freezermink

nah i hadn't used the avery or oracal before... i believe some of it was Gerber and the other was Neschen - hence the prices. luckily i wasn't ever the one fronting the money for that vinyl. I just got that quote this afternoon for gerber 15in wide... $23.50 or something per yard. at that rate i'd rather panhandle for money than charge my clients to cover those costs. i have a friend sending some of that Neschen vinyl over; enough to get my job completed. its good stuff. then i'm going to experiment more with this Scheinholographics stuff. funny... i read nothing but great things about it.

thanks for the info guys... i'll have to give that a try. though after seeing a few pictures of chrome vinyl, it seems they all have this problem a bit. maybe not to the extent that i am seeing in the vinyl i got, however. i have worked with extremely thick chrome vinyl before and it was really great, though cutting and weeding was a nightmare. it was also around $25 a yard at 15in wide... not very cost effective. ah how fun it is to learn things like this on the fly.

what is the product number for the avery chrome you use? looks like i am going to have to re-order. i've spoken to the signwarehouse people and they suggest that i am applying it wrong. what? i'm applying it with a squeegee onto flat glass. i don't understand how i can be doing it wrong. also, there is quite a bit of the orange peel on the roll before i even make a cut.

haha. i never thought of that. next time they show up with a package i'll have to ask them if they could just hang on to it for a few days... you know, until its more convenient for me. i'm sure that'd be no problem.

i was having this problem a bit (maybe not as bad), until i ended up getting some advice about setting the blade depth much much more shallow than i had it. not only did it seem to diminish those problems with the strange pigtail overcuts, but the quality and sharpness of the cuts i'm getting are much much better. its possible that with all the switching out of the blades and holders that you've got it positioned too deep? i'm not going to say that it is your entire problem, but i was suprised at how much of a difference the blade depth made. try it out! i've got the blade set into the holder far enough that i can barely see it and can't really feel it.

hell i was just thinking about getting some new cards. throw me in the bucket!

mr. 'pay me $10 for something you all have for free' - original poster. check his sig.

owned.

i bought this bike last summer in used but almost perfect condition. the only real exception was the condition of the decals. they had been peeled a bit, scratched, scraped, gouged, etc. its tough to tell from the before pics (bleow), but they were in rough shape. it was even tough to clean them, as they had some permanent stains on them from dirt/oil/chain lube/whatever that made them look pretty gross. So after picking up this plotter a month ago, i put 2 and 2 together and realized that i could do something about these decals! i got rid of the blue and made it a pretty streamlined red/grey/white while keeping the same feel as the old. i think it came out great and so far its been holding up nicely. i thought i'd post up and show you what i came up with. the only real problem is that i am just starting out without a printer plotter, so 3 layers of vinyl may prove to be a problem down the road as far as longevity, but i'm not really worried about it at the moment. its all oracal 651 so it should hold up for a bit. what do you guys think?

agreed! never again will i trust the credit card rule. we should find all the listings on here and put a disclaimer on them. heh. doing some more test cuts with the same 'motorsports' logo down to ~6mm in height, everything still looks great, and suprisingly weeds as easily as if the letters were 4x as large. it is oracal 651, so that helps i'm sure. i'm still excited to see what the 60 degree blade will do, but i think i've gotten that extra bit i needed.

do it! since i put them on i've actually had 3 people mention 'nice bike' while i was out and about. makes quite a difference apparently.

well i have an few updates. i talked with the guy over at cleancutblades, and he was extremely courteous and helpful. i ordered up a blade and he even got me the forum discount and free shipping. can't ask for more than that. so the blade is on its way. while we were discussing the issues, he mentioned blade depth and it got me thinking. so for the last few hours i have been doing some blade depth testing and HOLY CRAP does the depth make a huge difference. i had it set to about 1/2 a credit cards depth, as most threads on this site had informed me, and it was working just fine, or so i thought. i cranked it down and kept getting progressively better results. the blade is now down to a point where i can barely see it in the holder at all... its cutting fantastically. its not perfect, but its MUCH better. attached is an example i just cut... 'motorsports' is ~8mm high. (it was right on the roller path, but eh, it was just a practice cut.)

oh i completely understand. its fairly precise stuff. at this point i'd rather know that my limitations are on the hardware end, and not my knowledge about this process. i did just reinstall the program just a week or so ago, so i'm not sure that would fix it. worth a try i guess! thanks guys.

thanks guys. i'm actually alright with it if the vinyl doesn't last TOO long... i'd just have to do it over again with a different color scheme. this stuff is too fun.

ah i see. so it may just be a product of the cutter itself. makes sense. it was one hell of an inexpensive cutter considering all it can do. i don't have many projects with a need to cut this small, so i'll not worry too much. I will, however, order up a blade from cleancut and get that in asap. thanks dakota-

grabbed. thanks! i was just thinking about trying to find something like this.

here's a pic of what i'm talking about... keep in mind that this is a macro shot of the 'a'. the size is approx 8mm tall x 12mm wide. you can see that the middle cut in the 'a' isn't incredibly accurate, and there is that strange cut where i'm guessing it starts/stops.

i feel like saving as an eps then importing into the program takes eons over a simple copy/paste. i haven't had issues with things getting funny at all... just the size thing. if it is what it is, then no big deal really... but i'm curious as to what settings might be able to be tweaked in order for it to come out correctly.

i may try the 60 degree blade. if nothing else, it'll be nice to have a spare around. i was just messing with speed settings as well. with small font cutting (approx 3/8in block letters) it seems to make VERY little difference whether i set it to 4in/s or 48in/sec. same results almost exactly. depth variances get me the same result. it must be a blade issue of some kind.

i noticed that too. i'm not sure why either, but i just end up resizing in SB, typing in the size at the bottom to match the width and height from AI. works out fine. it would be nice to have it import at the same size though... i hadn't noticed if it was a consistant exponential size from AI or not, but it did look like it was around 4x larger, give or take. update: just for kicks, i pasted a simple vector box to SB from AI. in AI, it was 50mm x 50mm. once pasted into SB, it was 176.87 x 177.18. hmm. the fact that the width and height are not the same once transferred troubles me.

no tips/tricks?

just tried 'whatthefont' for the first time in a serious manner... seems to be fairly accurate! i cropped and just used the bottom half of the picture you provided. it came up with 5 fonts that are incredibly similar, though i don't know if any of them match exactly. it listed: Reforma Grotesk Demi (the closest i saw really...) Standard CT Condensed Bold Deltarbo-Slim Nimbus Sans Cond Bold Doublecross (the least likely candidate.) hope that helps!

hey highboltage- i've got a font called '911 porscha' (notice the 'a'. heh.) that seems to be EXACTLY what you're looking for. i'm assuming it is designed for the specific porsche badge fonts. somwhere i've got the 'turbo' type font as well. i believe i found it free on a font site. example that i just threw onto photoshop for comparison attached.

did you get the vinyl that'll turn the mountains blue when their cold enough?

a friend and i used a combination of a few different vinyls that he had laying around to sticker up a rally car that my previous employer sponsored. we used oracal 651, 751 and some of the cheaper avery stuff (and possibly some of the less expensive 3m vinyl as well), as we figured the car would take a TON of abuse and we'd end up replacing the vinyl at regular intervals (along with them replacing fenders, doors, etc... haha). As it turned out, we had to do VERY little replacement of any of the vinyl, as it all seemed to hold up great through all the cold weather, dirt, mud, etc. i was very impressed. here's a pic of the car we did, just because it was tons of fun and we thought it turned out great: