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.
I got a Email from a member of the forum. He was having trouble posting,so I decided to help him out. Any advice would be greatly appreciated by Jim and myself. "I just purchased this window/sign vinyl from a company called Specialty-Graphics.com in Chicago. The vinyl is called “FDC Graphics 4200 Series Vinyl Film” and whenever I do a detail cut, the vinyl is pitting and tearing (see attached photo’s ). This never happened on your shirt vinyl, EcoFilm so I know it’s not the cutter. I’m doing a test cut which is working fine so I know the force is correct"THANKS FOR LOOKING. ... JB
that looks like a pretty thick material, have you tried a 60 degree blade and slowed down the feed maybe half of what it is currently set at ? If that does not work , try doing a multi-pass instead of cuttingit thru in one pass. For this technique, you'd have to reduce the blade force to half of your blade test strength and then do the cut, and with out disturbing the position of the media, do another cut. The cutter should retrace its path all over again, if that still fails, do 3 passes...good luck
4200 series is FDC's calendared vinyl, I use it all the time. A 60 degree blade is not needed. That cut should be a piece of cake once all the settings are correct.
Not knowing what kind of cutter/plotter is being used might be a concern here too. My P-Cut from USCutter has the pinch rollers on top of a pair of grit rollers for feeding. If you aren't watching what you're doing, you can easily get the vinyl bunched up or heaved up in the area between the pinch rollers and it won't feed properly. With the vinyl lifting off the cutting strip, it allows the blade even in UP position to grab at the design and tear it up like shown in the picture above. I would make sure that you are feeding this vinyl absolutely FLAT, as I've not had any problems with the FDC material from Specialty Graphics myself.
Well, in all honesty, I've only wasted about $100 worth of vinyl.....I bought some cheap sign vinyl to learn with and then used smaller designs with tee shirt vinyl while getting the hang of that as well. I would say, on average, I have one ruined piece per 5 jobs and it's usually something I did wrong, not the cutter. LOL
Looks to me that your off set is not correct, blade depth is not correct and speed of cut is to fast.
Thanks very much for your help. I've not changed the factory defaults for my new Roland GX-24 so I do not know much about this "offset" that you spoke of. I didn't see much at all mentioned about offset in the Roland Manual. Can you tell me how I might change the offset? My test cut was at 50g which was perfect. I've changed to a fresh blade which I believe is a 45-degree and the cut got much better; no more pulling yet I did have letters being removed when I weeded. When the letters pulled off I looked at the backing material to see if it was being slightly imprinted by the blade and it was which indicates to me that I was cutting through the letters yet some were still pulling off. Again someone mentioned off-set.
This is a discussion about Advice needed on how to correct this issue that was posted in the Vinyl Cutters (Plotters) and Transfers section of the forums.
Advice needed on how to correct this issue 
