Making the Cut: 3 Ways to Get Creative with a Graphtec Cutter

Printers and laminators are standard equipment for PSPs, but often overlooked is the cutting plotter. Adding a Graphtec cutter to your print shop provides your customers with additional ways to explore their creativity.

We explore three ways that a cutter can increase your versatility:

  • Decals – Creating decals involves two different types of cuts: a perforated (perf) cut in the release liner that pop out the decals for easy resale and a kiss (die) cut for the sticker image that will easily separate from the release liner at the time of install.
  • Packaging and labels – The great thing about inkjet printing is the ability to offer personalization for small quantities. If you have a customer requesting a short run of stickers to personalize water bottles, notebooks or any other items, you can easily die cut the labels and send the labels to your client for the final step in the customization project.
  • POP Graphics – Perf cutting cardstock or other media gives you the opportunity to create POP/POS graphics with fold lines for easy display set up.

While cutters work with all types of media, there are some types like high gloss, reflective or highly textured surfaces that can sometimes be difficult to kiss cut or perf cut with accuracy. If you work with those types of substrates and have trouble with registration marks, the Graphtec cutter has Intelligent Scan Mode (ISM) technology that improves the detection for more accurate cutting.

If you would like more information about Graphtec cutters, contact a sales specialist at 800-453-9538 or visit LexJet.com today.

Print, Cut and Go with HP Latex Printers, Summa and Graphtec Cutters

HP Latex Printer and Graphtec Cutter

At first blush, it would seem that a print-and-cut, all-in-one solution would be the quickest and most efficient way to achieve die-cut prints. However, HP has partnered with Summa and Graphtec to offer an alternative combination that can improve production of cut-out graphics.

HP Latex prints are dry and ready to go immediately; there’s no need to wait 24 hours for prints to outgas and dry before laminating and cutting. And, since latex prints provide excellent scratch resistance and durability, lamination is unnecessary except for specialty applications like vehicle and floor graphics.

Moreover, with printer/cutter combos you typically make sacrifices in speed, quality or both. With the combination of the HP Latex Printer and a Summa or Graphtec cutter you maximize quality on the print side and speed on the cutting side.

Other benefits of the HP Latex Printer and separate cutter combination include:

  • Multiple jobs can be completed even if one station is busy
  • Separate machines allow multiple jobs to run at the same time: print only, cut only, and print and contour-cut
  • If the print/cutter combo breaks down, the entire production line goes down with it

If you’d like to find out more about combining HP Latex Printers and Graphtec and Summa cutters, contact a LexJet customer specialist at 800-453-9538.

Graphtec cutters optimized for HP Latex Printers include the FC8600-130 and FC8600-160. Summa cutters include the S Class D Series and S Class T Series. LexJet now carries the new HP Latex 300 Series Printers and the cutters are available upon request.

Creating and Applying Bowl-Worthy Graphics that Stick

Applying graphics to a stadium

The AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic has a storied history in the annals of college football. For most of its 77-year history, this big game used to be played in the actual Cotton Bowl Stadium at Fair Park in Dallas, but is now played at the state-of-the-art Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

Wall graphics for a football gameThe new venue requires an equally state-of-the-art approach to the myriad of graphics that cover the stadium to promote the big game, recognizing the teams and branding the bowl, and that’s where E.H. Teasley & Co. steps in.

E.H. Teasley & Co., based in Dallas, has been producing and installing the graphics for the Cotton Bowl for the past 18 years – the last four at Cowboys Stadium. The difficult and time-consuming task of wall graphics installations at Cowboys Stadium has been much easier with the use of Photo Tex Repositionable Fabric.

Applying graphics to elevator doors“We spent the first two years trying to find something that would adhere to the concrete walls. We tested a material during the summer before the initial opening of the stadium and that material seemed to work perfectly, but when we applied the vinyl a week before the game, in the winter months, the ambient temperature of the concrete had dropped considerably. The next day, we received a call from the Cotton Bowl folks telling us that a majority of our stickers had fallen off the walls. After all of our testing we were very surprised. We found a way to fix the signs that failed, but it made the project much more difficult and time-consuming,” says Jeff Teasley, owner of E.H. Teasley & Co. “In 2011 we were lucky to find PhotoTex. It’s a lighter weight material, and the adhesion properties are so much better than what we used for the prior game. To make sure we were on the right track before the game installation, we took it to a business near us with stucco-type walls. The graphic stayed up there for months in all of the outdoor elements. Seeing this, we felt confident that Photo Tex would do the job. Now we could sleep at night.”

Branding a hotel lobby with large signsThe graphics were printed on the company’s superwide solvent printers, which included a quantity of 352 four foot by four foot die-cut helmets and logos cut on a Zund cutter. These graphics lined the various levels of the stadium, the tunnels where the teams enter the field, as well as the lobbies of the host hotels. The hotel elevators were also branded with Photo Tex graphics.

“The elevator graphics were a lot better with the Photo Tex product. With the vinyl we were using before, people would tend to pick at it because it was thicker, where the Photo Tex is thinner and appeared to be painted on the door. Not one of the Photo Tex Graphics peeled off of any of the elevators. We used the EX version in a couple of places where we thought it might need a little more adhesion, and overall it went very smoothly this year and we were extremely pleased,” adds Teasley.