Looking for updated info on vinyl sandblast mask cutting for sand carving

[Ric Williams]

I'm looking into using a vinyl cutter for cutting out sandblast stencils, but haven't found much up to date info on the current crop of devices and dealers. I know @hockenbery has a very helpful pdf that I've poured through, and others here do some very nice sandcarving on their projects. I'd appreciate any up to date info anyone has on vinyl cutters and resist materials, either successful equipment or failed attempts. So far I get the impression that most of the hobby level cutters won't handle the thickness of the resist materials and that, as usual, the equipment to do what I want are much higher up the price scale than I hoped.
Any helpful info and/or guidance would be appreciated.

 

[hockenbery]

vinyl cutters and resist materials

I buy my resist, transfer tape, and vinyl from uscutter.com.
I talked to them on the phone a long long time ago. The guy was very helpful and told me I would be a lot happier with the T226 resist than some other products they had which he said would work well on cylinders but wouldn’t stick to curved woodturnjngs.o

I can recommend -> Anchor BlastLite Sandblast Stencil #T226, 22 mil
It stretches and compresses some so you can get a bigger cut piece to fit on a curved surface without having to put a relief cut in
Of course I choose cutout I know will fit tightly. Dragon flys are great examples easy to cut with an exacto wings and body are 5 long thin pieces.

Transfer tape is also essential for me.
ORATAPE HT55 in the 6” width works well for me. If I need wider I just use 2 strips. It’s not clear but translucent enough to let me position the resist fairly accurately.


My Titan desktop cutter is still working I think it is about 12 years old
uscutter has newer models and some attractive alternatives.
My cutter acts just like a printer. I use the cutsalot software it lets me trace an jpg image and build my cut lines.
I get best results with a slow cut speed.

You might explore the Uscutter offerings then give them a call.

One of my demo attendees who did a lot of glass sandblasting told me the cricut cutter would cut the 22 mil but it didn’t like doing it.

 

[Ric Williams]

Thanks for the reply Al! Your sand carving pdf has been an invaluable help in getting a working system together and finding the needed materials. I've got what I need to get started, but I'm finding that my hands aren't as steady as they used to be and I can see a lot of frustration ahead if I try to do much mask cutting by hand, so I'm looking for an affordable solution. The Titan 15" cutter is now $599 on sale and the Cricut Maker 3 ($400) is the only hobby level one I've found that claims it can cut the resist material, but you have to get the deep point cutter head (+$40) and use their limited use cutting mats (+$20), and I've yet to find anyone who can verify that it works well enough for me to feel OK spending that much. I checked with Curt Fuller about his feather patterns and was impressed that he draws his patterns by hand and relieves the areas around them with pyrography. I had assumed he was sand carving them!

 

[hockenbery]

The Titan 15" cutter is now $59

I’ve been pleased with Titan I have.
I just checked mine and it is a Titan 3. I was wrongly thinking it was a Titan 2.

I also cut vinyl for signs and widow decals
I got an extra blade holder. That way I can swap a 60 degree blade holder for resist cutting for a 45 degree blade holder for cutting vinyl in seconds.

It can take a few minutes to get the blade holder to the proper cut depth. You want to cut the material but not the backing.
I cut little triangle holding the blade holder in my hand. If it’s too shallow the triangle won’t come out or if tears the part you didn’t cut. If you cut too deep the face of the backing tears loose from the baking and comes out stuck to the litlle triangle.
A couple little triangles and it’s usually good. Then I cut a row of objects a double check the depth. Maybe do a fine adjust.

Blades are held in by magnet so they turn as needed while cutting.
Changing blades is really easy pull the old one out and slide the new blade in.
Tricky because the only thing sticking out is sharp. A smarter person would use needle nose pliers

 

[hockenbery]

The cuts a lot software traces images like this.


Then you can get the size you want cut the resists and blast



The black leather dye



Once you have the object saved you can cut copies in the future in