stencil cutting machines

i am looking for a stencil cutting machine instead of the jigsaw and left hand that i am using right now. it will need to cut letters from 12" to 24" in 1/8" thick material. does anyone know where to look for one of these Dorian D & M Striping

Doran, Its not automatic, but I make all of my own stencils with a Dremel rotary tool with a spiral cutting bit. I have a guide mounted on it and use a t-bar for long straight runs. Just trace out your pattern and with a small amount of practice, you can knock out any stencil in short order. I use Duralast 1/8" material bought in sheets for around $60.00 per sheet. Hope this helps. Woodie

I use a Makita router with a plain steel Vermont American 1/8" veining bit to cut my letter/number stencils. This particular bit has a long cutting "blade" which will allows me to cut 3 stencils at one time (stacked) out of the .090 (3/16") LDPE I make stencils with. The router has two hand grips and allows precise cutting. The bit is about $3 at Ace. For cutting larger (arrows, etc.) I use a very sharp razor knife, kneepads, ibuprofen, a straightedge, and lots of patience. To get an automated stencil system would require a significant investment (oh yea, I've researched this one). Top of the line is a water jet system, don't even ask the price. Next possibility is a CAD router about $10k-$15k. Another possibility is using thinner material and using commercially available sign vinyl cutters ($900-$4000). But my experience working with those has been that they would not do a satisfactory job, even with high cutting head weights and brand new blades. I demo-ed one for this purpose about 5 years ago and it just did not have the horses to do the job. It cut the vinyl masks for sandblasting signs perfectly, but couldn't handle 1/16" stencil vinyl. If Roland or Ioline were to produce a vinyl cutter specifically for cutting stencils like we use, I would buy one in an instant. BUT DON'T LET MY PESSIMISM STOP YOU FROM EXPERIMENTING!!!! There. More info than you wanted.

Chip's right. The cheapest cnc routers are over $10K and those are small. I have used the sign shop to cut vinyl one time use stencils for logos and school mascots. But they aren't capable of cutting even 1/16" ldpe. Be cool if they made one that would. BTW the waterjet machines that PTM uses for the stencils I sell cost well over $100K.

I use a razor knife the same as chip for my ldpe it is time consuming but with a steady hand and lots of practice, I also have a stack of stencils traced out ready to cut in my trailer so when we are on job sites and my helper runs out of things to do there is always stencils to cut. I use 1/8" hdpe for my handicap stencils and for that I use a router to cut out my stencils.

where can i find the stencil material?? the duralast 1/8"? and what are the abbreviations "ldpe" and "hdpe"?

LDPE is low density polyethelene, HDPE is high density poly. LDPE is better for stencils. Here's where you can buy LDPE: http://www.parkinglot.bigstep.com/category.html?UCIDs=131…

I have been using a box (straight razor) to cut my stencils and that's getting ready to surpass 4 years. I always buy 4 - 8 sheets of the plastic in case I run into a job that might have a weird shape stencil or if the stencil is abnormally large and for some reason I don't think/want to free hand with my striper, such has arrows I can throw a sheet down, trace it and cut it. I have a router but as of yet have not taken time to practice to ensure a sure hand. I have also wondered what would be the best cutting table for it since the bit needs to be long enough to go through the stencil? So for now I just cut them out by hand.

www.plasmacam.com or www.practicalcnc.com both are under $10,000. They are both capable of using Plasma for cutting any kind of metal and both have router carriages available. Plasmacam will run you $9000 and the Practical CNC I think is around $6-$8000. I have the Plasmacam. It works quite well with the Hypertherm G1000 plasma cutter. I have made several parts to modify my asphalt equipment etc. I have not done any router work with it yet. The Plasmcam carriage holds a Dremil type cutter where the P CNC carries a full sized router. I picked up an air power Dremil type cutter with the 1/8" cutout bits that I plan to use. You can cut plastic, wood or ? You should be able to cut up to an inch with either machine. Obviously the thicker you cut the slower it will operate but if I could cut out an alphabet in an hour or so I would be happy with that. The Plasmacam machine and Co is probably more reliable

I use a heat gun for striping paint off, just heat up the ldpe and use a razor knife cuts like butter, it does distort the ldpe a little but I have no problems when spraying them

Once you get your stencil fonts scanned in, that machine should be the stuff. What a great way to cut stencils....I guess I'll start watching the MRO salvage sales for a CNC router.....

Stripeitok, The best table I have found is a kitchen table that I picked up at a yard sale for $10.00 with a leaf in the middle. I pull the leaf out and push the table back together until the table is only open a little wider than the item I am cutting. Very stable and the table gives a great surface for the dremel to ride. See ya, Woodie

You don't need to scan your font if it is on any program out there. Plasmacam program has a complete CAD drawing program along with fonts etc. You can also import any drawing or font into the Plasmacam program and it will convert any file to a pcm.file Not likely to find one at a salvage sale but if can go to [email removed] This is the official Plasmacam Forum Site. Do enough asking around and sooner or later you will find a used one. All CNC tables are not alike. User friendly is what you are looking for unless you have CAD/CAM mastered. Plasmacam has taken CAD and broken it down and written their own version so that people like me don't need a degree to run it.

