This tutorial is intended for roll coater machine operators, maintenance personnel, technicians, engineers, scientists, supervisors, and others who would benefit from an introduction to issues related to roll-to-roll vacuum coating onto polymer substrates. This tutorial will emphasize practical aspects of the topics, and the treatment will be descriptive with little mathematics used. The tutorial focuses strongly on coatings made by resistance evaporation but touches on e-beam and induction evaporation and sputter coating.