lowest priced best quality cutter/plotter

[Personalised-4U]

im looking to expand into the world of decals and wall art, what would be the best machine to buy? are thse ebay packages worth it? ive sen a few at £400-£500 that come with cutter/plotter, heat press, vinyl, app tape, etc bla bla bla and seems a fair deal but its a lot of money to gamble with,

ANY advice would be appreciated

[RogerC]

If you grab a coffee and do a search on here you'll find the 'general' trend is buy cheap....buy twice. In all honesty there's no such beast as a low price, best quality cutter. Depending on the size you need there's the Cameo for up to 300mm cutting width (there's a deal posted on here somewhere for B grade models at £200.00) or for something bigger there's the Graphtec 6000 series but they start at around £1200.00 for the 610mm version.

The cheap Chinese ones say they have a 'magic eye' for cropping/registration marks but in the main this 'magic eye' is nothing more than a small red laser which in reality does nothing, you use it to manually align when this is required, whereas the Graphtec machine with the 'magic eye' does what it says automatically.

So in a nutshell I would say (only my opinion you understand) you would be wasting your money on the fleabay packages.

[Personalised-4U]

Only looking to start small to be honest, nothing major

[FutureProject]

chineese cutters are ok, but getting them set up can be hit or miss, for example, my kingcut cuts backwards, so you have to reverse stickers and not reverse garment vinyl, not a massive deal but if you're not used to it it can catch you out, also when I changed PC it took me ages to get it to cut stuff with lots of points as the flow control was messed up. a roll of paper and a pen is good to practice with any cutter you get that way you can see results without needing to weed or waste material.

[Paul]

If you want to start small but cut large wall decals i would suggest to go for better cutter. I had 2 cutters. and none of them was able to cut LARGE jobs. i think this is something to do with memory in them. they just sop the cutting and start cutting random lines.

[arko]

My chinese cutter cuts up to 610mm wide and up to 20 meters long! Never had a problem with memory drop-out (not tried complex designs that big yet or even that long but have had almost 15 meters out of it!) and it only cost me £139 with software. ... so not all chinese or other cheapo cutters are crap!

[Personalised-4U]

greatly appreciate all the input!

i think i will test the water with a cheepo flea bay thingy ma bob and if it picks up for me i'll invest in one of the more expensive cutters,
that way i wont dent my budget too much until i know its the right choice, LOVING THE £200 POST ON HERE!

FLEA BAY

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EH721-VINYL-P ... 3f2780d721

HMMMMM thoughts on this?

[FutureProject]

the random line problem is flow control, I've had and fixed it by tinkering with the flow control settings (not 100% from memory if you need to set it to software or hardware control) this is where a pen and paper roll comes in handy as you don't waste loads of vinyl)

[Justin]

721 is a fine machine whilst it's working, mine died pretty quickly I'm afraid so I'm returning to the Roland cutter. There really is no comparison but obviously you're paying for it! I find my little Silhouette does 95% of the jobs I need pretty easily and the other 5% with a bit of thought

[bms]

greatly appreciate all the input!

i think i will test the water with a cheepo flea bay thingy ma bob and if it picks up for me i'll invest in one of the more expensive cutters,
that way i wont dent my budget too much until i know its the right choice, LOVING THE £200 POST ON HERE!

FLEA BAY

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EH721-VINYL-P ... 3f2780d721

HMMMMM thoughts on this?

You can also get the baby Cameo - called the portrait and this cuts up to A4 width and cost wise should be around £150 - £160 inc vat brand new.