What is a vinyl cutter? A vinyl cutter is an amazing machine that actually doesn’t immediately look like something out of The Jetsons. Vinyl cutters in Santa Rosa can be the size of a small laptop printer; larger vinyl printers are about the size of a medium-sized computer desk.
How Does It Work?
Thinking about a vinyl cutter acting in an analogous way to a desktop printer can actually be helpful for understanding how a vinyl cutter works. Your desktop printer “talks” to your computer, which tells the printer where to aim the nozzle and apply the ink.
Similarly, a vinyl cutter will be told by a computer where to make cuts in order to create letters, shapes, and fun designs out of self-adhesive plastic or vinyl. Once the vinyl cutter does its job, you’ll be able to apply the final product to a wide variety of surfaces with the right adhesive.
Vinyl Cutter Santa Rosa
Santa Rosa vinyl print shops now have the ability to turn the vector files with your unique letters and patterns into real-world designs thanks to vinyl cutters.
Because vinyl, the transfer tape, and adhesive backing can be ubiquitously applied to a lot of different surfaces, vinyl cutting has wide application for all kinds of banners, business signs, and various other forms of advertising (e.g., vinyl decals for cars).
Vinyl cutter Santa Rosa can also tailor the type of paper used to the job at hand and use, say, computer paper for one job and special paper stock for longer-lasting results elsewhere.
In fact, vinyl cutters are frequently used to make custom apparel for businesses and one-off events like fundraisers with the same process of cutting, weeding, and heating after cutting the vinyl.
Vector Images Really Make the Cut
To back up a bit, your starting point for whatever design you decide to have made with the help of a vinyl cutter Santa Rosa will probably come from a digital vector file. There are quite a few reasons why vector images are preferred over raster (a.k.a., bitmap) images.
The problem with raster images is that they lose fidelity when you go to zoom in or change them up because raster images are based on a dot matrix data structure, or tiny pixels.
Vector images are totally different and more sophisticated in the sense that they’re mathematically derived equations made from lines and curves known as vector paths.
That might sound like a lot of mumbo jumbo but the advantage of having the image based on math is that you can have you image rescaled to different sizes without losing any kind of image fidelity. It’s going to keep looking professional.
Bringing things back to vinyl cutting, vector files are actually preferred because the computer that’s “talking” to the vinyl cutter is telling the cutter to make incisions based on the vector paths of the vector design.
The blade will move smoothly along an X axis and Y axis (bad memories of high school geometry!) to create your vinyl design from the vector file depicting your unique brand or message.
Billboard-sized Designs Possible!
The cool thing about vinyl cutters is that you can have really long rolls – almost like scrolls – sent through the vinyl cutter to make huge posters.
The process is the same with the vector files and the precise cuts being made with the vinyl cutter, but the length of the vinyl material can change to suit what you’re looking for – e.g., banners, car advertisements, or even eye-popping billboards.
The options with vinyl cutters are essentially limitless. Contact a Santa Rosa print shop to get started!