Wilson

I think the challenge is these aren't regular keychains. They're basically a piece of foam with some type of smooth covering. I believe this is the type of keychain she is talking about: Floating Keychain I'd try some 751 or 951 to see if the cast vinyl held up better with the squish or the keychain.

I don't know about tissue boxes... but 6x9 speaker boxes held down with Velcro do hurt really bad in an accident... LOL

You might try the Color Theory Multiverse while you're at it (https://www.uscutter.com/Color-Theory-Multiverse-Heat-Transfer-Vinyl). I haven't tried this yet but it's supposed to apply in 3 seconds to cotton.

Use the lever on the back of the pinch rollers to move them up/down. Once they are up they should move freely side to side.

Go to my comment on this post to see some small text from an SC... http://forum.uscutter.com/index.php?/topic/57004-so-how-small-can-a-vinyl-cutter-cut/&tab=comments#comment-454087 That's with the 45-degree blade that came with the machine and the setup was from learning on this forum. So the machine is capable of doing it.

Not familiar with your software but are you using the jog buttons to adjust vinyl position and then using the origin button to set the origin on the cutter?

I would check the cutting strip again. If it were me, I would load enough material to do two cuts. Do one regular, advance a little & reset origin and then one rotated 90 degrees. Now see if the problem area is the same location on the axis the cutter head travels. If it is, your cutting strip is not level which may be why it seams like your force is changing mid-cut.

If you think of the carriage head / blade as the X-axis and the vinyl feeding in/out as the Y-axis... the more travel on the Y-axis the less accurate it is. So if you were to just do a simple rectangle that is 6-inch on the X-axis and 5-feet on the Y-axis... you start at the origin and go 5-feet (Y), 6-inch (X), 5-feet (Y) and 6-inch (X). With a high end servo machine you'd your blade would be back at origin... with a cheap stepper machine it will not, it will be off. And where it's "off" will be throughout your whole design when it's cut. If you can live/work with that, then you should be fine. If you need it to be really accurate then probably not. Personally, if it were me and I couldn't justify the increased cost of at least the SC over the MH, and if I was only buying the cutter to do some stencils for one car, I'd do the design and then pay a sign shop to cut and tape it.

Inkscape will do a lot of what Adobe Illustrator can do... and it's free. Wonder if you could export as a dxf, import that into Inkscape and then node edit to fix all it issues with the dxf file?

Can you export a .eps file out of MasterCam? I know nothing about MasterCam but if you've already got a usable file in that format I would try to get it exported out of MasterCam into a .eps/.svg/.ai/etc. that you may be able to import into Inkscape/Adobe Illustrator/etc. Once you get the file taken care of you're probably gonna need something better than a cheap cutter to get the kind of tolerance you're looking for.

From my experience with the paper test it was WAY to light of pressure. I've done some shirts at that pressure that looked alright (because I didn't know what I was looking at) and started to peel when being worn or washed once. I would invest in the temp gun. I ran the calibration test on my press when I first got it and mine ended up not being too bad (maybe 5* F), especially for a cheap clam but I've seen a lot people say theirs were off 20* - 30* F. Here's two things that helped me the most: 1.) Somewhere along the line I read that with Siser Easyweed (and Easyweed Stretch to some extent) when the pressure & temp are right and you look closely you should be able to see the texture of the fabric in the vinyl. Those first shirts I did weren't even close to this. Maybe Wildgoose or someone that does a lot more HTV than me can confirm this. 2.) I wear a white cotton T-shirt under my Polos for work everyday. So I bought a new 10 pack of shirts and then cut out text "Sample 1" through "Sample 10" in Easyweed Stretch and then experimented with temp & pressure using the paper test as my starting point. Worked great with minimal expense and it doesn't matter what the shirts looked like cause they're always covered up anyway.

First thing I would do is try using a Windows PC to eliminate the IMac. I'm not an Apple guy but as far as cutters go they seem like they cause more problems than what they're worth.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't part of the reason this seems daunting is because you're not real comfortable with the software yet and don't know exactly how to do this? If it were me, I'd either do what Slice suggested or just start laying and aligning circles. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes either way. Personally, as easy as this is I'd stay away from a pre-done vector I found on the web because you could run into more problems if the person messed that graphic up.

