Discuss the various aspects of heat pressed vinyl transfers. Popular and new types of vinyl media, suppliers, vinyl cutters /plotters, press times, quality, how to instructions and more can be found in this heat press sub forum.
The USCutter Laser Point 24?? Not clear what a laser point cutter does that the others don't? Is it worth the extra money? and the software IS or is NOT availble for it? Thanks ahead of time, for all your input.
suggest you go to US Cutter site and check into their forum. As I understand (Have not seen or used) the laser point uses software to set registration to contour cut. If this works, it is much, much cheaper than the Roland or graphtec...For me, I chose to go with the Roland...reason??? well I guess because of reputation and the quality of other Roland products I have had experience with. But It seems US Cutter is doing well..again there is a lot of info on their users forum
Yes, the laser in LaserPoint is for lining up your plotter to contour cut printed stickers or transfers. You create your artwork and print it with special registration marks, and you manually aling your plotter with your printed work to cut around your design.
You only really need it if you want to contour cut inkjet transfers or printed stickers.
Let's say you have a design that's not just a rectangle and you want to put it on a shirt, but you don't want a rectangular polymer window (the shape of your transfer paper). Without a plotter capable of contour cutting, you would cut around your design with scissors or a hobby knife to minimize the window effect.
Contour cutting on a plotter is doing just that...cutting around your design.
Ohhhhhhh, so its for digital transfers. If you are cutting designs out of vinyl or letters out of vinyl, you don't need the laser do you? so then without the laser why can the blades follow the lines for lettering and designs in the vinyl, but not for the digital transfers? Again I apologize if these questions have a DUH! factor
Yes, it's for following the contours of your designs with digital transfers or printed stickers. It doesn't actually automatically follow the contours of your design. Instead, you set up your contour curves in your graphics program. It doesn't automatically know where to cut. And the registration marks are so your machine knows where on your page to cut those contour lines.
With simple vinyl designs, you design your cut shapes and your machine just cuts it in its default position. It doesn't need to know exactly where your design should be, so you don't need registration marks.
In order for a plotter to work, it needs what's known as vector information to follow. They cannot cut bitmaps, or raster information. So you would need a design program like Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, or Inkscape to design your cut shapes in. Then you would import those shapes into your plotter's software, and it would cut them.
Don't worry about your questions. Everyone's a beginner at some point, and you need to learn somehow!
Would it be possible to contour cut Laser Dark paper wint a normal cutter without optic eye? I think if printed on standard A4 and then (scanned and) vectorised, overlapping the vector for the contour over the same format...
Maybe i'll give it a go... Someone tryed that yet?
The problem is not cutting the paper itself, but lining your cut line up with the printed graphic. Without registration marks and some way for your plotter to read those marks (whether automatically or manually), then you'd find it VERY difficult to line them up...almost impossible.
I would think it would be worth the extra money just in case you ever want that option. I always advise to buy more than you need so you can grow a bit without it costing you. .... JB
Eh Chani
so the US cutter laser point does not register automatically like the Roland GX-24 right?
is that why the Roland is so much more expensive than the US cutter?
There are several reasons, but that's one of them.
With the LaserPoint, you need to use the controls on the plotter to manually line your laser pointer (hence LaserPoint) to your registration marks. Then you send your cut file to the plotter. With the GX-24, you just set up your cut file, print your media with reg marks set up in CutStudio, then you load it in the plotter and hit Cut. It does everything else automatically.
Laser Cutter 
Thanks ahead of time, for all your input.
Re: Laser Cutter 
