Many sign companies will outsource their small sticker making to firms that specialize in doing this.  Firms that have the ability to die cut.  For those of us that prefer to do as much in house as possible, this article is for you. First off, a quick background on our situation.  We run a Roland VS540 in our shop.  A company engaged us to produce stickers for them...generally 2 sizes: .75" x 1" rectangles and .75" rounds.  These stickers are to be used in a type of jewelry that this company creates.  Basically, a medal medallion is created that has a cut out indentation the size of the stickers we produce.  A sticker is put into this indentation, and then epoxy is put into the cavity over the sticker.  Some issues they've had in the past include:

• Sticker curling up after the epoxy is put in
• Sticker is too thin..stretches while being put in place
• Print is too grainy

The first 2 problems were solved by laminating the material.  This, however, brought on an additional issue.  After we would laminate, we would put the material back into the printer to be cut.  Although within Roland published tolerances, the cuts were off enough on these small stickers to make them unusable.  We then attempted to use a thicker material.  We tried Solvex 8M.  An 8 mil matte vinyl.  By using this, we didn't have to laminate.  And since we didn't have to laminate, we didn't need to remove the vinyl from the Roland, instead we just print and cut.  This took care of our cutting issue...all cuts were perfect.  Unfortunately, it created a new issue.  Since the material has a matte finish, it wasn't as clear as the glossy vinyl we had used previously.  It made the small details on the stickers hard or impossible to view.  So....back to step one! Unable to find a glossy vinyl in the thickness we needed, we decided to try laminating our original vinyl, and then print/cut.  Surprisingly these all turned out perfect!  The colors are vibrant, the detail shows up (not grainy), and the cuts are dead on.  We now laminate several yards of material at a time to have on hand for these stickers. Hope this helped you out!  Have another way of creating these, leave a comment!