STX-8 vinyl cutter

G. Strickland, A vinyl cutter is basically a plotter, like a blueprint
printer, that has a knife instead of a pen. It cuts a path in sign
vinyl which is almost exactly like contact paper (vinyl). After the cut
you are left with both the positive and negative designs on the sheet
of vinyl. With tweezers you remove the part you don’t want, a process
called weeding. Then you press “application tape” over the design and
lift the whole thing off of the backing paper. You then press the
vinyl, held in place by the application tape, onto the surface you are
going to work with. Press down the vinyl, peel up the application tape
and you have the vinyl design stuck to the surface with empty space
wherever you weeded out vinyl. This vinyl is one of the crowning
achievements of the petrochemical industry. It resists almost
everything, including nitric acid. So far I have mainly used it as a
sandblasting resist with great results. For now, I will still use
Rayzist and PhotoBrasive for my smallest and finest sandblast designs.
There is a limit to the cutter’s cutting and my weeding ability. As
time permits, I’ll be doing some anodic depletion of sterling with
nitric acid and vinyl resist. I’ll post the pictures when it happens.
John Flynn

Thanks, John, for your description. What a “neat” process. I look
forward to your pictures.
Gary