Summa’s Vinyl Cutters

Let’s face it, full-color graphics are a sexy aspect of the sign business. We’ve been offering digital prints for many years in our shop, but our bread and butter is vinyl graphics. If you own a general-purpose shop, you likely created more vinyl-based graphics than digital prints last year.

So, given vinyl’s continued presence, we felt obligated to check out Summa’s advanced vinyl cutter. Summa’s new S Class cutter line offers top-notch performance and well-rounded features that simplify creating vinyl designs and contour-cutting digital graphics.

The S Class family

The family includes six different cutters. The six cutters can further be divided into two different classes, depending upon blade type. The D Series uses a drag knife, and the T Series uses a tangential blade. The 30-in. S Class machine with a tangential blade has a model number of S75 T Series. The same size with a drag blade is an S75 D Series. Before we continue, we’ll explain the difference.

Vinyl cutters use the same motions as a pen plotter to cut. The media roll or sheet goes in and out of the platen, and the tool holder travels back and forth in a left-to-right motion on the other axis. A drag blade is lowered onto the media when cutting begins, and it swivels to make sharp turns.

A tangential blade has a control in the tool holder that positions the blade in the direction of the cut. It doesn’t rely on friction to turn the blade in the correct cutting direction. The tangential blade will cut much more cleanly when working with small text and graphics, or thick materials such as sandblast mask. The drag knife will often lift the corners of small text and thick media.

Advertisement

Why even bother with drag-knife cutters? Well, the drag blades are generally fine for day-to-day signs. In addition, the drag-knife cutters are typically much less expensive than a tangential model. However, if you work with tiny text and graphics, or with such thick media as sandblast masks, the tangential cutter will justify the price difference by eliminating the amount of re-cuts and weeding you would encounter with a drag blade.

The two series each have three cutters that basically differ by media width. The S75 handles 30-in. media; the S120 is a 48-in.-media machine, and the big brother, the S160, can handle 64-in. media. Other than the dimensions, weight and width, the cutters have the same specifications.

Specifications

The cutters look virtually the same except for size. They have an attractive black finish and come with a media basket that will catch finished jobs as they are cut. All of the cutters come with integral stands as well. Summa said the new S Class machines employ the most powerful servo-motors they’ve ever used. The media-handling system uses a technology called MicroSprocket