I recently met up with a friend to interrogate them about their vinyl cutter, and to take a closer look at its imaging and cutting process. Primarily, I was curious about what scale and level of detail these machines were capable of. The vinyl cutter model E owns is the MH Series Vinyl Cutter by USCutter, which currently retails around $220 dollars, which was reasonable enough for my technology inclined friend to buy for their home use. They are currently using this vinyl cutter to make small-scale vinyl cutouts for themselves and a few others, but I think this machine has capabilities beyond that.

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I chose a simple project for this trial. A close friend of mine is going back to school, and I wanted to give him a unique and sentimental gift. I chose a design of a laurel wreath, a motif from his favorite book( it is Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, if you are curious!); I then found some clipart of the design, calculated the scale of the design to fit on his laptop chassis, and chose a lovely white vinyl to cut it out of. 

I sent the clipart to E’s laptop so they could use the software to scale the artwork and make any changes they felt were necessary; they made a few tweaks to the lines to make them easier to print. Intricate lines with a lot of negative space were harder to print, they explained, and a more linear and streamlined design was more likely to be successful. 

I confess that E did just about all of the editing, because the software was complicated even for an experienced user. Even with prior experience, it took E a few tries and finagling of various tools to widen a few lines and move a few points of the design to make it ready for printing. 

Weirdly, I was struck by the sounds the vinyl cutter made, a series of bright chirps and deep, resonant whirring tones. It was strikingly musical for what is essentially knife-wielding robot printer. I now wish I had recorded its peculiar tones the printer made as the knife-point maneuvered over the vinyl. The printer was also faster than I expected, and the design was quickly done. 

  Fresh off the printer, the vinyl was cleanly cut except for a few corners and points, which needed to be gently cut away with a hand-held X-Acto blade. It seems that even sophisticated technology still needs the dexterity of the human hand, which can adjust angles and pressure in ways the Vinyl Cutter is not yet capable of. Once the cutout was finished, E applied the sticker-paper backing that will allow the cutout to adhere to the final surface. 

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So, who should invest in a specialized vinyl cutter, and who shouldn’t? It depends on how much you’re planning on using it, and how complex your designs will be. 

The more commonly found Cricut machine has a similar build, but is able to cut paper, leather, and fabric in addition to vinyl. Because it’s less specialized, the Cricut may be a better choice for Makerspaces with limited budgets or physical space. I am really curious about the difference between these two machines’ physical durability and product quality, but I don’t want to draw any conclusions until I’ve messed around with a Cricut and can compare them fairly! 

However, if your Makerspace/Library/Institution has the money, physical space, and willingness to figure out a few hiccups in the image editing technology, a vinyl cutter may be a useful investment. This machine could allow students to not only learn technical skills, but to help them produce complex art or design projects on a larger scale than they could execute by hand.