Wildgoose

No great pics no great help. Sorry back at ya.

The image is way to grainy to be able to run Auto Body Suppliers through Find my Font but Mattoa Demo Reg Oblique is similar to Potts or at least has the same vibe.

If you are talking about registration marks to align different color layers of a multi color cut vinyl project, yes. If you are talking about registration marks to be printed by a solvent/eco-solvent printer to be used by optical sensors then it's more complicated. If the first you can build your own marks and place them wherever you want. Once you have them where you want them you can copy and past another set right on top and change the color layer to match the other color(s) and they will appear as if by magic when you open that color in the cutter dialog. Please take a minute to join the forum. It will allow you unfettered access. Guest posts each have to be reviewed and approved by the mods and there aren't that many of us and we are volunteers who have our own lives going on and may not be particularly timely.

More likely you have multiple exact copies stacked on top of one another. Or you have some setting selected to make multiple passes. If you file is not something copyright protected you can post it and we can take a look. You may be able to find it by selecting your work and ungrouping it (perhaps more than one time) and then unselect by clicking off in a blank spot or on another object and then select it again and drag the object to a new location. The lower elements (if they exist) should remain there. You can sometimes spot these in your cut dialog box if they happen to be a different color or have no assigned color.

Most common cause and I am willing to bet EVERY single user on the forum has made a-plenty. I know I have.

You need to aim the infrared as perpendicular to the platen as possible and usually a given distance away. I think about 6" Angled shots are not as accurate . Is the cover a teflon sheet? If so just take it off for the test and you can put it back on after you get dialed in. If using a teflon sheet/cover you usually also want to increase your time by a couple seconds.

You're good if you have a spare. bear in mind many of us cut thousands of feet in that 6-8 months (with quality blades) so hobbyists pretty much go on for years unless you mess up and snap a tip off.

I wouldn't even trust a single layer to a home iron. The whole concept of trying to apply with an iron is ridiculous IMO. I use a really expensive press and even with the best money can buy it's pretty easy to get a poor application from something as simple as a thick seam on a tee shirt. I have not used Color Theory so I have no hands on experience with their potential quirks. That is massive overflow though. I have never seen that much in all my days of making shirts.

Same as most above. However, cutting heat transfer vinyl for tee's tends to need a nice sharp blade, especially if it's Siser Stretch. I have been cutting regular vinyl and then need to swap to HTV and found it was not getting through the stretchy stuff. Also, cutting reflective or glitter can shorten the life of your blade dramatically. I save my change out blades that were still working just for when I need to do something nasty like glitter that I don't want to subject a newer blade to. Be sure to place them in a separate spot so you know which were new and used. I have used clean cut blades and they are awesome. If you try them out be sure to drop your cutting force by about half to start with and work back into the material because they cut better.

Most presses, especially the budget models, will have an area or two that are a little lower than the rest. Set it so that cooler area (if yours has one) is the correct temp. HTV is pretty forgiving and many brands have a fairly wide temp range. I tend to go a little on the long side and with plenty of pressure but at the correct temp. I bought my temp gun at an auto parts store I think. The Easyweed regular will definitely show the weave of the fabric like was mentioned above. That's the "tried and true" method. Stretch doesn't show nearly like regular. Stretch has also changed their recommended heat and time where they used to be the very same. Still 305 F for 12-15 for regular but it's 32o for stretch and 20 seconds for stretch now. They were having problems and changed those several months ago.

You DEFINITELY want to verify the temp with an infrared. Maybe you can borrow one from someone. On the pressure, I would look at the springs when I was using my original swinger. I used them as a gauge of sorts. I tend, even now, to press a little harder than take a chance on being too light. The worst you will see is if you over press it will start to squeeze out the adhesive along the edges.

