Vinyl Sign Cutter

A vinyl sign cutter (sometimes known as a cutting plotter) is used by professional poster and billboard sign-making businesses to produce weather-resistant signs, posters, and billboards using self-colored adhesive-backed vinyl film that has a removable paper backing material. The vinyl can also be applied to car bodies and windows for large, bright company advertising and to sailboat transoms. A similar process is used to cut tinted vinyl for automotive windows.

Colors available are generally limited only by the collection of vinyl on hand. To prevent creasing of the material, it is stored in rolls. Typical vinyl roll sizes are 24-inch and 36-inch width.

Generally the hardware is identical to a traditional plotter except that the ink pen is replaced by a very sharp knife that is use to cut out each shape, and the plotter may have a pressure control to adjust how hard the knife presses down into the vinyl film, allowing designs to be fully or partly cut out. The vinyl knife is usually shaped like a plotter pen and is mounted on ball-bearings so that the knife edge rotates to face the correct direction as the plotter head moves.

Sign cutters are primarily used to produce single-color line art. Multiple colors can be cut and assembled but the assembly process is extremely painstaking if the cut sections are thin and flexible.

As with the pen plotter, sign cutting plotters are in decline for general billboard and sign design. They are being replaced by wide-format inkjet printers that use special fade-resistant UV-protected solvent-based inks, which can directly print onto fabrics, vinyls, or plastic sheeting. These large inkjet printers have the added advantage of performing smooth color transitions and photo printing, which sign cutters cannot duplicate.

However, sign cutting plotter are still very much in use for precision cutting of graphics produced by wide-format inkjet printers, for example to produce shaped stickers and window graphics.

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