Flying Fiber Laser Marking Machine Automatic Mark Production Line For Can PVC Bags Plastic Bottle Marking Machine
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faking die cut stickers on a laser cutter - i made it at techshop!
by：Transon
2020-09-03
As part of the project, I need the die-cut label to apply to the point of purchase display-when I investigate the cost of the die-cut label, before I am told that I also have to pay for the professional mold to cut the sticker, they seem to be reasonable, the cost of this project doubled, my first intention was to make stickers on the vinyl cutter system, but due to the number of colors, layering and Labor will be involved more than necessary.
Then I suddenly realized-why not print the full color on the Avery label and cut them out using a laser cutter?
Luckily, there is almost a tech store in my backyard.
If you have one but haven\'t been there yetget going!
If you are not familiar with Techshop, you can read here: Techshop.
Techshop offers state-of-the-art design and manufacturing equipment, software and tools.
They also offer courses and training to help you get up faster without familiarizing yourself with the idea of die-cutting stickers, the idea is that the outline shape of the sticker is the same as your art or logo, instead of printing your logo in a large, middle white Square-die-cut follows the outline of your work, or cut directly to the edge, or leave a small contrast border shape on the outside.
The laser cutting machine can cut a lot of things, including paper (
Have some experiments)
So if you arrange your artwork, print it out on the sticky label, and then run the artwork on the laser cutter with a matching art file containing only the final outline of the art, with the correct alignment, you should be able to poke out many stickers at an excellent price.
This tutorial assumes that your work is vector-based, not a photo or list image.
While you can have sters and photos in your artwork, there must be some kind of external edge or border item that is a vector-we will use the software command to extend the external vector to create a cutting path for the laser printer.
To prepare my art, I simply opened the existing files in adobe illustrator-you can also perform these functions in other vector-based art programs, such as Corel draw.
First select the outer edge closest to the vector or your art-dark blue shadows in my case.
Make sure this vector is the only selected vector and then use the path-offset path (
Or equivalent commands for your specific software)
Add a wider border that tracks the shape of the original artwork outline.
In my example, I want to leave a blank between the original art and the cutting line, so I change the fill color to none and set the stroke color to black.
Doing so now shows the \"path\" the laser cutter will take when burning the sticker \".
Almost any office supplies store will sell the peel and paste printer labels of various Avery or store brands.
For this project, I purchased the Avery brand 5265 full page label.
My purpose is to label as much as possible on a piece of paper, not only to minimize the cost, but I will put one label after another into the laser cutting machine, frankly, I want to minimize the number of times I have to do this.
In this step, we will nest as many stickers as possible on the master page, add some alignment registration tags (
More information about this reason)
And create the necessary \"print stickers\" Master and the necessary \"cut stickers\" master art work files.
Step 1: group your work.
Use the select all tool in the software to grab each item that now constitutes the main sticker-all original artwork vectors, plus the profile created by the path offset command, which will be your cutting line.
Step 2: Copy the grouped artwork with the Copy command, then open a new document of the same size as the sticker you purchased in your software.
Once a new document is opened, move the grouping label to the document and as close as possible to the printable edge of the page allowed by the printer. .
Step 3: paste multiple copies of a single sticker onto the page and move around so they don\'t touch each other --
This is called nesting.
Step 4: create alignment registration tags-what are these you asking?
Well, different printers align objects on pages in a slightly different way.
You may even notice at some point that if your home printer does not pull the paper properly, you can get two copies from the same printer in different locations on the page.
We will create some marks on master art, we will include on the printer\'s \"print label\" file and the \"cut label\" file of the laser cutting machine, we can use it to collide the artwork, or the home location of the laser to arrange the artwork and overcome these differences-we will print this part of the artwork before committing to cutting the entire pager to make sure we get the expected results before the final cut.
The best option for this registration mark is a square or a cross-we will adjust the X or Y axis on the laser or art, so in these directions alignment marks fun is the best.
If you can really put each one on a separate layer of the artwork, it would be best-later, we want to use one at a time, you can simply tell the printer/cutter to print or cut the layer only (
More will be introduced later. )
Step 5: After you have everything set up, save the main document as the main file.
Print a copy of this document to the printer to make sure that the printer margins do not cut any artwork.
