# Weeding small text LP24



## flamer (Dec 28, 2009)

I am playing around with my new L24 at the moment and am having difficulty with small text. (appears a few people have the same issue with the LP).

The font is reasonably small, each letter is around 1/8 inch. block font. nothing fancy. I have a brand new 45 degree blade in the machine and have tried a lot of different settings, lowest speed, lowest downforce, highest downforce, medium downforce, changing blade protrusion etc etc etc. but I always get the same issue, when I pull up the outer box of vinyl it takes half of the lettering with it, the text is too small to be able to hold each bit down even with a small tool. the clear backing is getting abrazed so I know it is cutting far enough.

The vinyl I have is not a known brand to you guys (its all that s available in my location) I have two types, one is called UCUT50 (50 microns) the other is PU90/UK90 (90 microns thick).

should i be using a 60 degree blade maybe? i thought that was for thicker stuff only? could anyone share their settings for me to try?


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## iat (Aug 28, 2008)

Haven't used USCutter, but if you have some kind of overcut function, try to use that, helps with weeding.

Also material with stickier backpaper helps.


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## flamer (Dec 28, 2009)

iat said:


> Haven't used USCutter, but if you have some kind of overcut function, try to use that, helps with weeding.


well it does not sure how to use it though, I saw another thread where someone suggested cutting it at a lower pressure, then running it through again at a higher pressure. Could be worth a try.


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## Nick Horvath (Feb 26, 2010)

The overcut and also simply running the job again without resetting your origin (so it cuts right over the same area again) could work.

Some vinyls simply have limitations to how detailed you are able to cut and weed out of them. Have you tried making the design slightly larger or less detailed?


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## flamer (Dec 28, 2009)

Nick Horvath said:


> Some vinyls simply have limitations to how detailed you are able to cut and weed out of them. Have you tried making the design slightly larger or less detailed?


I have, with much bigger letters there are no issues, I haven't really gone down the path of seeing what the smallest weedable font size is yet. 

I have also been reading that a blade with a smaller offest may help, should I invest in a 0.15 offset blade or is it more likely the vinyl i am using? I am trying to do text for a tagless collar so I can't make it too big.


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## Nick Horvath (Feb 26, 2010)

A 60 degree blade is more for detail cutting, while a 45 degree blade is for most cutting.

Additionally blade depth can play a part in how good your cuts are. You should have your blade extended 1/2 the thickness of a credit card.


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## Nvr2Old (Oct 14, 2009)

flamer said:


> I have, with much bigger letters there are no issues, I haven't really gone down the path of seeing what the smallest weedable font size is yet.


 The smallest text I have been able to sucessully cut and weed on the LP24 is a tad smaller then 1/4 inch. Anything smaller and the accuracy of the cut is not consistent. Even that took a lot of effort to set up the blade, pressure and speed to cut half way decent. (Higher pressure and less blade protrusion, and slowest speed helped)
As for cutting inside tag info, we decided that by the time you figure in labor and extra weed time, it was cheaper to have plastisol transfer gang sheets made for us.


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## Crawler Graphics (Jan 11, 2009)

I have to use an old airbrush needle to hold down the letters while weeding. The smaller the letters the more work and time but I really haven't come up with a good solution...


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## Nick Horvath (Feb 26, 2010)

Also, after you cut this design, completely weed away all vinyl and take a look at the scoring on the carrier. Look for any broken lines. 

This would indicate where you are not getting as good of cuts. One of the main reasons you are not able to weed a given design is that the vinyl is not completely cut through, resulting in a snag. 

This snag most of the time doesn't cause an issue if the bond of the vinyl to the carrier is strong enough, but if the bond isn't that strong you will lose vinyl when weeding.


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## cryptkeeper (Apr 26, 2010)

flamer said:


> I am playing around with my new L24 at the moment and am having difficulty with small text. (appears a few people have the same issue with the LP).
> 
> The font is reasonably small, each letter is around 1/8 inch. block font. nothing fancy. I have a brand new 45 degree blade in the machine and have tried a lot of different settings, lowest speed, lowest downforce, highest downforce, medium downforce, changing blade protrusion etc etc etc. but I always get the same issue, when I pull up the outer box of vinyl it takes half of the lettering with it, the text is too small to be able to hold each bit down even with a small tool. the clear backing is getting abrazed so I know it is cutting far enough.
> 
> ...


Hi, I'm new, it's my first post 

I used to be a sign guy (still am) and going to try this tshirt thing for a bit. Here is my trick to you free of charge 

For small text, I cut around areas I know are going to be an issue, and weed the rest of the vinyl. Then I mask the entire decal, and peel it off, I then weed the difficult part directly _off the transfer tape_


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## flamer (Dec 28, 2009)

cryptkeeper said:


> For small text, I cut around areas I know are going to be an issue, and weed the rest of the vinyl. Then I mask the entire decal, and peel it off, I then weed the difficult part directly _off the transfer tape_


Thanks CK, sounds like a good plan i will try that. i think i first need to calibrate my offset so I can get rid of the incomplete cuts I am getting at the moment first. 

If it doesn't work out I might just go for inkjet transfer on the neck collar.


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## Nick Horvath (Feb 26, 2010)

flamer said:


> Thanks CK, sounds like a good plan i will try that. i think i first need to calibrate my offset so I can get rid of the incomplete cuts I am getting at the moment first.
> 
> If it doesn't work out I might just go for inkjet transfer on the neck collar.


To clarify: Is this heat appied vinyl?

If so, then the above suggestion will not work.

It's a great suggestion for sign vinyl, though.


