8 Hours of Cutting Vinyl!
Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 4:59 am
The owner of the motorcycle shop where I have my Harley fixed gives away Vinyl Window cuts of his shop name to his customers. I asked him where he get's them and he tells me that he can't get them anymore. I tell him that I can make them for him. We agree on a price and he wants 100 cuts. I have enough vinyl to get started and I start on Friday night. I lay out 8 artworks on a 12" x 24" piece of vinyl. I cut the first 8 and I was so excited until I look at them and I see that I didn't lay them out correctly and part of a letter was missing. I had a second page started so I quickly cancelled that. 5 of the second 8 had already cut, so now I have 13 cuts with part of a letter missing. On Saturday morning I look at the cuts and I see that I can rescue 7 of the cuts by recutting the messed up letter. It takes me about an hour to get the size correct, but it works. 3 hours later after I have all the bugs worked out, I have 15 cuts. I run these over to the shop and I tell them that I will get him 35 more by Monday. Back home, I start again. By now I have all the bugs worked out and I am able to get 1 cut done every 4 minutes. I work until about 5:30 and make 36 more cuts. I have a system all worked out, so the next 50 cuts won't take nearly as long as the first 50. It's been a long day of cutting, weeding and pressing, but it has gone so well, so why stop now. I decide to cut some things for my walls. I collect animation art, so I cut a WB symbol, a Walt Disney, a Walter Lantz, an Eh, What's up Doc and a kees, kees, kees.... I think they look pretty cool. After it's all said and done, I started cutting at 10:30 in the morning and I didn't stop until 8:30 at night. Not counting the time I was gone and the 2 breaks to eat and relax for a couple minutes, I figure I was cutting for over 8 hours. I started out cutting the vinyl on a pressure of 3 and cutter depth of 3. The vinyl cuts were looking a little rough, so I changed the depth of the cutter to 2 and the cuts really smoothed out. It was a great day and my Cricut and Scal worked beautifully. I have attached pictures of my wall cuts.
I am off to cut vinyl today too, but am not quite as ambitious as you are 
Awesome stuff!