ShaneGreen

I sure appreciate the help. The worksheet is way better than cutting and pasting a bunch of images to a proof sheet.

Thanks skarekrow! Wow, that's a round-about way of getting to a command, how did you even find it? I wonder why they took it out of the toolbar and menu.. As far as adding notes, in the video he just uses the text tool and adds text,

I've added the Seiki blades to my notes and will give them a try the next time I'm needing blades. How are they on reflective?

CleanCut blades arrived yesterday. WOW. In a properly organized society every cutter would come straight from the factory with these. What a difference. I went from 185 grams of force to cutting with 75g and I can cut fine detail I never dreamed of before. It's like I upgraded my cutter for $18. Here is the same picture I posted before of Oracal 631 at 100mm/sec with the 45 blade that came with this LPII on the left. On the right is same setup with a CleanCut 60. I counted seven places where the vinyl had slightly lifted and they all sat back down with a little nudge from my fingernail. A huge Thank You to everyone who suggested these blades over and over, I'm just sorry it took me so long to make the switch!

I messed around with the "Cut" version for 6 months or so and it drove me nuts. Most of the things I wanted to do either couldn't be done or took way to many steps. So I'd have Inkscape and VM open and be transferring things back and forth. It wasn't smooth or intuitive. As a last ditch effort before scrapping VM I upgraded to PRO....world of difference. I almost never open Inkscape any more. Pro is a really well thought out program. Just the time I've saved by having the curved text tool has paid for it. Pull up one of their videos on the "cut file" and watch how it can save you a ton of time and vinyl. Rather than sending items one at a time to the cutter, you can send them all to the "cut files" and then after you have a bunch of designs ready you send each cut file to the cutter. So all my black 651for the day gets cut at once, load up yellow and have it cut the yellow cut file, and then move on to the next color. Without sounding like an advertisement, Pro restored my faith in VM and has made cutting a lot less tedious.

Thanks, I think I'll go with the USCutter blade holder. Can't wait to try out the cleancut blades!

Seems that most folks swear by the CleanCut blades, so I emailed to find out what blade and holder I need for my LaserPoint II. Ross has replied that a ROLD-60 is what I need for a blade, but he doesn't know which blade holder. Neither of the ones he has seem to look much like mine: http://cleancutblade.mybigcommerce.com/holders-for-roland-type-blades-comes-with-a-blade-your-choice/ and http://cleancutblade.mybigcommerce.com/blade-holder-for-mimaki-and-envision-style-blades-comes-with-a-blade-your-choice/ USCutter offers one that works for the SC/LPII and I could order it from them and then order the blades separately, but I wanted to get both from the same place. Any suggestions on what's compatible?

Just for future reference, since we're on the subject of front plates, you can't use reflective red on a front license plate. Actually, anywhere on the front of a vehical: §393.26 Requirements for reflectors. (d) Use of additional retroreflective surfaces.. . . . "(4) No red color shall be used on the front of any motor vehicle, except for display of markings or placards required by §177.823 of this title."

I've been cutting a couple extra, but just because I'm still getting the hang of it and screw things up on a regular basis. LOL When I bought this LPII it came with a ton of 631 and Greenstar IPV. My plan was to burn through all the Greenstar while I was learning and then order 651. It's been kind of shocking to see how much the Greenstar wants to stretch. If you accidentally pick up the edge of a letter while weeding it's ruined. The part that came up will have stretched to the point that the letter is distorted. I made a couple of decorative pieces for my wife and mother this weekend using the 631 and there is a world of difference in the weeding. I made a sample piece on the excess vinyl and intentionally lifted some letter and they maintained their shape. I know the 651 has a stronger adhesive, but I'm hoping it isn't as stretchy as this Greenstar.

