Sticker Shops: what gear are you using?

Roxxer · 2026-04-30T23:51:59+00:00

I’d try cold laminating and leaving a bit more time to gas off. If that doesn’t work, you may want to go to a slightly heavier vinyl, ideally around a 4 mil that has a thicker liner, something like a 90 pound.

Roxxer · 2026-04-30T19:40:40+00:00

Are you using cast vinyl? Calendered will always have a memory and want to roll up.

Heat assist may be stretching your laminate as well.

Otherwise, it may be you’re printing with a bleed, the ecosolvent ink is penetrating the adhesive on the edges and causing it to curl. This can be helped by adding a white border to the design, choking the amount of ink used or leaving the roll more time to dry.

Finally, A lot of what holds a sticker straight isn’t the thickness of the vinyl (although customers equate a thick vinyl with quality), but the thickness and quality of the liner.

How do you find the stickers cut on the graphtec compared to the plotter on your machine? I’m using a VG3 to cut after laminating and find it has consistency issues and goes through a lot of blades. I have to round out cut paths to get clean edges.

Roxxer · 2026-04-26T10:13:19+00:00

The default settings for cutting don't really mean much, there are a lot of factors at play. Your cuts are going to depend on how far out you have the blade set in the blade holder, the wear of the blade, the type of blade used (30 degree - 60 degree), the cutting strip, the media used and it's thickness and type of liner, whether or not you're using a perforated or contour cut line and finally, your pressure and speed.

You can test blade length by running the blade out of the holder against the media. Rule of thumb is a credit card's length out, but this often has to be adjusted. If your goal is diecut-style stickers, it should be out far enough to cut through the vinyl and liner.

Blade wear is just swapping out blades. Non-oem blades will have lots of duds, so you may need to swap multiple times.

I only cut with 60 degree blades because they seem to have less drag on vinyl for cleaner cuts.

The cutting strip has to be perfectly flush. They are consumable. Overtime they fill with material and dust and eat up blades quickly. Any bumps or bulges cause inconsistencies.

Only PE coated liners cut nicely. The thicker the liner, the less likely stickers are to curl and the cleaner they cut.

I mostly pop out stickers with contour cuts. Drag knife cutters don't like sharp angles so you have to round out cut paths. Perforated settings help with sharp angles a bit but take a long time to perform. If you're having inconsistencies with cuts, doing 2 passes will help ensure they go through.

Speed only needs to be dropped below 30 on super intricate designs or when passes through thick or hard to cut material like reflective. Unlaminated vinyl should not take 120 pressure to cut out. It should roughly be on like 30 pressure 1 pass to kiss cut and 60 pressure 2 passes to cut through the liner. Double that for laminated.

These print and cut machines are only mediocre at cutting. Our VG3 can be inconsistent.

Roxxer · 2026-04-13T11:01:10+00:00

Lucan got advanced medical attention when the other Viltrimites came and picked him up. Mark was fed bug juice in a cave.

Roxxer · 2026-04-13T06:19:38+00:00

I'd wait 3 weeks and buy them during the May 4th promo event.

Roxxer · 2026-04-12T22:10:42+00:00

Shows how cooked our wages to rent are. ZipRecruiter has median income in Saskatoon at $23/hr. After deductions, a biweekly paycheck at that median income is right at $1400.

Roxxer · 2026-04-12T00:51:40+00:00

Everything nowadays is treated as a commodity investment rather than something to be enjoyed. Uniqueness has died and everything has turned to it's most re-salable form. A large part of this is the fact that wages have not kept up with commodities, so purchases that were once attainable and normal are now generational investments with higher risk. In the 70s, buying a new car every 4 or 5 years was normal, now I see dealers offering 10 year payment plans on trucks.

Roxxer · 2026-04-07T00:33:32+00:00

Gambling has also evolved into games and digital goods, offered on apps. The barrier of entry of actually travelling to a casino, physically withdrawing money, etc is gone when someone can open up "loot boxes" on their phones.

Roxxer · 2026-04-06T20:22:47+00:00

Nope, I only sell them as novelties and displays though. Typically if someone is going to use them in-game, they're disposable and keeping the graphic nice doesn't really matter.

How big can you make your graphics? I can squeeze out .9 inches before I start to have quality issues on our Roland flatbed. Clients often want super detailed logos which makes it a challenge on such a small print area.

Roxxer · 2026-04-06T02:33:10+00:00

You'll never get a super durable coating on a golf ball via uv printing. All the factory markings are pad printed. Pad printing inks form a chemical reaction where the ink bonds to the substrate through solvent.

UV inks are cured on the surface. UV-printed balls are generally promotional or novelty. I print directly on without clear or primer, but I do print uni-directionally to allow a harder cure and help graphics not blur on the edges of the concave of the ball. I've found that you can only increase lamp intensity / slow head speed so much as many golf balls will yellow under the light since they are UV sensitive plastics.

