Vinyl Cutting (sometimes known as a cutting plotter) is used by professional poster and billboard sign-making businesses to produce weather-resistant signs, posters, and billboards using self-colored adhesive-backed vinyl film that has a removable paper backing material. The vinyl can also be applied to car bodies and windows for large, bright company advertising and to sailboat transoms. A similar process is used to cut tinted vinyl for automotive windows.
Colors available are generally limited only by the collection of vinyl on hand. To prevent creasing of the material, it is stored in rolls. Typical vinyl roll sizes are 24-inch, 36-inch and 48-inch width.
Generally the hardware is identical to a traditional plotter except that the ink pen is replaced by a very sharp knife that is used to cut out each shape, and the plotter may have a pressure control to adjust how hard the knife presses down into the vinyl film, allowing designs to be fully or partly cut out.
Generally it is preferred that only the upper surface with the vinyl is cut, but the backing surface is not completely cut through. Completely loose pieces cut out of the backing material may fall out and jam the plotter roll feed or the cutterhead.
The vinyl knife is usually shaped like a plotter pen and is mounted on ball-bearings so that the knife edge rotates to face the correct direction as the plotter head moves.
Sign cutters are primarily used to produce single-color line art. Several colors can be cut separately and then overlaid, but the process quickly becomes cumbersome for more than a couple of hues.
Sign cutting plotters are in decline in some applications, such as general billboard design, where wide-format inkjet printers that use solvent-based inks are employed to print directly onto a variety of materials. Cutting plotters are often relied upon for precision cutting of graphics produced by wide-format inkjet printers, however - for example to produce window or car graphics, or shaped stickers.