Welcome to the Presser Academy Blog!

As a sign-maker, it is vital to buy only the best vinyl cutter suitable for your needs. A wrong decision at this point can break the business. Modern day choices involve more than force and speed. Price is also not a decisive factor. You should have a look and analyze the following features prior to bringing out your check book for final purchase.

Servo drive or stepper drive motors 

The vinyl cutter's engine is the drive motor. The latter powers grit roller which first advances and then retracts the media. It also moves blade across platen. You get two varieties of drive motors in the market- digital servo motors and mechanical stepper motors. 

Mechanical stepper motors are old technology. The mechanical stepper, as name implies, moves in a number of steps or small increments. Physical gears drive the set-up. The principal advantage of this age old technology is that it is extremely economical. A lot of cons are present, a majority of them mechanical in nature. The foremost among them is the harsh noise. The second-and lethal for business- is the absence of precision when it comes to small graphics. You can use mechanical steppers to accurately cut big images. However, when characters are less than half-inch, the gears' physical size prevents a machine from smoothly plotting the path. This results in jagged lines which appear pixelated. 

This does not mean stepper motors have only disadvantages. They are much cheaper to operate. The steppers permit manufacturers to manufacture the vinyl cutters cheaply. Entry level plotters utilize this simpler and older mechanical drive system. 

Servo motors

Servo motors cutters use a digital encoder which translates the commands of the software into binary form. The result is a much precise and smooth movement of drive motor and the cutting head. Three advantages are present in this kind of technology. Absence of mechanical gears mean that the operational decibels of the machine in action are much less. The digital movement permits the cutter to turn and also pivot along the much smaller paths with excellent precision. The smallest letters are cut with the same precision as the bigger ones.

Superior tracking is yet another benefit when you purchase digital servo motors. Tracking is defined as the ability of any cutter to maintain straight path along the vinyl's length. This is done much better-nearly 10 times- by digital servo motors. It follows that digital servo motors are much better. 

Leave a comment

All comments are moderated before being published