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Cut contour generator
This tool builds the cut line a vinyl plotter follows around your logo, in your browser — your file never leaves your computer. Set the offset, smooth the corners, and export a path a cutter can actually track.
Automated · not a substitute for a person
If what comes out is not right, send it to us
These tools run on their own in your browser, and automatic is not the same as correct. A trace can miss a curve or turn a smooth arc into short straight segments. A cut contour can clip a tight corner. Bleed can be added to a file that was never built to carry it, and a check can pass artwork that still has something wrong with it only a person would notice. Treat what comes out as a starting point, not a proof.
If you are not happy with the result, send it to us and we will set the artwork up properly — free when you print the job with us. No setup fee, nothing to pay for the time. We would far rather spend twenty minutes on a file than have you print something you are not pleased with, and you still see a proof before anything runs. If you are printing it somewhere else, we will still set it up — that is artwork setup, at a fixed price from $29.
What a cut contour is
A printed sticker is two separate operations. First the artwork is printed onto vinyl. Then a blade follows a path to cut the shape out. That path is the cut contour, and it has to be a vector — a picture of an outline is not something a cutter can follow.
- Die-cut — the blade goes through the vinyl and the backing. You get individual stickers.
- Kiss-cut — the blade goes through the vinyl only, leaving the backing intact. You get stickers on a sheet that peel off one at a time.
Offset: the number that matters
The contour normally sits slightly outside the artwork rather than exactly on it, giving a thin border. That border is not decoration, it is tolerance. Cutters drift by a fraction of a millimetre, and a contour cut exactly on the edge will shave the design on one side and leave a sliver of white on the other.
2 to 3mm of offset is normal. Below 1mm you are relying on the plotter being perfect. Intricate shapes need more, not less.
Sharp internal corners are where cuts fail. A blade cannot turn on the spot; it needs a radius. A star or a spiky logo cut with no corner smoothing will tear at the points and fall apart when peeled. Smooth the contour rather than following the artwork exactly.
Before you send it
- Supply the artwork and the contour as separate, clearly named layers or paths.
- Make sure the contour is a single closed path, not a series of open segments.
- Check nothing important sits within 3mm of the cut — the same safe-area logic as trimmed print.
- Weeding matters: very thin isolated elements may not survive being lifted off the backing.
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