Airbrush Technique Issue 23 - (Page 29) by Don Johnson Like Debbie I’m a newbie to the world of vinyl cutters and was looking to purchase one mainly for lettering on the helmets I paint. After doing some research I decided the Roland Stika Design cutter fit my needs nicely at a reasonable price. For years I’ve held off on purchasing a vinyl cutter as I’m old school when it comes to my painting and believe you can cross a line and take the art out of your artwork with some tools available to artist today. Airbrushing to me is relaxing, a great escape hanging on to some of my old school ways provides me with more time to relax, enjoy my work. The flip side is I’m doing more and more helmets for customers who race and want sponsor’s name, logo’s included in their helmet designs a vinyl cutter is the only way to go for this so I now own the Stika. In this article I’m going to give you a basic over view of my experience with the Roland Stika and show you just how easy it is to use. At this point my experience with the Stika is very limited as I just purchased it two months ago and have had limited time to play with beyond getting the lettering cut I need for helmet designs. By the time issue #24 comes out I hope to be able to provide you with more advanced info on the Stika and its use. With the Stika’s you will need to precut your masking material to a width to fit your cutter. There are three different Roland Stika’s to choose from 8 inch, 12 inch and 15 inch depending on which one you purchase would determine the size material you could use. The Stika comes ready to go to work it’s just a matter of installing the software, plugging the cutter into a UBS port on your computer and you are ready to start cutting designs. The software Roland CutStudio comes with a plug-in for Photoshop and will cut vector images if you desired to do so. I found CutSudio to be very easy to use with a lay out much like Adobe products Photoshop, Illustrator. Basically I use the Stika to provide me with lettering outlines thru which I spray paint. For this I use paint mask and purchased two different types with my cutter. The first being the white roll pictured is Spray Stencil Mask - The adhesive on this has been formulated to withstand temperatures as required in a baking, so if you are heating setting your paint this is the mask for you, 3.2 mil thick. The second roll is Oracal 813 Stencil Film Blue translucent is 3 mil thick and has a low tack, water based adhesive. The Stika comes with very good set up instructions that have you install the driver and CutStudio before plugging the cutter into the USB port of your computer. Once you have the Stika set up load your material into the cutter and open CutStudio.
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