Vinyl Cutter Advice

[Peter Normington]

Hi carl

welcome to the boards, I ‘m not sure what you mean when you say you spend a lot, and dont get a return? any promo stuff should do just that! get you business through getting your name known.
It may be difficult to measure, but it does work. If you thought it didnt, why do it?

Quite a few people have asked here for advice about producing their own promo stuff. My advice, and dont take this the wrong way, is stick with your core business, It may look a cheap alternative, but when you tot up the time involved, to design and produce, buying stock and the equipment, (for t shirts you will need a press and materials) especially in small quantities, then you may well be better of buying in.

your £300 should buy quite a lot of ready made stuff, but wont go along way to get a decent do it yourself set-up

(I like kites and own several flexifoils)

Peter

[Blade kites]

Hi Peter nice to see another kiter on a forum,

Im a new brand in the uk and as you know there are some big Kite brands already in the UK to try compeat with ,
i think i said it wrong when i said i dont get anything in return ,
I started this business from scratch and with a very small budget
I seem to be putting more in then getting back,,
If you know what i mean,,
i go through a lot of stickers, giving to my dealers to give out and when im at demos,
Also free t-shirts,
Just trying to keep my cost down if i can,
I alredy have a heat prss and a cup press
the cup press is well used for promo but the heat press is new not been used that much ,,
the plotter would jut helpme out that little bit

Thanks for the advise<<
Can i intrest you in a kitesurf,
lol’

[Robert Lambie]

welcome to the boards carl…

[Peter Normington]

Carl.

I have a bit of a problem, my local kite shop has gone belly up. I live near Dunstable Downs, which is a well known venue for an annual kite festival. what I need to do is find info on how I can make a kite for half the cost of Blade or flexifoil, can you help?

Sorry if I am being a bit facetious,
But as you said, you are not a signmaker. and as this site was made by signmakers, for signmakers, perhaps you are in the wrong place..

Other members may disagree, and offer other advice
But if they want to cut their own throats, its their choice.

Carl its not personal,

I just dont think you should enjoy the benefits of this site, unless you are directly involved with signs,

Peter

[Blade kites]

Hi Pete

I was sent to this forum for a bit of freindly advice from people Who i thought would give me a little advice, as they know a lot about the business,
Its not as if im making a profit out of it or doing my local shop out of business,
My bit wont even line his pockets,
Fair enough,,

Thanks

Il close the door behind me !!!

[Hugh Potter]

hi carl, welcome to the site,

whilst i can see peter’s point, i probably wouldn’t have said it in the same way ! he’s a nice guy really !! i know we all like to do what we can, but if i did all i wanted to do then i’d be running about 6 businesses ! some things just need subbing out as they’re not cost effective to do yourself, even signmakers sub alot of stuff.

i do think however, on a budget of £300, you’ll struggle, a decent cutter will be in the region of £1500+, a cheap chinese one (still £600+) may do the job, but there have been a number of reliability issues to my knowledge,

you’d need normal vinyls for stickers, and if you did a hundred small stickers, you’d spend at least a day weeding them all, and small lettering carries it’s own problems when weeding !!

you’d then need seperate flock vinyls for the t-shirt press, which other than not being very cheap, will require the cutter setting differently when you swap between vinyls,

your best bet, if serious, would be to print your stickers, very quick, but you’ll not get much change out of £5k, even for a used machine. that takes some serious work to make it pay for itself,
then a die sublimination printer for the t-shirts / mugs, again a decent one will set you back around £2-300, plus the subli inks, which again, are expensive,

so Peter, in theory, is correct. it’s a time consuming job, the t shirt route might be cost effective if you use dye sub printers for both, but i think a cutter will be more work than you realise, for eg, i recently made 100 club stickers, a logo and small text (8mm high) underneath, and then stuck that onto a small coloured rectangle, it takes about 20 mins to do the easy bit (art work), about an hour to cut them all, about 6hrs to weed them all and pre mask, half hour to seperate into individual decals, 10 mins to cut all the rectangle backgrounds, 1/2hr to seperate, and about 3hrs to stick aall the decals onto the backgrounds (and the all have to be straight !), so thats a very long day, of very repetetive labour, for not a great return (money to time ratio). not to mention, 100 stickers won’t go far !

good luck with whatever you choose to do though.