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## spiderx1 (Oct 12, 2009)

Good suggestion is to put weed boxes around the small area, remove the excess large area then mask and "reverse weed" i.e. weed from the transfer paper as the other guy said. More time consuming but will work, I have to use this all the time for graphics much smaller than 1/8" inch. A good weed tool such as a Stahls Easy Weeder which has a curved hook. or a needle tapes to the end of a pencil can help along with a good pair of tweezers. Overcut of 3 may help but can result in pulling up the letters with the blade. The 45 should work well, you should not need a 60 deg blade for 1/8 letters. If your material is thinner it can help, such as a good 2 mil. I have a lot of problems when using a 3 mil or thicker, also sometimes if it has a grey glue on back it tends cause problems. If this is a heat transfer material then it depends, if using a transfer material such as used with a print and cut type you can use the aboved tech. If it the type that you cut in reverse / mirror then you may need a different brand.


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## Teashirtz (Apr 29, 2010)

flamer said:


> I am playing around with my new L24 at the moment and am having difficulty with small text. (appears a few people have the same issue with the LP).
> 
> The font is reasonably small, each letter is around 1/8 inch. block font. nothing fancy. I have a brand new 45 degree blade in the machine and have tried a lot of different settings, lowest speed, lowest downforce, highest downforce, medium downforce, changing blade protrusion etc etc etc. but I always get the same issue, when I pull up the outer box of vinyl it takes half of the lettering with it, the text is too small to be able to hold each bit down even with a small tool. the clear backing is getting abrazed so I know it is cutting far enough.
> 
> ...


Small lettering and sign vinyl? I´d personally suggest the following:

Maybe it is needless to say but the vinyl cutter has to be a good one ( I love the Summa machines), and the cutter protection needs to be in a good condition. 

If the knife protrudes too far you can get problems with fine details and corners being cut off or pulled away from the liner and also maybe not being quite cut through at the point where the knife changes direction (when using a vinyl cutter with a drag knife).

The depth of cut is also pretty critical as you don´t just have to cut the vinyl but the adhesive which will cause you big problems if the ambient temperature is high and you do not weed immediately after cutting. The adhesive flows back into the cut and the material to weed and the letters then stick together when weeding.

The idea with a 60 degree knife is a good one because the higher the degree of the blade then the smaller the area of the blade which has to be pushed through the vinyl but it is very important here to use a new knife and change the offset in the machine you are using to suit the knife, most people do not recommend this because the knife will go blunt more quickly than the usual 45 degree and quickly deliver bad results.

Using multiple weeding boxes to keep the area to weed small and easier to handle is good and then, you might need stronger nerves for this one, you can just take the vinyl to weed at one corner, fold it over and rip it away with a jerk and high very high speed keeping the angle to the surface of the film as low as possible and then you´ve got the small lettering you wanted.
It is also essential to weed in a diagonal direction always working against the direction of the letters hence pulling the film out of c´s and e´s etc. otherwise you will pull the letters away with the weeded material.

Last but not least different vinyl´s behave differently depending on how the manufacturers have designed them to behave, I´d personally use the Ritrama Premium-Grade and also like Avery products.

I hope to have not stated too much of the obvious, good luck with the little letters


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## flamer (Dec 28, 2009)

Thank-you all for your replies they were very useful.

Firstly, this is heat transfer vinyl I am using (tshirt vinyl). 

I will do some more testing over the weekend and post back with my results.

Some of the things I also need to try are changing the knife offset in flexi (the offset option was unchecked in the software). Playing around with the x/y offset values on cutter itself and also trying multiple passes on the small text. 

I have noticed my squares have very slightly rounded corners and also quite a few incomplete cuts so I might get better results if I can first get the cutter setup right.


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## Nvr2Old (Oct 14, 2009)

flamer said:


> Thank-you all for your replies they were very useful.
> 
> Firstly, this is heat transfer vinyl I am using (tshirt vinyl).
> 
> ...


Hopefully you will be able to change the LP24 offset with Flexi. LP24 with Signcut Pro offset adjustment seems to make no difference at all when cutting a square object, either SCP does not work properly, or the blade offset is not adjustable on this cutter.


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## Nick Horvath (Feb 26, 2010)

flamer said:


> Thank-you all for your replies they were very useful.
> 
> Firstly, this is heat transfer vinyl I am using (tshirt vinyl).
> 
> ...


The rounded corners are due to your offset settings. Is there an LCD screen on your cutter? It may be better to adjust offset on the cutter if yuo are able to. Dial those in until you see straight edges/corners. Change your offset and do a test cut. Try higher and lower settings. Notice how the corners flare out, the higher you go. Then lower them until you are satisfied with your edges. This may help you to understand what offset does.


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## flamer (Dec 28, 2009)

I HAVE DONE IT!! yey.

Ok so I adjusted my offset and found the best result was 0.400mm (45 degree blade) But that gave some incomplete cuts. SO.. I left offset at 0.400mm and enabled overcut @ 0.100in chucked some vinyl in and it just worked, not only did it work I had even forgotten to turn the speed down, well at speed 40 it still cut 1/4 inch text perfectly, even kept the dots on the i's etc. I then made the text smaller, turned speed down to 20 and it weeded well just lost a couple of the dots. (Will just use capital letters if going this small)

So the magic settings for me on the LP24 for small text using flexi pro 8.1 was:

Pressure: 120
speed: 20
knife: 45 degree
offset: 0.400mm
overcut: 0.100inch
passes: 1

I am a metric kid, so for reference the width of a capital letter "I" that I cut was 1 mm thick. I can go smaller if anyone is interested to hear the results but I think the text would become eligible anyway. also make sure you enable the weed border.


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## Nick Horvath (Feb 26, 2010)

Glad everything worked out. Keep us posted.


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