Those instructions may or may not reset themselves each time (gotta love windows). This "should" be permanent. >Open Windows Explorer >Navigate to OS(C:) > Program FIles (x86) > FutureCorp > Extras >click on the "View" tab along the top menu. >click "Large icons" from the list of views. >The last menu option on the right should be "Options" open this. >click "change folder and search options" >the usual options/properties dialog window opens. Click on the "view tab" of this pop-up. >chose "Apply to Folders" and then "Yes" from the confirmation dialog. >click "Apply" (if it's offered) and then "OK" to close out the pop-up. The next time you open any of the fonts, logos, clipart, etc. from within Vinylmaster, it should show the images. Your mileage may vary. . .

>File >Import >Advanced >Corporate Logos >whatever folder you want A file explorer type window will open but just showing the generic thumbnail. In the upper right corner you'll see a little icon of a computer screen and a downward arrow. When you hoover over it you'll get some form of the phrase "Change Your View". Click on this and choose "Large icons" (or if you're on the high end of middle age I hear you use "extra large icons", but I don't know from experience. No. Really.)

Hmmm. . .I've never thought of trying that. Thanks!

WOW. . .it hurts my head to think about trying to weed that! Fantastic! I think it's time to order a Cleancut blade. Everyone seems to love them. USCutter doesn't show a Cleancut for the LaserPoint II and the blades they do offer for LPII don't look at all like what's in my cutter (mine is a smooth shank and they are showing a stepped shank). Cleancut's site just says that "most" USCutter models use a Roland. So what should I be ordering? I'm going to be cutting reflective on a regular basis soon. It stands to reason that they will hold up longer than a standard blade on reflective. But is it going to last long enough to be worth the extra money to have one dedicated to reflective?

Dakota, here is a similar image set as close to the same size as I could get it. It's Oracal 631 at 100mm/sec with the 45 blade that came with this LPII. It did a lot better than I thought it would and it's not weeding half-bad. Is there anything I can do to improve the lifting issues? Would a 60 degree Cleancut really help, or have I surpassed the limits of this cutter? Is there a trick to getting those thin lines to stay stuck to the backing? They want to lift as I'm weeding.

It would be nice to have an image that everyone could use to do a test cut with. For instance, on the smaller feathers on that eagle I don't think my LPII would do a very good job. But if someone else with the same machine cut it out fine then we could compare notes and do some fine tuning. It would also help twice a week when someone posts asking what cutter to buy and we could point them to a page full of samples of the same image cut on different machines at different speeds. Just a thought. . .

If you make the lower arc a different color, say yellow, and the middle section red, you can cut them separately. When you send it to the cutter choose "separate by color". It will want to do the top arc in black. Then it will want to do the bottom yellow arc, but leave the black vinyl loaded. Follow the same steps for the middle. You'll need to do the same sort of thing for the blue outlines, only using 3 different colors. It's not the prettiest way of doing it, but it gets the job done in a hurry.

APC has been pretty good. They have replaceable batteries, which is really handy because like any battery, they will degrade over time and use. Right now we have two ES-750 in the office. Mine handles a computer, two large monitors and my cutter. My wife's has a computer, two monitors and the printer attached. They give us enough power to finish up what we were doing and then safely shut things down in a power outage. The specs say they will run "full load" for up to 3.5 minutes. But I try to buy them about twice as big as I need and you seldom are running full-load anyway. They have a nice little program to help you select the size on their website: http://www.apc.com/us/en/tools/ups_selector/home/device

The UPS can save you a lot of headache and cost even when it's not storming. You'll be amazed at how often you'll hear one click on and not even notice a change in your office lights. They will smooth out a lot of the little hiccups and stray voltage that happen all the time on the power grid. At our last house we lost nearly everything that plugs in over a 5 month time span. Turns out the power company had a transformer nearly a mile away going bad and causing an unnoticeable brownout. Power strips didn't save anything because it was never severe enough, but everything on a UPS lived. Now imagine you're cutting a large graphic or using some high-dollar vinyl and the power flickers. If it's enough to reset the clock on the microwave, it will stop your cutter. You've just lost a lot of time and money.

Thanks, that pointed me in the right direction. It was the transparency. To fix in Infranview: Options> Properties/Settings > Viewing > Main window color. This changes the background color in the viewer, but also sets the thumbnail backgrounds to white so if they are transparent you can view them.

