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Which vinyl cutter should I buy in the $400-500 range?

5392 Views 7 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  Ripcord, 
M
I am looking to buy a plotter. I don't want to spend more than $400-500. I just want to see if it is a good feature I can add onto my business.

I saw a few on amazon but after doing some research.. I found that those off-brand plotters do not cut straight. If I want to make signs for example.. Don't I want straight lines? Or what does people mean by, "It doesn't cut straight."

I saw the graphtec silhouette cameo.. Only $300 but it is a known brand so I'm guessing the quality of cuts will actually be worth $300? Not some china-made junk?

I don't want to buy something that won't get the job done right.. I mean I understand for $500 I'm super limited but I just want to get pretty much introduced to this side of the artistic business.

I will be making vinyl window stickers, signs, and rarely heat press t-shirts (Screen printing is so much easier!).
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F
Re: Plotters

Spend the extra $100 and get a GCC Expert 24 LX (optical eye for registration/contour cuts). You can get it without the optical eye cheaper but you will regret it forever.

You could also get the Silhouette with the optical eye for less but 12" is really small. I plan on buying one for portability to do the convention circuit with, I wouldn't buy one for a shop, it's too small.
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M
Re: Plotters

I don't mind spending $10,000 on a plotter I'll use every day, but I just want to start out as a little hobby I guess.. Probably not going to bring it to the shop. I'll leave it at home! :)

What's that whole optical eye thing?
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Rodney
:: edited thread TITLE to be more descriptive and moved to a more appropriate section of the forum :) ::
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F
If you are contour cutting t-shirt transfers for white shirts, or plan on cutting out stickers/printed decals, if you have a cutter with an eye, you put registration marks on it, and it will cut exactly where you want it to cut. Otherwise you have to jump through hoops to make sure the object to be cut is where the plotter will start cutting and you may ruin many things trying to do it. Silhouette Cameo has it, so does the 24LX.
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Nick Horvath
I agree. The GCC Expert 24LX is a good startup cutter.

Don't worry, even a high end cutter would not be near $10,000. ;)

You can get a great high output cutter for under $2,000
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jmcgurren
Isn't the only need for the LX if you need to cut out printed material? I am only going to be using it for cutting 1 color images / vinyl. In that case I have no need for the optical eye right?
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Ripcord
I bought the 15" US cutter for less than $200 and it cuts just fine. (No optical eye but you don't really need that unless you want to die cut printed stuff.) In hindsight, I wish I had spent another $50 or so for the 24" model, but I've made some pretty big signs using the one I have. This sign is 5 X 3 feet (I did the window sign with the same cutter...)

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