad 1640 computer twin 5.25 floppy then a 20 meg hard drive £250.

chris

[Martin Manley]

I worked with a bloke in the early seventies called Terry "Sniffer" Clarke (Brilliant Signs, Shepherds Bush) who came up with the idea of cutting letters out of "Fablon"- the famous sticky back plastic of Blue Peter fame – that he bought in Woolworths and cut by hand after a draughtsman had drawn up fonts for him. It took forever & looked crap compared to the perspex letters we used then, but he was way ahead of his time and if he’d followed up on it, might have been a millionaire today.
Are you still out there Sniffer, me old mate?

[John Childs]

You tell young people that today…………………

😀 😀 😀

[Gareth.Lewis]

Mind you (and I’m not putting myself up as some kind of supersignman or owt), from the state of some of the signs out there today, it is as if the plotter was never invented.

[Brian Hays]

quote Robert Lambie:

peter, I’m sure there was a gerber 4a but i “think” might be wrong of course… that it was in the U.S. the 4a was released but upgraded to the 4b when launched to in the UK. that’s a rough guess though… 😀 after the 4b there was the gerber sprint which was much faster but would appear steam driven by today’s standards!

There sold the 4A & 4B here.

The 4A had some kind of slide to adjust the pressure, the later 4B had the weights.

[Colin Hibbitt]

i started in 1987 at the wee age of 18 when my ex boss bought the 4a as rob described then in a short while we had 3 of these running – we were the first in plymouth to get these – then we purchased a 760mm cutter with sprockets which was connected to the 4b with a switch to use which ever

I still have the 4b in my cupboard in full working order with around 20 font
(brings back memorys)

Then we bought graphtec 5100fc and gerber edge 1

then he retired and i kept his name and continued on my own – had a great first 6 months and purchased the cadet – 1st employee in first 12 months then trading my cadet after 2 yrs and bought grenidier 2 and now have 2 staff and 2 selfemployed (0ne graphic designer and one sign maker) each doing 2days a week – still struggling to keep up

[Mike Grant]

I still have the oldest 4b in the country. That has been proven and confirmed by Spandex about 9 years ago. I won a Summacut plotter on the strength of that 😀
How can I be so certain that there is no older ones out there, well to be honest I can’t, but I can tell you that the probability is quite high that I have one of the oldest due to the fact that Charlie Dobson used to own my company before he founded Spandex and the guy who bought the company from Charlie was probably his first port of call when he started flogging the machines. I would like anyone to prove me wrong 😕

The machine was probably a 4a before being upgraded to the 4b. It then was upgraded yet again to be fitted with a monitor (the old green type screen) so you could plot shapes by putting co-ordinates into the machine. A very long slow job by todays standard. Then when I took over the business I upgraded to a fantastic 286PC 😀 and the Graphics Advantage software. Cost me an arm and half me leg.
The 4b is still plugged into my computer today and will start at the press of a button 😀

[Paul Hughes]

Brian

the 4B had the sliding weight bar too, at least the one i used to use did, so i don’t think that was the difference between the 4B and 4A.

the sliding bar weight was a pain, if the vinyl looped up as it rolled back and to it would lift the slid bar and put more weight on the knife and most times dig in and come to a stop in a complete mess (:) ….. arr the good old days 😀

i have still got a super sprint here built like a battle ship and still works if required.

Paul

[Brian Hays]

quote paul hughes:

Brian

the 4B had the sliding weight bar too, at least the one i used to use did, so i don’t think that was the difference between the 4B and 4A.

the sliding bar weight was a pain, if the vinyl looped up as it rolled back and to it would lift the slid bar and put more weight on the knife and most times dig in and come to a stop in a complete mess (:) ….. arr the good old days 😀

i have still got a super sprint here built like a battle ship and still works if required.

Paul

Maybe yours had been upgraded from a 4A? not sure what other differences there were. New 4B’s definitely had weights to plonk on top of the head to adjust the pressure.

[David Rowland]

So what about this Signmaker® III, Graphix 3® (1983) as I posted?

[Paul Munford]

We have an old gerber S/4E rotary engraver! from approx 1985
It runs through a 4b and i cant find reference to it anywhere ! Its not in the gerber timeline.
Still used occasionally, bed size of 370mm x 450mm
Gerber certainly knew how to build em back then.

[Brian Little]

hmm im glad i started this post its got arms and legs and thats what i love about uksb…..with all this equipment getting abit old in th tooth i can see a sign equipment museum starting in the not to distant future dare i ask when did the first didgy printer come about of is that another story ? 😀

[Jayne Marsh]

Ive used all the old gerber 4a’s and B’s and I remember being able to hire fonts from spandex to put in your 4b, they were plug in boards :lol1:

[Paul Hughes]

hay Brian you calling me old in the tooth 😀 😉

i have been thinking that a signmaking museum would be good too, they have one in the USA and i have been to the neon sign museum that is trying to set up in Las Vegas

as for digital print machines i don’t know, seem to remember seeing a large machine printing full colour at a sign show at a horse racing course down south somewhere, must have been around 1995, memory is not as good as it used to be 🙁

Paul

[Brian Little]

quote paul hughes:

hay Brian you calling me old in the tooth 😀 😉

i have been thinking that a signmaking museum would be good too, they have one in the USA and i have been to the neon sign museum that is trying to set up in Las Vegas

as for digital print machines i don’t know, seem to remember seeing a large machine printing full colour at a sign show at a horse racing course down south somewhere, must have been around 1995, memory is not as good as it used to be 🙁

Paul

well it wouldbe a great idea paul as i say the stuffs out there now

[Peter Dee]

quote paul hughes:

as for digital print machines i don’t know, seem to remember seeing a large machine printing full colour at a sign show at a horse racing course down south somewhere, must have been around 1995, memory is not as good as it used to be 🙁

Paul

That was Sandown Park Race Course in Esher, Surrey.

[Martin Manley]

Anybody still running an original Spandex System 48 CNC router?

[Chris Dowd]

quote MARTIN MANLEY:

Anybody still running an original Spandex System 48 CNC router?

We are, still in excellent working order too.

[David Rowland]

Our Gerber Dimension 200 router is sat in the corner with a cover over it… our Gerber Odyssey is running daily