Several schools of thought. 1. Budget cutter (I would STILL avoid the MH and go to the SC2) and keep your trial investment low. 2. Mid range leap into a Titan or perhaps the Prismcut. (we have not seen much on the Prismcut as yet. It's new and is a stepper motor but I think it has high down force. My browser bounces back to the first screen when I try to look at the spec sheet) 3. All in for a Graphtec or similar name brand full tilt machine. (over your budget) Whichever you choose I suggest avoiding bundles. The stuff they send in bundles is usually bottom rung quality and not all the helpful. I still have quite a bit of my bundle I bought back in 2010 which is as yet unused so you can have my stuff. Definitely go with a machine capable of cutting on 24" vinyl (most designate this as a 28" cutter, the name brands use a "60" after the cutter model to designate 60cm I think) Buying anything limited to smaller than 24" rolls will severely affect your product availability and you'll soon be regretting the small savings. I started out with option 1 and chose roughly the equivalent of the SC2 or thereabout with a stepper motor. It was sufficient to learn a LOT and eventually I made the leap to a full bore commercial pro level machine and now have a working side business. I did not go into it with that in mind. It was a safe way to start a new hobby and I had SO much fun I have stuck with it and the forum ever since. Good luck with your conundrum. It's really hard to know what to do when you are brand new to something like this. I expect you have done a fair amount of online searching. Takes notes and think it through. The Prismcut is interesting but being as new to the users forum as it is we have little to help. It could be fantastic but somehow I just have a slight doubt in the back of my mind. Seems a little too multi-task oriented for something that is such a specific use operation for the rest of the cutting world. On another note also avoid small heat presses (go at least 15"x 15")and the ones that have multi-function like mug and plate press connections. I like a swinger because I can work over the platen without the heat right above my finders. You will be aligning HTV vinyl to the shirt if you decide to get a press and build shirts. I HIGHLY suggest this. More fun than a barrel of monkeys and all your friends and family will be delighted when you make them a cool tee. We do 98% apparel in my side business now where it was not my main focus when I bought my equipment.

Inkscape is free. This is no entry level vector though. You'll soon see why people charge for doing this type of thing.

All good advice. You seem most worried about the computer so that is probably your litmus test. Try one or both of the free vector art programs noted above and see if you can get a grasp of the design part. Cutters are dependent on vector designs. They are basically very simple other than gaining an understanding on creating them. If you can figure that out then the rest is not that hard. Yes there WILL be some connection issues initially when you get a cutter and try to get it working. Almost every new user goes through an initial freak session trying to get it to connect and figure out the settings but there are plenty on the forum who help get past those questions and once you're set up cutters are a true joy rarely rivaled in hobbies I have ever tried. I would spend some time learning about vector vs raster images and watch some training videos (probably more available on Inkscape than on Sign Blazer but I have not searched for SB videos so I can't swear to that. Both essentially do the same thing as far as design goes. ALL vector programs essentially do the same thing they just label everything differently and some go about getting from point A to point B a different direction. When done the vector is a vector all the very same. I use a very painful-to-learn program called Adobe Illustrator and literally took an online college level class to figure it out so don't be surprised if you have to spend even a few weeks getting the basics down. Inkscape has many training videos and tutorials linked from the help menu and there are hundreds of how to videos that can help. Good luck with your quest and have fun. I find myself using my graphics skills in many other ways as well so the knowledge gained in the art side is a win win. Great way to spend lock down time for sure.

All I have ever heard about the Graphtec is they don't use blade offset. Never owned one myself.

There's nothing wrong with using the mac. For a trial to see it from another perspective do a free trial of SignCut Pro (they have a 7 day free trial) it is mac compatible so it should hook up and run without any problems. If it does this while using SignCut as well then you will have narrowed it down to a setting or mechanical issue with the cutter. If it cuts fine with SignCut then you will have narrowed it down to a setting or problem with whichever variant of Graphtec software you are using.