I would have to scan the font & kern setup that I have used for 30+ years so all of the stencils would match up. If you are starting from scratch you'd have no worries. I have found a bunch of the tables, from eBay to MRO Overstock and sooner or later one will come along for the reet price. Thanks for the idea. I always wanted to play with a plasma cutter.....and most of them run off of programs I already know....and I have a friend who does CNC milling work and knows how to set up the machine....could be a happening thing.

just curious, if you are using the duralst material how many stencils do you go thru? i have stencils that are 3 years old and are still in great shape i can't imagine spending that kind of money on a machine to cut them unless i was going to sell them.

If you are asking me, then all I can say is "You can never have too many stencils".

This is one I have never figured out. Different parts of the country I guess... I have never even thought about "cutting out" a stencil and can't imagine why anyone would (unless you were going to sell them). At the start we switched to a larger arrow stencil than our competitors and that solved that problem, everything else is pretty standard. Once or twice in 20 years have we run into something strange we just "taped off". Whenever I got a job (except a few where we ordered stencils to "specs") I wanted the next guy to have to match my stencils, not me match the guy before...and did my best to make it hard for the next guy to match me. Of course you would not believe how many "hand painted" (by using a striper and making square letters) stencils I have seen and especially arrows done by "drawing" a triangle with the striper and filling it in, in this part of the world. I have even seen hand drawn (like with a paintbrush) handicaps although those are thankfully rare. If I needed stencils I just bought them, the "standard" stuff you use all the time anyway and like I said only a couple of "custom" orders over the years (charged enough to pay for the stencils) And I can't see BTS saying that about too many stencils...heck they get in the way, you have to store them, etc. If a stencil isn't getting used all the time...what good is it? That may be the regional difference. Here you get your basics for handicaps arrows, fire lanes, no parking, set of 12" numbers, etc. (maybe a letter set) and that's about all you'll ever need. I can't imagine spending time & money (and effort) cutting them out myself (except I have had a couple of the northern types tell me it gives them something to do while there is snow on the ground for months and they can't stripe...I can't imagine living with that either)

I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to hump around arrow stencils period. I just a got a job with 32 arrows that are 25 sq/ft of paint on each ! Why? Anyway, I see alot of folks out there using stencils for arrows, I will agree that it is nice to throw down and spray and on to the next especially if there are many, but not always. I use them for DOT arrows but not on what we come accross on a daily basis. This market was layed out so many markings are machine paintable for a reason, you don't need or use stencils. I don't mind it that way as long as a striper operator can produce a quality result, that is where a stencil can come into play. A caveman can do it and make it look great, well most of the time.

Yikes. Don..have you ever had to do 150 RESERVED Stencils on fresh sealcoat? Or even 500 IBM's on a restripe? Being able to put down 10 VISITORS at one time is fast. No worries about drips, fewer cleaning cycles. And I would hate to "draw" 300 arrows on a mall. And yes...when I stencil match it does tend to be a tad bit larger....just to be ornery. I rarely have to clean a stencil on a job. I spray until the stencil is loaded, get a new stencil, and pick them up on the way out. It takes me 15 minutes to layout and cut 3 (stacked) 12" NO PARKING stencils and they are cheap. And I personally just don't like blacking out stencils. To each his own.

Reserved is what I mean by a "standard" stencil even though I didn't mention it and I've never had to do anywhere near 150...and no, we don't have any IBM plants around but if we did I might see the point. I mentioned using arrow stencils...we didn't "draw" them unless that was what was there already & what the customer specifically wanted, but even then being able to "draw" one with a striping machine and have it look decent is an acquired skill. And in 20+ years I have never "blacked out" a single stencil. We keep a couple of reserved and "visitor" etc. but that's about it. We did have a bank who specifically wanted "bank customer parking only" in a specific size on certain space's curbs since they were in an office building. We charged them extra for ordering the custom stencils, just used the "thin stuff" since they would be seldom used, and they were happy because they got exactly what they wanted. 2 was enough since there were relatively few of them, we could paint 4-8 spots or so, go back to striping, come back & paint 4 or 8 more etc. to prevent drips. Just not a lot of "custom" requests around here...surely not enough to justify spending a bunch of money on a machine to cut stencils. And like I said, here striping is almost (but not quite) year-round so the time spent cutting stencils could be used to be painting something & making more money than the cost of ordering a few "ready-made" on the very rare occasion something custom is needed...