sjaguar13

I am trying to cut this design in vinyl and apply it to a shirt. My problem is, I don't know how to separate the color. I tried twice. The first time, each color covered the entire image with cuts in the color to show the bottom color. This meant the where the top color was, there were 3 other colors underneath it. Also, it laid the black down first, then the rest of the colors, and then black again. That didn't seem right, so I tried again. The second time around, it overlapped nothing. That seemed better, but would make it really hard to line up. I then colored in the edges to give some room to overlap without having to be 100 perfect. The black outline that is on the top seems to be too complicated for my cutter (a Creation PCut) to actually cut. I need to find another way to layer it.

The top checkbox was already checked, so I just had to check the second one. I changed the USB cable and reduced the number of nodes in the vector file to make it less complicated. I went from 900 to 500 nodes. It was cutting okay for a while, but the same problems started happening. The vinyl has a lot of static and will swing back and stick to the cutter's stand. Is there a proper way to do the grounding, or can I just attach a wire to the stand and then run it to something that's grounded?

I am not doing 400 decals at once. I am doing 1 decal at a time, but I have to do it 400 times. It will cut it and be done. I tell it to cut it again, and it locks up half way through. I have already run into the issue where I send it a really big, complex design to cut and it runs out of memory, but I don't think this is it for 2 reasons. First, I only do 1 at a time, and it easily cuts some of them. Second, when it locks up, I have to reboot the computer and the cutter. When I go to cut it again, it could lock up right after rebooting and before it cuts a successful decal. The memory couldn't have been full. As for the serial connection, my computer has a serial port, but the cutter doesn't. I will try changing the settings and will see what happens.

I am having a problem. When cutting a design, I can cut it several times. Then it gets half way through, randomly cuts through the design, the cutter just says "waiting" and the computer locks up. This happens with Vinyl Master Pro and Sign Blazer. I check the USB cable to make sure it's plugged in, restarted the cutter and the computer, and then I can get another design cut. After one more cut, though, it starts doing it again. I waste more vinyl that I use, and when I have to cut 400 decals, it takes for ever since every other one messes up and I have to restart. Any idea on what is going wrong?

Yeah, I meant I cannot print white ink, so the shirts have to be light colored. Otherwise, the image is too dark to tell what it is.

I sent you a PM about the color of the shirts. I can't print white, but if you wanted them on white, light gray, or any light colored shirt, I could do them for $5.50 plus shipping.

The cheapest I go is $4.50. I made exceptions for non-profits, $3.50. However, if you go too cheap at the start, they expect you to always be that cheap. They might like you and want to continue with you, but when your business grows, you start turning them away since you aren't making much profit. Less than $4.50 isn't worth doing it over and over. The other downfall is they like the shirts and tell everyone they know, and you get 200 people asking for 200 shirts at the same price. Basically, even though you want to give them a discount, don't make it so cheap that you regret it. My normal charge is $6.48.

If you had to print the letter A on a shirt that's white with a thin red outline and then another blue outline, how would you do it? Would you cut a big blue A, and then lay a red A on that followed by a little white A on top? That would make each color the same thickness all the way across. It would also distort each letter making the outlines lopsided. You could make a big white A that would be the foundation, and a red a that goes on top with a bigger gap to let the white come through followed by a blue outline. That would also make it each color the same thickness, but would be stacked in reverse order. You still have the problem of it distorting, but the outline is pressed last, so the distortion should be minimal. You could cut the red and blue as outlines and only overlap them a tiny bit. That would make a ridge in the colors, but should help with the distortion. You could make it so the outlines line up perfectly with no overlapping. Avoiding distortion when the first color is pressed seems impossible.

I will play around with SignBlazer tomorrow. I emailed the guy for the fix. I am hoping the offset fixes the issue. I am still thinking about going with FlexiStarter unless SignBlazer turns out to be pretty good. Vinyl Master Pro 2.5 is kinda lame. There's nothing helpful in the help section of VMP. Is SignForums.com free?

Email Vitor at vitordigitizing@hotmail.com. He does good work, and I believe just text digitizing he does for free.

US Cutter live help was entirely unhelpful. There's no settings on the cutter. I changed blades from a new 60 degree carbide to 45 degree carbide. The 45 works better. I tried moving the blade in the front and back blade holders. The back works better. I tried increasing pressure and decreasing blade depth. That didn't make a difference. I tried slowing down the cutter and speeding it up. Cut speed 60 worked the best. I don't get why the offset isn't consistently wrong or why the small test rectangle has rounded corners when cut directly from the cutter without any software. Do I change the offset depending on how big the graphic is?

Does the Signblazer Elements demo allow you to cut? I tried the Flexi demo, but cutting, printing, and saving were all disabled. I have VMP 2.5.

Thinking about getting FlexiStarter, but would like to make sure that the offset is actually the problem. This only happens on small text. I can cut something 12 inches wide and it's perfect. I then make it 4 inches wide and it's rounded.

I am currently using an older version of Vinyl Master Pro. On small text, the corners are round. I have to upgrade VMP to get an offset option. I am thinking about going with FlexiStarter. I use Illustrator for all design work, so I don't really need Flexi to design anything. The only thing I am worried about is getting FelxiStarter and not being able to get the corners sharp. Is the offset what I need or is there another problem, software or hardware, that I need to address?

The XY Scale seems to be good. I guess I need to upgrade my software to mess around with the offset.