There are alignment tools in VM that will make short work of this. You may have some practicing to learn to use them. There should be options to align to top or bottom or sides and some distribution options to spread them out uniformly. Once you get the first row done make another full copy of the first row and remove one circle and it should be perfect to be the second row. Once you have these two just stack copies in and use the same alignment tools on the groups of circles you did on the individual circles. 600mm is what... about 24 inches So your talking about 30 circles and 29 spaces or 31 circles and 30 spaces. You only have to deal with the individual circles for a single row then you are dealing with about 30 more groups of them. If I was at my regular workstation I couple whip this out in about 10 minutes in Adobe and I'm pretty sure VM has similar tools. At least the upper levels do. Inkscape will as well.

I have never installed tint but in my mind it almost seems like it would add an extra level of trouble to pre-cut them if you don't get it aligned perfectly all that effort would be fruitless where a little extra around the edges can be hand trimmed to perfection. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, I just know that I have installed pre-cut cover layers to aluminum signage and it can be a problem to get it just right. I HAVE heard that tint is a PIA to cut though so your trouble getting the pressure setting just right are probably due to that stuff being a bit touchy to begin with. A low angle blade speaks of hard material.

I had no luck. Lazer 84 is close.

Put in your pen tool and turn your blade offset to zero and see what pressure gets good results. Not much to it. Great way to learn your cutter without wasting vinyl.

For what it's worth I have a construction supply outfit that I do about half of my yearly revenue through. They have about 50 sponsors who share co-op money with them based on how much of their products they sell the previous year they get basically a kickback toward advertising that they can use for tee shirts. The kicker is they want their logo on there placed a certain size and a certain place or at the very least approved prior to releasing the funds. I bet I have had to recreate 90% of them because they always just send a raster image to be used. The first year or two I spent a lot of effort to go through all the hoops and try to get vector files. Some finally got the vector to me some never did but they all were fine with the end result and I quit fighting it and just send in the proofs with the logo I have re-made. It would be sweet to have a few of those to grab from a file like that. I have found a few out on Brands of the World but they are usually someones else recreation and often are inaccurate (and I'm super picky). End result of your question is that no you can't take a Pepsi logo and start making unlicensed shirts legally. You will find that most of the big name corporations have online detectives who's job it is to scour the internet to find mentions of their logos. Pepsi will probably visit this post at some point. We always make it a huge point to pass on information to new users to avoid breaking the law. As your skills increase it's actually very simple for anyone with any talent at all to make near perfect copies of about any logo imaginable. It calls for restraint and honor in respecting the efforts they have made and the investment that building their brand took. The is why our forum bylaws prohibit posting working files that are copyright protected. The people who own and fund the site do not condone any illegal acts and will not tolerate them being passed around on the forum. We appreciate you following those rules along with the rest of us. Great bunch of people here and lots of helpful advice.

Ha join the old man club I guess! I use one of those headlamp flashlights so I can get the light coming from a good angle and enough of it. Old eyes suck, dang-it.

medicine man - I suggest you sign up officially for the forum. It will get faster response times. Any guest posts have to be approved ahead of time by a mod and you never know when we may be around or not. You should be able to edit the trace after the fact. There are node edit tools in there that let you clean things up. I usually use the image as a template and hand draw over the top of it to get really nice looking reproductions when I need to do what you are talking about. I often rebuild clients designs if they don't have the vector (pretty common especially with my construction worker clients). Text is by far best done from scratch even if the rest is auto traced. Figure out the font and type it out and adjust to fit.

I have a couple USB ports that I have worn out and had to switch to another due to wear and tear

Are the logo's base building blocks that you add in the specific data? If so those are good to use, they typically have something like "lorem ipsum" where you would put your text. You may want to look through the documentation that will be in there somewhere that will give you details as to what specific license comes with them. Most will have certain things you can and cannot do with them. You can go to any of the typical artwork sellers like shutter stock and purchase similar designs with varied license agreements as well. If they are an actual logo like Nike or Monster then they shouldn't be in there. If you find actual trademarked logos out there (and you will) I would avoid them like the plague or covid19. The best logo's are ones you actually cook up yourself.