When the test print looks good, save two copies of the main document, one with the name \"print sticker\" and the other with the name \"cut sticker \".
\"Step 6: Open the\" print sticker \"file and delete the black outline representing the sticker cutting line-remember that the cutting line exists for the benefit of the laser cutting machine, now, you are running these for your normal paper printer.
In theory, you can leave the cutting line because if your alignment is a bit off, the laser cutting machine should break the cutting line when it happens and you will be left with some black line display.
Make sure to highlight only the cut path and click delete.
Save the changes to the file.
You should now have a file with your original artwork (
No cutting line)
And the registration cross or box shown.
Print a copy on normal paper on the printer.
Step 7: Open the \"cut sticker\" file, delete all original colored artwork that make up the sticker, leave only the black outline that represents the sticker cutting line and the registration mark-remember, this file is for the benefit of the laser cutting machine, so there should not be your colored artwork on this file.
After deleting everything except the cut line and the registration box, save the changes to the file.
Now you should have a file that shows the cut line and the sign-up crossover or box.
Print a copy on normal paper on the printer. . . Why you ask?
Because we will confirm that there is no movement in the process of jumping and moving content between files.
Print a single copy of the color artwork printer file and the laser cutter cutting file on plain white paper.
Take both of them to the sunny windows.
Fold two sheets of paper together until the window.
When you browse the newspaper
Does your artwork page and the cutting line page show that the two parts are centered on each other?
If so, you have a good start.
If not, please try to check the second one
Look at your sign up signs, are they aligned?
If so, but your art is not, you somehow moved your art on one file or another, and need to go back to the previous steps to set up the file.
If your registration marks are not aligned, this may mean that your printer will pull them out in a different way when printing each sheet.
Align your registration marks with each other and ignore the edges of the paper-
Is your artwork and cutting line centered correctly now? If so -hurrah!
That\'s why we added these registration lines.
Therefore, you can use them as a guide in future laser cutting machines to make up for the difference between printers.
If you have a set of labels to print, check the number of labels per page and do math.
Load so many tabs into the printer, make sure to set the printer to label if there are options (
If you don\'t, you might want to try it if thick paper or card paper is optional. )
Finally, be sure to load the sticker section correctly into the printer so it can print on the right side of the page-some printers print on the top side of the page and others actually print on the bottom.
If you\'re not sure, look for an icon on your drawer or paper feeder that shows the direction.
The worst case scenario is to write the word \"top\" in a large letter at the top of a piece of paper and then print a test sheet.
Did the sticker on the side where top was written print?
If so, your label will face the tray with your cutting file and a bunch of labels in your hand and go to the laser cutter.
Follow all correct safety and operating procedures including the X and Y axis of the guide laser cutter.
Insert a sacrifice sheet that may become a printed label.
On the computer connected to the laser cutter, load the file and open the editing software (
In my case is adobe Illustrator. )
In your cut file, close all the layers except the one that contains the top registration mark-in a moment, we will tell the system to actually cut, if the alignment is bad, you only damaged a small part of the page.
We can make some adjustments, open another registration layer and cut again-using this program, we have four opportunities for our alignment before we ruin the sticker.
It is important to remember that the cutter requires you to set its cutting path line to the thinnest option provided by the software (
Corel drawing for hairline, month.
25 pt on Illustrator)
Select your first registration box and set the line weight accordingly.
Once everything is set, select print to open the print settings dialog box for the laser cutter.
Most laser cutting machines provide a proper set-up sheet to cut a variety of materials-our stickers are not listed.
It is important to be familiar with your materials and make some of the best guess assumptions in advance.
I know my sticker is a paper face, a layer of adhesive and a wax paper backing.
Anything can happen when I try to cut these things, including fire, so I will have a fire extinguisher at hand.
I will start with the basic paper cut settings provided by my manufacturer.
Since I didn\'t distribute these stickers and wouldn\'t apply them myself, I really don\'t care if it would cut all the time and post everything from the page, I just wanted to tear the sticker off the backing, so as long as we cut the paper on the top floor, I can go, the less power, the faster the speed, the greater the chance that my project will not rise again, remember that this is just a calibration test to see if the laser matches the path of the first registration box drawn by my printer.
