Using Scrap Heat Transfer Vinyl in your Vinyl Cutter.
This week’s CAD-CUT Direct Tip Jar video tutorial is one that may ‘call you out’, but rest assured it will save you money.
I’ve had the opportunity to visit many decorators in the United States…our outside sales team has visited thousands of customers. Through our visits we often get the opportunity to provide feedback to a business owner or operations manager about what they could be doing more effectively in production. Many “tips” come from these consultations, but one of the repeated suggestions is to cut down on waste.
When using heat transfer vinyl, a vinyl cutter and a heat press to create apparel graphics every square inch of film used on a job goes into your cost calculation. Considering that heat transfer vinyl costs anywhere from $.01 to $.02 per square inch you’ll want to be sure that you’re not driving up your cost with waste. So, please do me a favor…
STOP reading right now for a moment, go to your trash can by your vinyl cutter and see if you can find any piece of film larger than 5″ x 3″. Seriously, go check now and come back….
If you’ve found a piece, do me one more favor…when you’re done reading this entry, tape this scrap piece to the wall above your vinyl cutter. This will be a reminder and new commitment for you and your employees to cut down on waste.
If you run a larger shop you’re usually the most guilty. The cutter operator at your shop does not have a direct tie to profit so they aren’t as careful with material utilization and cutting scraps especially.
Anyways, I won’t continue the lecture in writing, we’ll do it on video, and actually show you how to accommodate waste on one style of vinyl cutter:) Thanks for reading and watching. Please leave a comment telling us if your innocent or guilty – I know I’m guilty sometimes and I got called out with a comment on one of my YouTube videos!!!
On the GX-24, besides “roll” and “piece”, I notice there’s and “edge” option. What is that for?
I wanted to ask if the “eyes” on the GX-24 behave the same whether it’s a roll or piece? For example, I can see the eye on the front of the machine, but not the back.
One time I come near the end of a roll, but still had plenty to finish the design, and the material rolled up a bit. Because the material rolled up, the GX-24 thought it was either misfed, or ran out and stopped the job right in the middle. I stretched the material back down the back, but I didn’t know how to continue the job where it left off. I ended up throwing the material away.
If we know we have enough material, and the cutter thinks there isn’t, is there a way to overide the detecter on the back to prevent the above situation from happening?
Hi Joseph – good question. Simply place a piece of masking tape over the back sheet sensor. This will trick it into thinking material is still there. This will allow you to keep cutting…but it will disable the ability of the machine to read the sheet size. Also – once it reads it as unloaded, there is no way to go back and fix it if it has already stopped cutting the job.
Edge, automatically retracts and sets up the material to start cutting at the front edge of whatever you have loaded…this is nice so you don’t have to manually retract the material, however I prefer the roll setting, because you can cover the sheet sensor with your finger and cheat the material back farther to save on waste…with edge this is not possible.