Tip Jar - Cutting Scraps of Heat Transfer Vinyl
Uploaded by CADCUTDirect on 05.08.2010
Transcript:
Hi I'm Josh Ellsworth General Manager with Stahls' CADCUT direct.
Are you wasting too much material in your shop or business?
What would I find if I cam into your shop right now and checked your circular file?
Would it look like this?
Empty water bottles.
Perfectly good material.
What could have been good material if I would have properly utilized a weed border? Watch
our other video for that tip.
Here's the backing to that material.
Another small piece of material.
Some thermal tape.
Perfectly good piece of material that I could be utilizing.
You probably would have saved this piece and reclaimed it.
But how about these small pieces?
Is this something you would have saved or you just pitch them in a can?
Material cost about one to two cents per square inch; you can't just afford to throw away
this material.
Does your vinyl cutter accommodate scrap material?
This one does and a lot of them on the market do, so read your manual or watch our training
videos to learn how to use scrap material.
It's this simple.
Taking the piece of material assuming you use a weed border so you can save this scrap.
Start to create a file system where you file by color or by product type so you know exactly
what you have on hand.
And take this material and load it into your cutter.
These cutters have adjustable pinch rollers, yours probably does too, you're familiar with
how to use those.
Lock it down on the edge...the edges of your scrap material.
This particular machine can accommodate about five inches wide of scrap material.
So I simply lock the rollers down once I load the scrap material in to place.
Now, instead of telling the machine you have a roll in the machine, you need to tell it
you have a sheet or a piece, it's categorized in different ways for
different cutters.
But basically on this one, it calls out piece.
So I'm going to tell it that there's a piece in there.
Now if you watch closely, you’ll see the machine scan the width of this material but
it also will feed through and scan the length.
If you accidentally hit the piece or sheet function when you had a roll in, you probably
remember it.
Because the whole roll shot out at your feet as you were standing at the cutter.
But now it’s measured those dimensions and it reads them out on screen.
So if I'm hooked up with a parallel or serial port, I can simply go into the software and
punch in the dimensions on the screen.
That’s my cut able are on this particular scrap piece.
If I'm connected with a USB connection that has two-way communication from the software
to cutter, cutter to software...I can actually get the size directly from the machine.
So I'll go and get that size from the machine in the software right now.
Now I'm over in the Roland Cut Studio software.
This is the software for my vinyl cutter most cutters have software that you can punch in
the size to the machine, or get the size from he machine if you’re connected
USB as I mentioned before.
So with this program it's pretty simple.
I go up to file, cutting set-up, have my Roland selected and I go into properties.
And I say get that size from the machine.
It's reading in millimeters so I'll switch it over to inches.
You can see I actually have a six and three quarter’s wide piece available to cut by
one point six eight inches.
Click OK.
And watch when I click OK again, you'll see this background page size to the exact size
of my scrap material.
Now this is the available cutting area.
So, I can use this to cut a little job, maybe the scrap pieces are bigger and I can cut
something for an actual size shirt or a left chest logo.
Or worse case scenario, I can just cut a promo design, heat press it to a mini t-shirt and
drop it in the customer's next order so they can see a new finish or
a new type of material that I offer.
I'll just type in sample here to show you a sample cut.
Scroll that up a little bit larger.
Of course I want to mirror it since I'm applying to apparel.
And then send it over to my cutter and it will cut right on my scrap piece of material.
So it's finished cutting.
Simply unload my piece and now I'm ready to just complete the weeding process and you
can see I squeezed another little sample job out of left over material
that was in the garbage before.
This is basically free because before you used to throw this away or used to incorporate
it into the cost hopefully of your other designs that you produced on this particular job.
So I finish weeding away the pieces.
And now I'm ready to press it over.
Like I said you can get a mini t-shirt heat press it on to that as the sample, there's
numerous things that you can do.
This is large enough for a youth sized shirt or I could have utilized more of the space
and done an adult size shirt with the left chest logo.
So that's utilizing scrap material.