Actually, I can set the laser to run in pointer mode (
No heat, no cutting)
But in terms of the settings I need, I won\'t learn anything, so let\'s kill two birds with a stone and try to cut this thing.
After all the settings are correct (
Vector cutting method and appropriate speed, power and cycle, send the print job to the cutter by clicking print, walk to the cutter if needed, and press start on the control panel.
Then I suddenly realized-why not print the full color on the Avery label and cut them out using a laser cutter?
Luckily, there is almost a tech store in my backyard.
If you have one but haven\'t been there yetget going!
If you are not familiar with Techshop, you can read here: Techshop.
Techshop offers state-of-the-art design and manufacturing equipment, software and tools.
They also offer courses and training to help you get up faster without familiarizing yourself with the idea of die-cutting stickers, the idea is that the outline shape of the sticker is the same as your art or logo, instead of printing your logo in a large, middle white Square-die-cut follows the outline of your work, or cut directly to the edge, or leave a small contrast border shape on the outside.
The laser cutting machine can cut a lot of things, including paper (
Have some experiments)
So if you arrange your artwork, print it out on the sticky label, and then run the artwork on the laser cutter with a matching art file containing only the final outline of the art, with the correct alignment, you should be able to poke out many stickers at an excellent price.
This tutorial assumes that your work is vector-based, not a photo or list image.
While you can have sters and photos in your artwork, there must be some kind of external edge or border item that is a vector-we will use the software command to extend the external vector to create a cutting path for the laser printer.
To prepare my art, I simply opened the existing files in adobe illustrator-you can also perform these functions in other vector-based art programs, such as Corel draw.
First select the outer edge closest to the vector or your art-dark blue shadows in my case.
Make sure this vector is the only selected vector and then use the path-offset path (
Or equivalent commands for your specific software)
Add a wider border that tracks the shape of the original artwork outline.
In my example, I want to leave a blank between the original art and the cutting line, so I change the fill color to none and set the stroke color to black.
Doing so now shows the \"path\" the laser cutter will take when burning the sticker \".
Almost any office supplies store will sell the peel and paste printer labels of various Avery or store brands.
For this project, I purchased the Avery brand 5265 full page label.
My purpose is to label as much as possible on a piece of paper, not only to minimize the cost, but I will put one label after another into the laser cutting machine, frankly, I want to minimize the number of times I have to do this.
In this step, we will nest as many stickers as possible on the master page, add some alignment registration tags (
More information about this reason)
And create the necessary \"print stickers\" Master and the necessary \"cut stickers\" master art work files.
Step 1: group your work.
Use the select all tool in the software to grab each item that now constitutes the main sticker-all original artwork vectors, plus the profile created by the path offset command, which will be your cutting line.
Step 2: Copy the grouped artwork with the Copy command, then open a new document of the same size as the sticker you purchased in your software.
Once a new document is opened, move the grouping label to the document and as close as possible to the printable edge of the page allowed by the printer. .
Step 3: paste multiple copies of a single sticker onto the page and move around so they don\'t touch each other --
This is called nesting.
Step 4: create alignment registration tags-what are these you asking?
Well, different printers align objects on pages in a slightly different way.
You may even notice at some point that if your home printer does not pull the paper properly, you can get two copies from the same printer in different locations on the page.
We will create some marks on master art, we will include on the printer\'s \"print label\" file and the \"cut label\" file of the laser cutting machine, we can use it to collide the artwork, or the home location of the laser to arrange the artwork and overcome these differences-we will print this part of the artwork before committing to cutting the entire pager to make sure we get the expected results before the final cut.
The best option for this registration mark is a square or a cross-we will adjust the X or Y axis on the laser or art, so in these directions alignment marks fun is the best.
If you can really put each one on a separate layer of the artwork, it would be best-later, we want to use one at a time, you can simply tell the printer/cutter to print or cut the layer only (
More will be introduced later. )
Step 5: After you have everything set up, save the main document as the main file.
Print a copy of this document to the printer to make sure that the printer margins do not cut any artwork.
When the test print looks good, save two copies of the main document, one with the name \"print sticker\" and the other with the name \"cut sticker \".
\"Step 6: Open the\" print sticker \"file and delete the black outline representing the sticker cutting line-remember that the cutting line exists for the benefit of the laser cutting machine, now, you are running these for your normal paper printer.
