Twinge said:
Okay, thanks you two - I wasn't too far off then! =)
I do have a few more specific questions:
How thin can lines be and still transfer well? I think I've heard they can go pretty small (2-3 pixel) but not tiny (1 pixel), but I really don't know. We have some designs with thin line-drawing and are wondering if they'll work 'as is' with vinyl.
The lines can get pretty thin, but remember that the more detailed a design is, the harder it can be to weed. Thermoflex is a lot easier to weed than regular sign vinyl is though. You will soon laern what is easy in vinyl and what is not.
How hard is it to weed away the excess material? Do you have to pick at each piece you don't want to transfer, making it a major pain for very complicated designs - and, if this is the case, what do you do when you accidentally pull up one of the good parts? Or, is it more of a simpler 'wipe away' process? We have some designs with lots of little sections each seperated individually, so that could potentially be rather time consuming. Also, are there any special tools you use to help weed? Do you have to use exacto knives to pick out small segments, etc.? I think I've seen some $300 device that is supposed to weed for you, but I don't know if those are worth it or if they're junk.
How hard it is to weed depends on a few things, like plotter settings and stuff, but mainly it depends on the design. Simple text, line drawings, a few colors, are not hard to weed. Very small text (1/4") is hard to weed, whereas 1/2" text is much easier. Most text and basic color images are easy enough to do. Photorealistic images are not possible. There is no wipe away process. Each piece that is not wanted must be weeded away. In some cases that can mean getting a start on a corner and carefully pulling away a whole line of text, and then just removing the wholes, like in a letter D or B. Exacto Knives can be used as well as a pin tool, but by far the best way is with weeding tweezers. These are very sharp pin point tweezers.
That $300+ device you refer to is made for sign vinyl, and it's called a Weeder. It's made by Bold Advertizing Products. It would not be practical at all for what you need, and in fact I don't think it works that great for it's intended purpose either. They do make a product called a Sheeter that is for sign vinyl that is awesome!
However, you do not use it, or need it for Thermoflex. It's for sign vinyl.
Can you use high quality (300dpi) raster instead of vector? I understand the image quality might be slightly less, but do most plotters absolutely NEED vector or is it just recommended? (I'm guessing they do need it because of how they work, but thought I'd ask to make sure.) If I do need to convert everything to vector, how well do some of these raster-to-vector convertors work? We've got some complicated, hand-drawn images that we've scanned in, and would like to be able to use them with vinyl if possible =) (which also ties into the thin lines, hehe)
No, no raster image will even be recognized by a cutter/plotter. A vector based image is like a road map, with each line and curve representing a path. These paths are calculated and fed into your cutter for the blade to follow. A vector image can be reduced or enlarged to any size without loss of quality to the image. A rastor image is nothing but thousands of little dots to put it simply.
Ther are a few programs that can do a fair job of converting a raster (bitmap) image into a vector. These are called trace programs. Nothing will do a great job on detailed or complex color bitmaps. In many cases, cut vinyl is not the way to go for a transfer. It becomes to time consuming for many color layers, or high quantity jobs.
While I'm at it, I might as well ask this one too -- What plotter(s) would you folks recommend? I'd probably want 10" width minimum, but I think when I was looking most of them were at least 12" anyway. I definately don't need a giant 24" one or such.
You have to have at least a 15" for the ThermoFlex rolls, however I would not recommend any less than a 24". A 24" is not considered a giant. The Stikas are not really considered to be a very good cutter. They are like little home/hobby cutters. They might work, but there are much better cutters for not that much more money. Look into Roland's other cutter/plotters. Look into Summa, Lynx, Graphtek etc. Look into refurbished equipment also.
Edit: Oh, almost forgot to ask: Why craft paper instead of teflon? I'm already used to using teflon for everything else; is this a matter of 'craft paper will work just as well', or is there a reason to NOT use teflon here?
Yes, craft paper will work just as well. Every roll of ThermoFlex I get comes with a sheet of Craft paper anyway. It is used mostly to protect your heat platten on your press, and to not melt the previous layers of color you may have already pressed onto the shirt. You can use a teflon sheet if you want to though.