Our Spring Break Tees - Vinyl Cut

[okwoodsmith]

Here are our designs for Spring Break. They are done with t-shirt vinyl cut out with a vinyl cutter. I can supply the .ai files for anyone that has a vinyl cutter and would like to use them.

 

[Kellybell]

These are gorgeous!!!!!!! Forgive the stupid questions, what is a vinyl cutter? And what program supports it?

 

[okwoodsmith]

These are gorgeous!!!!!!! Forgive the stupid questions, what is a vinyl cutter? And what program supports it?

Are you familiar with the "Cricut"? The Cricut is a vinyl cutter that has been dumbed down for the masses. The problem is that what it makes up for in ease of use, it loses in ability to use custom designs. Anyway, I just mention it because a lot of people have see the Cricut and it helps explain what a vinyl cutter is.

A vinyl cutter is like a printer only instead of the head shooting out ink, it has a blade on the head that cuts the material beneath it. Car decals are typically cut out with a vinyl cutter. You can also purchase a thermal material that cuts out like the vinyl, but can be heat applied to material like tees and totes and anything made of cloth material.

On the software side, you have to create your design as a vector graphic file. Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw are vector graphic programs. The nice thing about vector images is that they can be scaled to any size without losing quality.

Anyway...hope I've helped explain the vinyl world. It's becoming a great medium for short-run t-shirt designs that a lot of shirt shops are now using.

 

[Kellybell]

Are you familiar with the "Cricut"? The Cricut is a vinyl cutter that has been dumbed down for the masses. The problem is that what it makes up for in ease of use, it loses in ability to use custom designs. Anyway, I just mention it because a lot of people have see the Cricut and it helps explain what a vinyl cutter is.

A vinyl cutter is like a printer only instead of the head shooting out ink, it has a blade on the head that cuts the material beneath it. Car decals are typically cut out with a vinyl cutter. You can also purchase a thermal material that cuts out like the vinyl, but can be heat applied to material like tees and totes and anything made of cloth material.

On the software side, you have to create your design as a vector graphic file. Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw are vector graphic programs. The nice thing about vector images is that they can be scaled to any size without losing quality.

Anyway...hope I've helped explain the vinyl world. It's becoming a great medium for short-run t-shirt designs that a lot of shirt shops are now using.

Thank you for the quick respose, what does a machine like this cost?
And you just plug it in to your pc like a printer?

 

[tmdart]

Your shirts are awesome
thanks for sharing

 

[RustManFan]

Can you give us a brand name for the cutter you use? I am definitely going to investigate this process !!

 

[okwoodsmith]

Can you give us a brand name for the cutter you use? I am definitely going to investigate this process !!

I originally started with one I got cheap off of Ebay. It was a USCutter Laserpoint 24. I then found a bargain on one at a garage sale and it's what I use now. It's a Roland GX-24. Both machines cut about the same, but the Roland is just easier to use and it's quieter.

If you want to go really cheap, just search for vinyl cutters on Ebay and you'll find a lot of options. Then go to http://www.t-shirtforums.com/ and check out the forum on vinyl cutting for t-shirts. It's a great resource and you can ask questions about specific brands.

 

[okwoodsmith]

Here's a video for those of you who are interested in how vinyl cutting works with doing shirts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub5c65vcP-o&feature=related