Buying my first vinyl cutter plotter, any advice on specs I should know about?

I got an import vinyl cutter, and let me tell you it ain't half bad! I'd say start out with one of those and don't invest too much and if you see you are needing more, then just get another. Those import ones are so cheap anyway. I got one from FastPlot for under $500. They will get the job done.

don't get over 24 inches. not necessary.

Why would you not go over 24" I have a 64" and can do everything your 24' can do plus another 40" of work area for those larger pieces ?
Do buy one with registration sensor so that it will maintain registration. some of the older used ones do not have this feature
And consider biting the bullet and buying a print & cut you will probably be doing this anyways later and will not need the cutter.

djmods,

My humble advice is to go with a 24" cutter/plotter with contour cutting ability. I believe in purchasing well documented reliable equipment and stay away from cheap/inexpensive imports.

Personally we have the Graphtec CE5000-60 24". We chose this one over the Roland based on overall price. The Graphtec with stand and included plug-in software for our Corel was $500 less than the Roland at the time we purchased it.

Both of these cutters are the top of the line. We use Clean Cut Blades < CleanCutBlade.com > in our cutter, they are very popular in the community.

There are others out there but like I stated, Quality for us is #1. Broken machine equals lost revenue and also business.

;) Ya get what ya pay for, take ur chances, live with the results and pay now or pay later with lost revenue. :rolleyes: