-
What Cutter Would You Recommend?
As stated in my intro, I’m in the auto refurbishment industry so a plotter / cutter would not be running 8 hrs a day / 5 days a week.
I’d require a model (610 range) that would be capable of 1) cutting airbrushing film for various layover templates to create an image ready for airbrushing, an example of this would be a shadowing effect. 2) Cutting vinyl for personalised logo’s for vehicles. 3) Cutting Paint Protection Film.
Having read a some posts, I can gather to stay clear of chinese imports.
Where the confusion begins for me is the ‘optical eye’. Because my customers want personalised logo’s this would mean scanning their image etc. Is an ‘optical eye’ necessary to recreate an image ready for cut or is that more to do with the software?
Servo or stepper? Because of the low usage of the cutter is a servo operated cutter necessary or is the difference more to do with accuracy?
At this stage of the game my budget would be at £500-£800. Any advice would be gratefully received.
Thank you in anticipation.
-
8 Replies
-
Graphtec, Roland or Summa… three of the most reputable cutter makes in the industry. Although your budget needs to be more in the £1000 region…
recreating graphics to be cut on a plotter is down to the software. not the cutter… you need vector files to cut/plot. best sign making software, in my opinion, is Signlab and it can come in modules to best suit your needs.
although there are lots of sign making software out there! -
Tim, not sure where you picked up on an Optical Eye but this would only be needed if you were printing images and wanted to cut round the outside of them after they were printed.
If you are going to be working with solid colour vinyl then you will need a plotter, some way of copying the customers logo and the software to recreate their logo as a vector file for the plotter to cut.
Your budget is a bit on the low side for what you need to be honest. A decent plotter as Robert has said will be more than your budget and that’s probably without the software required to produce the artwork. -
Thanks for the replies chaps, much appreciated.
Martin; Thank you for clarifying the optical eye. I don’t think I’d need that function. I used to trace around images on airbrush film to make the various nesting stages to create an image but as you can appreciate, it’s very time consuming hence not marketing a service to it’s full potential. The less I want to do something, the more I seem to be asked. Hey ho that’s business I guess.
In reference to vinyl logos etc. These would only be in a solid colour, maybe two depending on how easy it would be to lay one piece over the other. I have to realise my own expectations. I’m a sprayer at the end of the day.
I appreciate the my budget is very lean. The Mimaki CG-60SL ‘seems’ to tick all the boxes for what I need. I don’t need an all singing and dancing cutter for what I need it for and the time it’ll be used. Just something to cut spraying templates, solid logos and the occasional paint protection film.
-
Another option would be to look out for a brand name second user plotter, you can pick them up for reasonable money, if your looking for 610 wide them a machine from someone upgrading to a larger machine can also be picked up from some trade suppliers.
Layering vinyl is fairly easy to do, I am guessing most of the stuff you will be doing will be reasonably small and if you can air brush you should have a steady hand and eye for detail which makes lining up one colour over another a lot easier or you could also use registration marks to align.
Software will be important as you will need to be able to convert the logos to a vector file, this involves either using a software program to convert them or drawing them by hand (tracing them on the screen). Some software has downloadable demo versions so you can get a feel for what it can do and the functions available. Lots of people on here use corel draw and you can pick up older versions much cheaper than the latest version. There is also Signlab that Robert mentioned, Flexisign, Vinylmaster, illustrator to name but a few.
-
If you are looking to cut paint protection film your cutter should have 3 or 4 pinch rollers. The standard 2 rollers are not man enough and will buckle the film as it cuts.
Having said that I run a Mutoh that is 8 years old and never missed a beat but it does not like this film as there are only 2 pinch rollers.
Graphtec, Summa, Roland are all top end machines
-
Thanks once again Martin (edited my last post due to incorrect name – sorry).
I’ve been looking at some of the program software you mentioned along with Illustrator, WinSign & Inkscape(sp) and wow, what a minefield for a novice. I’d need a degree to work that lot out or get the mrs. to work it out for me:D I’ll just have to whittle them all down to meet my basic requirements.
Ref: registration marks. I’m aware of the concept but not knowledgeable enough to know how that quite works.
Another cutter that I was looking at on youtube was the Graphtec Expert 24 but I believe that’s a rebadged Chinese model. I’m unsure if that would have enough grunt to cut stone chip paint protection film. Not that I cut a lot of PPF these days but it would be nice to have the option just incase. 🙂
-
Expert 24 is supplied by GCC and is much the same as the Sable 60, also by GCC, higher your sights and go for a servo motor driven cutter such as Graphtec, Roland, GCC, Summa, Mutoh etc
Nigel
-
Thank you all for the advice given. Gives me food for thought. 😀
Log in to reply.