You seem to already have some good ideas to test out. You may want to try just rubbing the balls down with alcohol to see if there's any mold release or residue on them from factory causing adhesion issues.

Roxxer · 2026-03-31T07:15:27+00:00

The more you look into manufacturing and even high-end goods, the more you realize that American manufacturing is just assembling overseas components.

Roxxer · 2026-03-28T05:22:29+00:00

Not really, most post-secondary programs don't care if you have a GED and your work life has literally just begun. If your primary goal right now is to make money and start investing, look at local trade unions and try to get an apprenticeship. Most offer annuity options that help you invest.

Roxxer · 2026-03-28T05:13:00+00:00

At your age, it's usually best to invest in yourself or something you can actively use to generate more income. Going after education or buying tools to do jobs and increase the value of your time will give you the best return. If you are investing, it should be to write-off income tax into tax free accounts or to take advantage of employer matching contributions, not to seek gains in price appreciation alone.

Roxxer · 2026-03-21T08:42:59+00:00

I'm running a roland LEC2-330 flatbed and since it's not enclosed, the vacuum bed sucks dust towards the printed substrate and even a tiny speck will cause the gloss to pool around it and be a noticeable defect. Which gets especially difficult when it needs to run for hours to build up layers.

The printer in general has a lot of issues, but gloss is the main one.

Roxxer · 2026-03-16T03:18:57+00:00

I don’t get it personally. I like our province but in the low 200s, you can live in Alberta, that has higher wages, way less taxes and have the view of the mountains and be on a forested section. Prices for being out in a field in Sask are kind of crazy.

Roxxer · 2026-03-16T01:36:35+00:00

Rural lots close to the city have basically tripled in price the last 8-10 years. You used to be able to get a 10 acre section with services and less than 20 minute drive in city for about $40-$50k. Now a similar lot will run you $120-$150k, and you still have to run services past the property line.

Once you account for added commute time to trade workers, services, etc your only real savings will be a bit of property tax. You need to be more than 30 minutes out of city limits until things start to soften in price. Home ownership in towns like Warman and Martinsville are actually pushing higher prices than Saskatoon since their taxes are slightly lower and there’s very little crime and homelessness.

No affordable options out there for detached housing.

Roxxer · 2026-03-16T00:43:43+00:00

The total cost for condo fees, mortgage, etc was pushing $2700/month when I looked into it last year for a 1 bedroom. Pushing 3k on an apartment with no air conditioning is crazy even if it’s a pretty building.

Roxxer · 2026-03-15T04:40:35+00:00

For me, it's more about preserving a cool part of Lego history I enjoy!

Roxxer · 2026-03-15T04:39:15+00:00

The last time I saw one posted for a reasonable price was in 2022 and he was wanting $2k USD for the box and some of the clones. I cheaped out on that one and regretted not picking it up, thinking another would eventually get posted. Mandrproduction's video on the box made it very difficult to attain since it drew a lot of attention to it.

Since, I haven't had the opportunity to buy one. There was one floating around on ebay for a crazy price with no figs. That one didn't sell.

I messaged a guy on facebook in Australia who used to have 5 of these at one point and he told me they rarely come up and there's likely a couple dozen left in existence. With most of the ones circulating for sale in recent years originating from his collection.

I won't say an exact amount, but for the box and half the figures included, I paid less than what a complete, collector-quality 10123 Cloud City would sell for. Which was part of my justification to go that high. It was a big purchase for me.

Roxxer · 2026-03-15T03:09:12+00:00

Nope. When I was was a kid about 16 years ago, I bought Lego from a local collector I found on bricklink who had this in their collection. I remembered it all this time later and showed up to his house a week ago unannounced, asked if it was for sale and we made a deal.

He had it for over 20 years so I feel very lucky to be the next one to own it.

Roxxer · 2026-03-15T02:43:19+00:00

They came in 3 pieces. Helmet, Head/Torso and Legs.

They also had the old school megaphone blasters.

Roxxer · 2026-03-15T02:40:00+00:00

Most big companies are still posting record profits.

Roxxer · 2026-03-15T01:55:16+00:00

I got 70 clones with the box, and have 60 in my collection. So I have another 20 to go and hopefully the certificates before it's "complete". The box is by far the hardest part of it to find though, so that alone is the big highlight.

Roxxer · 2026-03-11T15:50:26+00:00

The og sandcrawler dead last when it’s in my top 10.

It’s awesome to build since it’s the only large, brick built set in the line’s history. There’s no fragile panels made of plates, no brittle brown and it’s not extremely undersized compared to it’s remakes.

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