Cheap Vinyl Cutters

Do you have a bitmap (pixel based) image you would like to convert to vector? Translation: Do you have a picture you want to cut out in vinyl? It’s easy to convert black and white images (and even some other images) to a vector graphic format using Adobe Illustrator’s “Live Trace” function. Follow these steps carefully, their order is important.

Practice with our friend here.

Pro Tip: For images not so fabulously suited for this purpose, don’t be afraid to use Photoshop to put it into grey scale. Also, use a Blur for smoother edges on images that you’ve enlarged. Pixelation is difficult for tracing.

1. Open a new Illustrator Document.

2. Paste our friend here into the middle of the document. You can leave his size alone.

3. While he is selected (You should see a blue box around him) go to the “Object” Menu.

Select “Ungroup”. Then, from the “Object” menu again, select “Clipping Mask” (near the bottom) and hit Release.

4. Deselect the object by clicking on white space outside the blue box.

5. You’re now ready to trace. Select the “Object” Menu once again, and go to “Live Trace” and then “Make”.

Pro Tip: If for some reason, make is not available, you’ve not followed the previous 5 steps correctly.

6. Most of the time, You’re done. Save in your favorite Vinyl friendly format, and get to cutting. However, sometimes, the trace looks like an impressionist painting of it’s former self. If this is the case, read on:

7. From the “Object” Menu, select “Live Trace” and go to “Tracing Options”

8. In the top left hand corner of the menu there is a drop down box labeled “Preset”. There is a TON of different options in here like “Line Drawing”, “Comic Art”, “Ink Drawing”, etc. Try them all. Just because it says “Comic Art” doesn’t mean it won’t work awesome for your picture. One of these presets will solve 99% of all tracing problems.

9. If it doesn’t work on ANY of the presets, find the one that works the closest. In the window there are lots of numbers and options. …. Start playing.

Symptoms: While cutting closed shapes like circles, or squares the cutter leaves minute pieces of vinyl uncut that makes weeding difficult. This is a repeatable condition. (i.e. If you cut the same file 10 times, it will leave it uncut in the same place 10 times.)

Solution: This problem is not related to the offset of the blade, but is important that for accurate cuts, you have the offset correct before using this solution! See our guide on Setting the Blade Offset for your cutter.

1. Make sure your blade offset is correctly set.
2. Open up the Settings in your cutting software. We’ll use SignCut X2 for example here.
3. From the Settings Menu, Select Settings, or hit this button from the top toolbar:
4. There is a setting in the middle called “Overcut”. Increase this setting until your cutter no longer leaves pieces uncut. My Refine MH-1351 needed .1 once all was said and done.