In theory, you can leave the cutting line because if your alignment is a bit off, the laser cutting machine should break the cutting line when it happens and you will be left with some black line display.
Make sure to highlight only the cut path and click delete.
Save the changes to the file.
You should now have a file with your original artwork (
No cutting line)
And the registration cross or box shown.
Print a copy on normal paper on the printer.
Step 7: Open the \"cut sticker\" file, delete all original colored artwork that make up the sticker, leave only the black outline that represents the sticker cutting line and the registration mark-remember, this file is for the benefit of the laser cutting machine, so there should not be your colored artwork on this file.
After deleting everything except the cut line and the registration box, save the changes to the file.
Now you should have a file that shows the cut line and the sign-up crossover or box.
Print a copy on normal paper on the printer. . . Why you ask?
Because we will confirm that there is no movement in the process of jumping and moving content between files.
Print a single copy of the color artwork printer file and the laser cutter cutting file on plain white paper.
Take both of them to the sunny windows.
Fold two sheets of paper together until the window.
When you browse the newspaper
Does your artwork page and the cutting line page show that the two parts are centered on each other?
If so, you have a good start.
If not, please try to check the second one
Look at your sign up signs, are they aligned?
If so, but your art is not, you somehow moved your art on one file or another, and need to go back to the previous steps to set up the file.
If your registration marks are not aligned, this may mean that your printer will pull them out in a different way when printing each sheet.
Align your registration marks with each other and ignore the edges of the paper-
Is your artwork and cutting line centered correctly now? If so -hurrah!
That\'s why we added these registration lines.
Therefore, you can use them as a guide in future laser cutting machines to make up for the difference between printers.
If you have a set of labels to print, check the number of labels per page and do math.
Load so many tabs into the printer, make sure to set the printer to label if there are options (
If you don\'t, you might want to try it if thick paper or card paper is optional. )
Finally, be sure to load the sticker section correctly into the printer so it can print on the right side of the page-some printers print on the top side of the page and others actually print on the bottom.
If you\'re not sure, look for an icon on your drawer or paper feeder that shows the direction.
The worst case scenario is to write the word \"top\" in a large letter at the top of a piece of paper and then print a test sheet.
Did the sticker on the side where top was written print?
If so, your label will face the tray with your cutting file and a bunch of labels in your hand and go to the laser cutter.
Follow all correct safety and operating procedures including the X and Y axis of the guide laser cutter.
Insert a sacrifice sheet that may become a printed label.
On the computer connected to the laser cutter, load the file and open the editing software (
In my case is adobe Illustrator. )
In your cut file, close all the layers except the one that contains the top registration mark-in a moment, we will tell the system to actually cut, if the alignment is bad, you only damaged a small part of the page.
We can make some adjustments, open another registration layer and cut again-using this program, we have four opportunities for our alignment before we ruin the sticker.
It is important to remember that the cutter requires you to set its cutting path line to the thinnest option provided by the software (
Corel drawing for hairline, month.
25 pt on Illustrator)
Select your first registration box and set the line weight accordingly.
Once everything is set, select print to open the print settings dialog box for the laser cutter.
Most laser cutting machines provide a proper set-up sheet to cut a variety of materials-our stickers are not listed.
It is important to be familiar with your materials and make some of the best guess assumptions in advance.
I know my sticker is a paper face, a layer of adhesive and a wax paper backing.
Anything can happen when I try to cut these things, including fire, so I will have a fire extinguisher at hand.
I will start with the basic paper cut settings provided by my manufacturer.
Since I didn\'t distribute these stickers and wouldn\'t apply them myself, I really don\'t care if it would cut all the time and post everything from the page, I just wanted to tear the sticker off the backing, so as long as we cut the paper on the top floor, I can go, the less power, the faster the speed, the greater the chance that my project will not rise again, remember that this is just a calibration test to see if the laser matches the path of the first registration box drawn by my printer.
Actually, I can set the laser to run in pointer mode (
No heat, no cutting)
But in terms of the settings I need, I won\'t learn anything, so let\'s kill two birds with a stone and try to cut this thing.
After all the settings are correct (
Vector cutting method and appropriate speed, power and cycle, send the print job to the cutter by clicking print, walk to the cutter if needed, and press start on the control panel.
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