Having problems with print & cut vinyl on bn-20 (newbie)

[liannef]

Hi
I've been testing some printed vinyl from Grafityp and am having some problems. With the weeding I'm loosing bits or bits are coming away and it's not tiny detail. I think it was the soft print colour that I increased the cut force more than the recommend and most of the designs kept raising up when I was weeding. I made a right mess of my first attempt of applying application tape but did better the second time but when removing the backing, bits of the designs starting raising up even though I used a squeegee to push it down and even when heat pressing the corners came up on a large design using soft print clear. I followed the instructions and am going to ask grafityp for help too but am starting to think that a print and cut isn't as easy as i thought it would be!

I don't really understand how to add the cut lines where I want them. I have a jpeg and png of a princess and did a boundary around the outside for the cutline but there is a white part under the arm that I want to cut out but don't know how. If I convert it to vector and do an outline then it goes round all the different shapes in the design. I've tried watching videos on you tube but can't see how to do it. I have coreldraw. I'm hoping it will get easier with practice as I hoped I would be able to turn around orders quickly.

Thanks
Lianne

[socialgiraffe]

If you take the piece under the arm as an example, you need to create an outline in Corel around that white area. That outline will need to be in the cut contour colour. Here is how I do a quick trace which I then clean up....

Open PNG/JPG in photoshop
Remove all white so background is transparent
Copy image onto new layer
Select then object on the new layer and give it a fill of Magenta
Save file as PSD and import into Corel
Ungroup layers and do a trace of the magenta layer
Give this a fill of nothing and an outline colour of cut contour

That will give you a cutting path for Versaworks to use. Depending on the complexity it may take a while to cut and as you get better you will know to clean up the cutting path and search out EPS files where ever possible

[Vynmarius]

When you convert it to a vector, ungroup all the lines and just choose the outer line to cut, or copy your artwork choose bitmap black and white, then do a vector trace and it should give you a silhouette to work with and copy your artwork over it, view in wireframe mode to check your cut lines match up