So dig in your circular file...get underneath the water bottles and all the mess...and dig
through and see if you're wasting too much money on wasted material.
Are you wasting too much material in your shop or business?
What would I find if I cam into your shop right now and checked your circular file?
Would it look like this?
Empty water bottles.
Perfectly good material.
What could have been good material if I would have properly utilized a weed border? Watch
our other video for that tip.
Here's the backing to that material.
Another small piece of material.
Some thermal tape.
Perfectly good piece of material that I could be utilizing.
You probably would have saved this piece and reclaimed it.
But how about these small pieces?
Is this something you would have saved or you just pitch them in a can?
Material cost about one to two cents per square inch; you can't just afford to throw away
this material.
Does your vinyl cutter accommodate scrap material?
This one does and a lot of them on the market do, so read your manual or watch our training
videos to learn how to use scrap material.
It's this simple.
Taking the piece of material assuming you use a weed border so you can save this scrap.
Start to create a file system where you file by color or by product type so you know exactly
what you have on hand.
And take this material and load it into your cutter.
These cutters have adjustable pinch rollers, yours probably does too, you're familiar with
how to use those.
Lock it down on the edge...the edges of your scrap material.
This particular machine can accommodate about five inches wide of scrap material.
So I simply lock the rollers down once I load the scrap material in to place.
Now, instead of telling the machine you have a roll in the machine, you need to tell it
you have a sheet or a piece, it's categorized in different ways for
different cutters.
But basically on this one, it calls out piece.
So I'm going to tell it that there's a piece in there.
Now if you watch closely, you’ll see the machine scan the width of this material but
it also will feed through and scan the length.
If you accidentally hit the piece or sheet function when you had a roll in, you probably
remember it.
Because the whole roll shot out at your feet as you were standing at the cutter.
But now it’s measured those dimensions and it reads them out on screen.
So if I'm hooked up with a parallel or serial port, I can simply go into the software and
punch in the dimensions on the screen.
That’s my cut able are on this particular scrap piece.
If I'm connected with a USB connection that has two-way communication from the software
to cutter, cutter to software...I can actually get the size directly from the machine.
So I'll go and get that size from the machine in the software right now.
Now I'm over in the Roland Cut Studio software.
This is the software for my vinyl cutter most cutters have software that you can punch in
the size to the machine, or get the size from he machine if you’re connected
USB as I mentioned before.
So with this program it's pretty simple.
I go up to file, cutting set-up, have my Roland selected and I go into properties.
And I say get that size from the machine.
It's reading in millimeters so I'll switch it over to inches.
You can see I actually have a six and three quarter’s wide piece available to cut by
one point six eight inches.
Click OK.
And watch when I click OK again, you'll see this background page size to the exact size
of my scrap material.
Now this is the available cutting area.
So, I can use this to cut a little job, maybe the scrap pieces are bigger and I can cut
something for an actual size shirt or a left chest logo.
Or worse case scenario, I can just cut a promo design, heat press it to a mini t-shirt and
drop it in the customer's next order so they can see a new finish or
a new type of material that I offer.
I'll just type in sample here to show you a sample cut.
Scroll that up a little bit larger.
Of course I want to mirror it since I'm applying to apparel.
And then send it over to my cutter and it will cut right on my scrap piece of material.
So it's finished cutting.
Simply unload my piece and now I'm ready to just complete the weeding process and you
can see I squeezed another little sample job out of left over material
that was in the garbage before.
This is basically free because before you used to throw this away or used to incorporate
it into the cost hopefully of your other designs that you produced on this particular job.
So I finish weeding away the pieces.
And now I'm ready to press it over.
Like I said you can get a mini t-shirt heat press it on to that as the sample, there's
numerous things that you can do.
This is large enough for a youth sized shirt or I could have utilized more of the space
and done an adult size shirt with the left chest logo.
So that's utilizing scrap material.
So dig in your circular file...get underneath the water bottles and all the mess...and dig
through and see if you're wasting too much money on wasted material.