I’m planning a project where I want to use the Stingray Vinyl Cutter and since this is going to be a new tool for me, I’m looking for some basic tips.
I found the tool definition @WillAdams posted in 2022 and assume the contour path will be most appropriate, but would like some advice on the appropriate depth of cut and feed rate to avoid damage to the tool and tear out of the vinyl and any other disasters I haven’t thought of yet.
I’ll be cutting small elements with sharp angles on Oramask applied to hardwood. After cutting I’ll be painting, re-mask and regular milling, followed by more painting.
I have used it to cut vinyl and set my DOC to .009", but it would depend on your vinyl, Mine was kinda cheap.
I also used it as you describe this past wekend to cut through some shelf liner being used as a mask on a project. I simply set it to the thickness of the mask. It worked well, there were some tight corners and it may have pulled slightly there but I was happy with the result. The plan was to use that prior to carving so that the regular bit didn’t snag the edge and make more cleanup work. I think it looked good, but I ended up abandoning the idea because the paint I had underneath the liner was pulling up as I removed some areas even after letting it dry for a week.
All in all though, the stingray did fine. I used the heaviest spring so that the bitsetter button would compress before the spring in the stingray. I also used the 30 degree blade, or whatever the smallest angle was, maybe it was 60.
Yes, I didn’t think about it either until I saw the stingray compress so I switched out the spring and went again.
I failed to mention that due to the wood not being surfaced on the machine the stingray did cut a line in the wood at some spots. I wasn’t worried about it since I was following up with a bit that would cut up to that line as well but something to consider if your usecase does not support that. I think I told it to cut outside the line when I set up the profile path.
Ah, Outside Right rather than No Offset - Thank You.
I would have cut no offsets but do remember seeing a post about ‘cutting outside the line’. At the time I thought (I don’t know why though) that could have meant creating an offset to cut, rather than the original design element.
I’ll definitely be surfacing the board before applying Oramask (813).
By the way - I’ve found that when masking a painted surface if I give it a coat of Shellac (dried/cured) before applying the mask it can prevent the paint from coming up when the mask is removed later. Can still happen in some areas, but overall less than without the Shellac.
I am a big shellac proponent but I didn’t really think about it over the paint in this case. I have done the masking over paint before and not had issues, but it has been a while so maybe I did it then.
I will try again as I wanted a multi layer multi color sign without handpainting everything.
I think outside and inside gets flipped when looking at internal vectors. Or maybe not always flipped but sometimes confused (maybe its just me). So, if you are doing lettering pay close attention to how the inner loops on the letters are handled.
Either way though the width of the stingray is so small it may not matter.