A few weeks ago someone mentioned that they convert every image they get to an SVG rather than having a half dozen file formats lying around. I can't remember who it was, but I like their idea. It shouldn't really affect the file and then I'd be able to see the thumbnail in File Explorer, Inkscape, VinylMaster, etc. Probably my biggest frustration is with EPS file thumbnails being so wonky. I've tried IrfranView, Adobe, etc and just never know if an EPS thumbnail is going to be viewable the next time you go browsing. Can anyone think of a good reason not to convert them? Anyone know of a way to convert a whole file folder or directory without having to do it one-at-a-time?

Any idea why some eps files show up as black-on-black in InfanView, Adobe Bridge, etc? It's as though the background color of the file is black, but if you open in Inkscape or import into Vinylmaster the background is white. If you look real close on some of them you can see the image in a dark gray .

Thanks everyone for your input. DarkShadow, I appreciate the batch script! Use them all the time on our servers, so I'm familiar with them and It should save me a ton of time. Thanks. I should have been a bit more specific, sorry. The conversion would be to files I got from other sources. A local defunct shop gave me a bunch of their original art work in eps for local sports teems, business logos, etc. Then there was a collection of flags some site was giving away to get you to try their service. That sort of thing. I keep all of them in an "art" directory, sorted by subject or license. So vinyl/art/flags/ Any work I do in Inkscape or VinylMaster Pro I save in the native file format and I make incremental backups when I reach a "jumping off" point where I feel it might be handy to have the file at that point in the design process. Those are saved in a "decals" directory and given a revision letter. vinyl/decals/flag/dont_tread_revC.vDoc I've tried Sage Thumbs and maybe I had something set wrong, but I found it cumbersome to view some file types. And thumbnails that were there one day may not be there the next. It never looked like your screenshot DC, so I'll reinstall it and give it a try again. Adobe Bridge seemed to do a good job, but their constant marketing drove me nuts. The emails I could ignore, but the pop-ups ads for every other product they offered were ridiculous. Darcshadow, I have a longstanding love/hate relationship with opensource. Been running a small database programming shop for 15 years and everything but the toilet paper is opensource: Apache, Linux, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Javascript, Jquery, blah, blah blah. Some of the greatest innovations have come out of the opensource community and it keeps all of the big boys on their toes, but the lack of standards can be maddening at times. Anyone with a "better" idea can do it their way, whether anyone supports it or not.

Make sure your pinch rollers are directly over the grit rollers. Not sure on your machine, but most I've looked at have some sort of markings above the rollers to show you where they are. If the pinch roller isn't directly over them the vinyl goes all sorts of directions. Or at least that's what i hear. I'd never do something silly like that. . . . . ;-)

I like your blast cabinet. Simple and to the point. For lining the inside of your glass, go to a local flower shop and have them get you a roll of the plastic they wrap flowers in. It's really tough and cheep! For my old cabinet I had a Dust Deputy and shopvac attached to it and it helped a lot. But when I got a bigger shop vac that was pulling more cubic feet of air than the compressor was putting out the change was dramatic. . .virtually no dust ever leaked out of the cabinet and almost none clouding my view. I miss that cabinet, but now you've got me thinking about building another.

On the LaserPoint II the static kit is a conductive cord (imagine string with fine copper wire woven into it) and two magnets. You tie the string to each magnet, hang a magnet on a back corner, drape the string across the vinyl and place the other magnet on the opposite back corner. The static is picked up by the string and dissipated to the cutter's frame. Any time vinyl is moving back and forth it's going to generate static electricity, just like rubbing a balloon on your head as a kid. If the humidity is low it's even worse. One day my cord got hung up on a pinch roller lever and wasn't dissipating the static. I cut for about an hour. The static buildup attracted every piece of lint, pet hair and dust in a 10 mile radius. As the pinch rollers ran over the dust it smashed them into the vinyl. I learned all about static by wasting a lot of vinyl.