Lasers Over Los Angeles – Laser Cutting Service

Have you ever wanted to make a sweet decal for your store window with your awesome laser cutter with a bunch of neat tiny details and floating elements that would be impossible with a stencil?

But then you remember what your mom told you since you were knee-high to a laser beam:

“Don’t cut vinyl or that job will be your final!”
                                          -mom-

(if you have a laser cutter you should already know that what is referred to colloquially as “vinyl” usually contains some amount of chlorine which when burned and freed up will bond with hydrogen in the air to make hydrochloric acid which will ruin mirrors, lenses, metal and living organisms 😛 )

INGREDIENTS

-good quality 3M packing tape (I prefer a tape gun but you can just use a roll if you have longer fingernails). Don’t mess around with the generic cheapie stuff

-x-acto with a fresh blade (no broken tips cause you’ll need it)

-paper tape of your choice (here I used 3M blue painter’s tape in a 2″ roll which makes laying it out faster than a thinner roll). You can also use transfer paper but I’ve found that it is always that boring tan color and it sticks a bit too much to the table.

-clear spray paint or another clear finishing spray to seal the tape if you are making it permanent on a non-clear surface

-wax paper for transferring the decal if you are not applying it fresh off the table

-an awesome vector file with some fun details that will look really impressive with large filled in areas

1 Lay out a rectangle of tape on the table larger than the area you’ll be cutting so you don’t have to be super precise in setting your origin. Get at least 1/4″ overlap between the pieces so they stay stuck together when you pull them off the table later, most likely they will be much more fragile at that point.

2 Take your tape roll and rub your tape rectangle HARD to get the pieces to stick to each other. Don’t rub the tape with your hand as you’ll most likely get a tape burn and everyone will make fun of you.

3 Ah yes, a nice well-stuck-together rectangle of beautiful blue tape and the laser head registered to a corner with lots of extra space. Not enough you say? Greedy for the decals? As Captain Barnacles of the Octonauts says “Let’s do this!”

4 Boom all cut out. You can see some details fell through the table as they were smaller than the cell size of the aluminum honeycomb (usually about 1/8″x1/8″) or they weren’t stuck enough to the honeycomb in step 2. RUB HARDER

5 Time for the tapegun. Cover the whole area with the packing tape, making sure you are getting the 1/4″ overlap again. The packing tape is going to get your pieces off the table as the stickiness between the packing tape and the top surface of the paper tape is generally going to be stronger than between the paper tape and the aluminum honeycomb.

6 I used this lift to try to separate the pieces from their background but you can pull all the tape out and separate them later. Just go slow and encourage the background to stay attached while you peel your pieces off.

7 I usually encourage the background to separate with words like “Stay down! Haven’t you had enough?! We don’t want you!” Also the x-acto can help.

8 Once the design is off I usually lay it down on wax paper unless I am slapping it up on a wall in the shop. Once they are backed with wax paper you can cut the individual pieces apart like above and store them until they are ready to be deployed for max impressiveness.

When it’s time to apply yourself, make sure the surface is as clean as you can get it, peel the wax paper off the back and slap it up with authority. Make sure to rub the paper tape portion hard to get a good bond. The adhesive between the packing tape and the top surface of the paper tape is weaker than the bond between the paper tape and the lucky surface getting decorated so the packing tape should peel off relatively easily depending on how well you….

9 RUB!

10 Slowly peel the packing tape off the sticker, the packing tape might try to take some small details with it if it didn’t get rubbed down good enough, the x-acto will be a help in these instances.

11 On the flip side there will be some pieces that need to go to bring the decal into its full glory, x-acto is always your friend.

I find it fun to apply it over an uneven surface like this post. You can experiment with different colors of tape and do much larger decals by breaking them up into panels since you have the amazing precision of a laser cutter backing you up 🙂