Hugh

[Blade kites]

Hi Hugh

Thanks for the helpfull advice,,
😀

Carl

[Hugh Potter]

no probs dude !!

[Martin Pearson]

Hi Carl and welcome to the forum, there are a lot of friendly people on the boards, even Peter is a friendly chap most of the time but he does make a fair point about doing this sort of thing yourself. It will not be anywhere near as cheap as you think it will be and will be quite time consuming so you will have less time to promote your own core business. Having said all that it is obviously your choice what you do and how you spend your money.
With any business it takes time to grow and you will find that as time goes on you will find that you make more money than you spend which is obviously what you are aiming for but obviously takes time to achieve.
I don’t know anything about the plotters you have mentioned except for what I have read on the boards, if you do a search you will find quite a lot of posts about P Cut plotters. Seems people have had a lot of problems with some of them but those that have managed to get them running OK seem happy with the results.

What sort of size and how many colours are the stickers you use because you may find they are to small to cut on a plotter and need to be printed which would really mean that buying a plotter would be a waste of money. If you already have a heat press then you will need a plotter and the vinyl for making your "T" shirts but if you are going to use a plotter for making stickers you will need a different sort of vinyl for that and you would also be better off with another blade and holder as well.

[Philip Hammerton]

Carl

A Creation P-Cut cutter (£ 300- £500) will be more than adequate for your needs – as well as vinyl graphics, you may want to screen- print your stickers & t shirts, vinyl lettering on stickers can be time consuming.

A plotter can be used to cut stencils out of vinyl & film – purchase yourself a basic screen-printing machine, a Speedball printing kit, some vinyl inks (approx £ 300.00) – with a bit of practice you will be produce vinyl stickers & t- shirts quite cheaply.

Don’t be put off – This site can be useful for getting advice & help – whether your a hobbyist, home business or major company. 😀

Phil

[Blade kites]

Hi Guys

Thanks for all the help and advice,
I know some of you will not agree with what i’m doing and im sorry but its puly for my own business,
Iv just invested in a p-cut 630 (:) (:) (:)
I know but it was all i could afford and for the use i was going to use it for
Should be ok ( noticed i used should),
Didnt want to spend to much on a machine and have got it from a reputable name of this forum,
Signwizard, thanks for all the advise guys, 🙂 They were very help over the phone,
My wife has just found out and wants to add it to here design business.
ermm
we will see,

Any way thanks again,
Carl

[John Macdonald]

Would you mind helping me out also please. I am looking to get a cutter as well. I would like one where you can put a pen in to draw letters also. I would like to start something small as I am not happy in my job. Basically we could manage with about 200 a week. So if anyone could help me that would be great.
I am going to search the board threads now to see if this has already posted
Thanks

[Peter Normington]

John,

best thing to do is post an hello, (sorry if you already did it) tell us a bit more about yourself, and maybe why you want to do "signs"
most plotters will take a pen, as that is how they started life, not used much now though, unless you need to make paper templates for cut letters and the like.

welcome aboard.

Peter

[Shane Drew]

quote John Macdonal:

Would you mind helping me out also please. I am looking to get a cutter as well. I would like one where you can put a pen in to draw letters also. I would like to start something small as I am not happy in my job. Basically we could manage with about 200 a week. So if anyone could help me that would be great.
I am going to search the board threads now to see if this has already posted
Thanks

plenty of advise on the boards in the past mate

[Jason Xuereb]

Hey guys,

I just want to say I started out in the sign business with a cheap Chinese model. Yes it was crap, yes I had a heap of issues, yes I had to even repair it myself. Yes it sometimes caused me to recut things multiple times because the tracking was way off. Yes instead of cutting a 2 metre job I had to do it in 50cm lengths because of the tracking. Yes it didn’t have a blade offset so sometimes I had to carefully repair cuts by hand.

You will get a lot of grief so be prepared for it.

But it did also get me in the position I am today. If and when you can afford a better cutter buy it straight away. It’s the only piece of equipment you need to purchase outside a computer if you already have one.

In reference to Blade kites wanting to do t-shirts screen printing is by far cheaper than heat transfer vinyl. I use it currently for our work uniforms and to create one off custom tees for myself but the cost of having multiple items done screen printing is a lot cheaper.

If you want t-shirt advice use http://www.t-shirtforums.com/ I hope I’m allowed to post that link. They are a good bunch over there same as here.

Jason