Make sure you come back after you replace the blade holder and let us know if it worked!

Is the problem always repeatable or is it random? For example, will it always cut sheet #2 fine and always screw up the other two? And are sheet 1, 2 & 3 all the same image (that you posted above)? If the same image, take sheet 2 and add/subtract to recreate others and save as a new file and see if that helps. If the images are different, I'd look at your wireframe and see if you have some crazy amount of nodes or any outliers.

The two different text sizes (D in Skarekrow's picture) can make a big difference. One is the max height of all text in your text box and the other is your font size. Where I've found the font size useful is if you're trying to create names or other text of the same size... say Bella and Chippy. If you just set the text size (not the font size) to 1 inch, on Bella it's measured from the bottom of the B to the top of B and on Chippy it's measured from the bottom of the p to the top of the C. Your letters in Chippy are then smaller than in Bella. If you keep the font size the same then you don't have this problem.

You get issued one once you join their platform.

You could try Shipt or Instacart and do grocery shopping / delivery. Or Grub Hub, Uber Eats, etc. My wife does all of these to some degree. In our area there were over 200 unclaimed Shipt orders on Friday evening. If you're interested, PM me & I'll get you my wife's referral code for Shipt. With all of these you have to learn how to "play the game", as I'm sure you do with Lyft, but once past the learning curve they can be lucrative.

Here's one I cut with a US Cutter SC2 out of Oracal 651. The "LLC" text after AND BBQ is just under .125". I did a few of these for a buddy... learned a lot about what I should and shouldn't do if I were selling these to a customer. So can you cut small... probably. Should you... depends on the situation.

I would look at the specs for resolution, repeatability, tracking & maybe force. What I found when I was looking to buy my cutter, here in the US, was that the resolution & repeatability were the same for the SC, Titan 1 and LP3. I don't remember the differences between the tracking & force but it didn't matter for what I intended to use it for. I ended up going for the SC because I couldn't see a reason, for my use, to spend the extra money on the other two. I know this doesn't directly answer your question but may help give you a way to look at what you're comparing.

Just to get some ideas, check out www.jiffyshirts.com. I've heard you can get better prices from Sanmar but you will need to set up a business account with them. Here's how I approached it... VERY SIMPLISTIC, so those that do this a lot please let me know if my thinking is on track: Here's my assumptions based on doing 15 good quality full front shirts, working out of my home with negligible expenses: 5 yard roll of Easyweed Stretch - $38 (normal price) + $11.99 shipping (worst case) = $49 = $3.27 per foot 15 Bella Canvas Super Soft T from Jiffyshirts = $60 (Orders over $59 ship free) Selling price for custom shirts = $225 ($15 each) Revenue from Shits ($225) - Expenses ($109) = $116 ($7.73 per shirt) Obviously there's a lot of variables and other things to factor in from a business perspective.

Thanks for the replies! I find this topic both interesting and terrifying. LOL

So for all of you that have been around here for awhile... how do you, what procedures do you take to make sure you avoid copyright / trademark issues? I'm looking for more than just if you see it out there it's copyrighted and can't do it. If that's the case it seems like you wouldn't be able to make anything. I think the confusing part for some of us that are newer is what is the line and where does it get drawn. For example, I want to do custom T-shirts. I'm pretty sure with a little digging I could find every word, phrase or saying under the sun on a T-shirt somewhere. Where does that leave me? It's crystal clear that I can't use the Ford emblem or Mickey Mouse but what about a shirt that says "Blessed & Highly Favored" or "Mom's Time to Wine"? I'm certainly not trying to advocate for copyright/trademark infringement here but trying to understand this topic a little better and do things above the board.

The price also might change depending on color. That might be why they have the "Configure Product" button. And then there's also times where the manufacturer fixes the price you can advertise their product so you have to add it to the cart to see the price.

So the lighted box sign on the business next to the gym my wife goes to looks horrible. What is the proper way to re-do a sign like this? As simple as removing the old lettering, clean & replace with some Oracal 951? I'm reletively new to this so what's everyone's thoughts / insight? The sign is probably 3' x 8'.