Who here has a plotter cutter for making stencils??

anubisdeath6

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Who here has a plotter cutter for making stencils??

I'm getting ready to do my first stencil! Its for my current pinball restoration. I'm looking around for someone with a plotter cutter who would be able to create them once I make a file for it.

Also, what is the best way to do this? Correct me if this is the wrong way of going about doing this but I was planning on taking some tracing paper, tracing out everything, scanning it at my work through our wide format sheet scanner, and then using illustrator to vectorize the file.

Any input would be appreciated, and if you have a plotter cuter let me know!
 
I'm getting ready to do my first stencil! Its for my current pinball restoration. I'm looking around for someone with a plotter cutter who would be able to create them once I make a file for it.

Also, what is the best way to do this? Correct me if this is the wrong way of going about doing this but I was planning on taking some tracing paper, tracing out everything, scanning it at my work through our wide format sheet scanner, and then using illustrator to vectorize the file.

Any input would be appreciated, and if you have a plotter cuter let me know!

My wife has a silhouette plotter/cutter not sure how big your stencil needs to be.
 
I can cut them for you for 80 if you supply the artwork.

If you are going to trace, scan the cabinet rather than a hand tracing for the best results.
 
I was hoping you'd reply here. I heard through the grapevine that you have one. And what would you reccomend for scanning? That HP scanner that is removable? Or what?
 
Oh yeah you are...Do you own a plotter/cutter? And what are your opinions on tracing/scanning cabinets? I'm thinking about maybe buying an HP4600 Scanner, I've seen that used quite a bit on here.
 
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I have a vinyl cutter. As far as scanning, I have a visioneer scanner that I use. As long as you can take the top off and lay it on the surface you want to scan, it will work. Trick is to make sure you clamp on a straight edge and move it down the edge for each scan, them paste them together.
 
What model? I'm curious to check it out. The HP one looks pretty nice right now. I need to get something to do the scans...for my backglasses I ended up ripping the top off my xerox machine at work (I'm a graphic designer), and scanning it on the flatbed in pieces and stitching them together in photoshop...but a cabinet is a little too big to put on a xerox machine haha.
 
Its actually pretty old, probably 4 or 5 years, will have to dig it out and get you the model number. If the side art on the pinball is not too detailed like most of them are, you won't need a very high resolution scanner.
 
It's somewhat intricate...I just want enough resolution to not have to manually trace everything in Illustrator, it's much easier to use LiveTrace. So you think you'd be able to make the stencils once I'm able to get a digital file for you?
 

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Should be pretty straight forward. The sign software I use always seems to give me better trace results than the adobe live trace. I have been working on some files for my arcade games with it. Flexisign is the program.

Not sure why, but the adobe tracing doesn't seem to work as well. I have used Corel Draw in the past as well.
 
The only reason I was using Adobe is because that's what I have the most experiance with. I've been using the Adobe suites for years now...never got into Corel too much. Shoot me a PM or something, maybe we can discuss this off the thread? I'm really anxious to get something going as far as the stencils.
 
Kawydud: I'm working on a stencil for taitos coin door. Ive scanned the art and now I've vectored it. What I'm trying to do now is size it accurately. I know one of the lines in the design is 2 1/8". Is their any way in flexisign to resize the whole drawing based on something like that or do you just have to get it close by setting guidelines and judging it off that?
 
Should be pretty straight forward. The sign software I use always seems to give me better trace results than the adobe live trace. I have been working on some files for my arcade games with it. Flexisign is the program.

Not sure why, but the adobe tracing doesn't seem to work as well. I have used Corel Draw in the past as well.

Wow, flexisign looks sick! I just downloaded it and watched a few tutorials, I'm pretty sure I know it enough already to get it vectorized in that program and get it layered properly and whatnot.
 
KCfree, as long as you have the image vectorized proportionately the way it has to be, you can shrink it or enlarge it to the exact size you need. So if you know exactly what one line is supposed to be, the others will be exact as well if it was created properly. Hope that makes sense.
 
I acutually just bought a 48" plotter/cutter from for my own stuff so this thread is pretty interesting. Many people seem to recommend inkscape as the best app the vectorize your scans once they've been stitched together.

I havent tried it myself yet.. still getting the cutter unboxed but I hope to be cranking out some stencils I need shortly. I'm using it for etching and airbrush work. I really never gave much though to how versitle a cutters is. You can do signage, lettering, stencils, tshirt designs (heat transfer vinyl), etc. Tons of possibilities.

Malice95
 
Yeah, if I had the money I'd be buying my own...if I end up having to do more and more stencils, I probably will invest in one...if you don't mind me asking, which one did you end up buying?
 
Anyone wanna kick some names around of those plotter/cutter's? I would like to check some of them out like that 48...
 
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