Wildgoose

If it's the job in the picture you should be able to cut that out of vinyl. Two colors easy peasy

I have never noticed any substantial difference. 100% cotton sometimes tends to be a little rougher shirt texture which can effect the look a little.

You have to take into account what your final end product is about too, If you are making stuff to sell then ya you better be careful. SignTorch is a forum member and has some great vector packages that are affordable and there are several on the USCutter website that are nice to have for building other files. Even with purchased vectors you have to be careful how you use them. I bought a huge vector pack with my first cutter called Ultimate Ornaments Mega Pack that has tons of frames and scrolls that is a huge time saver if you are building someone a sign and just need something elegant to finish off the corners etc... Money well spent if you calculate the time you spend either looking for free stuff or building your own. The bottom line is that in the end you need to develop some skills with a vector based design program like Illustrator or Corel Draw or Inkscape (which is free). You probably have SCALP which came with your cutter but it is very limited in ability compared to any of the previous three. SCALP traces good and cuts good and has some basic editing capabilities but just isn't robust enough for doing the good stuff. Don't feel like you got stiffed though, when I bought my first cutter it just came with SignCut which is just a cutting utility and you can't design on it at all so the attempt with SCALP had good merit but falls a little short.

Ya it doesn't appear to be complete unless you are just doing some sort of patch. Have him send a dxf file if that's what he built it in.

I use a pillow frequently but it is not something you HAVE to have or at least not that you need ALL the time. I only use it if I have a garment that will have a seam or collar or something near the graphic. Any kind of uneven pressure can/may cause poor adhesion. Not saying that it WILL but it has happened to me and that's when I bought my pillow. I actually have two pillows and a press pad. One big pillow about 12x14 or some such and one longer skinny that is about 5 inches wide by about 16 long or longer that works for sweat pant legs which I have found are a real issue because they all have a major seam running down the inside of the leg which is directly under the press if your doing the outside of the leg. The press pad I bought was 5"x 6" I think and I use it for crest prints on front breast jobs that have buttons nearby. It's made from the same stuff as the base of your heat press (silicon Rubber I think) Very proud of them for price, I would like more sizes but I get by. I have heard of people using mouse pads for this and they would work great too and be cheaper. ALL of these are used typically inside the garment to support the layer your pressing away from the bottom or back of the shirt. You will still need to cover your design to protect your heat platen. I have a teflon sheet but I don't use it very often mostly I use craft paper or lately I have been using parchment backing paper that my wife buys in huge rolls from Costco. Sometimes I re-press HTV (heat transfer vinyl) with the teflon to give it a slight pattern which makes it look more like a semi-gloss rather than shiny. #2 on your list if you haven't figured it out yet, each HTV product is a little different for heat and pressure and time. Siser runs more consistently at the 305* for 15 seconds for their main easyweed and easyweed stretch which is just about all I use. I have tried several from stahls and they work fine but they all have higher temps and some don't have an sticky carrier so if you mess up on the weed you have a problem on your hands. The general consensus is that the easyweed is pretty forgiving and it doesn't show any signs of failure even at temps as high as 350* so I tend to go a little higher than 305 to allow for heat loss into the garment and I like to run about 18 seconds just for peace of mind that it's getting a good bite. You can tell if you can see the material pattern through the vinyl that it's there to stay. As far as graphics, there are definitely free vectors all over the place, the forum has a bunch here. I would put some training time in on the design program of your choice because you are going to need it.

Nice! Beat out again! I can't even win in the consolation race.

Jiffy is pretty good especially if you don't have a resellers license but I can usually beat them from SanMar or sometimes Statononline both of which require you to get set up with them first. Depends on the shirt and shipping. Jiffy gives you discounts for large volumes and free shipping at a lower amount. It's worth doing your homework if your buying very many.

Cream doesn't show up on a glass once you put a beverage in it either. However the cream is easy and works pretty good for small areas if you don't need a deep etch also if you are doing some part etch and part vinyl details.

You have a lower serial number than 5101? Wow that's cool. The only thing I see that makes me a little nervous at all is that the upper platen has no kind of heat shield. It doesn't look like it ever did so it's probably fine, I just don't want to accidentally put my hand on that thing.

Update. I received an email back claiming that the Jetwear Dark IYA is supposed to be the same product that used to be called IronAll Dark and is supposed to be soft and kinda stretchy so I ordered a sample pack (outrageous shipping fee!) and will try it out as soon as it gets here and I'll either leave some feedback or start a whole new thread. If the product is as she said then I think there will be a lot of interested parties. I think I could sell 30% more products if the feel on the dark transfers is even close to the soft feel of the JPSS. People love the JPSS just not always wanting a white shirt.

I have had my best success on white garments with Jet Pro Soft Stretch. (JPSS) but I have read where others have used other brands just don't buy the crap they sell at walmart. Best price I found was actually on amazon and I got a couple hundred for around 40cents per sheet if I remember correctly. Still have half of them. As far as opaque transfers for colored garments I haven't found any I like yet. They all feel like you just glued a piece of paper on the front of the shirt. I have heard rumors of a brand that is called Jet Wear Super Soft Dark made by IYA (not the jet wear dark made by Neehahs) that is supposed to be stretchy but I have not tried it and can't find a supplier who has small amounts. tshirtsupplies.com had 100 for $130 plus shipping and I just don't want to buy 100 to find that they really aren't any good either. <edit> I just bumped back to their site and they don't list the super soft dark by IYA anymore but they do have sample packs of a lot of other papers. I've got a call in to a salesperson to see if I can get a straight answer out of anyone.

It will be a dark spot on an otherwise perfectly good red shirt. The problem is that regular transfers rely on the shirt to supply the white where on the print it looks great because the carrier is white so your mind doesn't always compute that in reality you just printed on a clear product, the white paper comes off leaving just the clear and your ink. Take a blue sharpie and write something on a clear sheet protector and then hold it on the shirt and you'll see.

So the sublimated has to go on high percentage of polyester or what?

If you don't have a light box and want to do it poor boy style grab a piece of parchment paper from the kitchen (my wife uses it to bake with). Lay the parchment paper on the lower layer of vinyl and then peel the backing off the top layer and flop it down on there making sure the whole vinyl is on the paper so it won't accidentally get stuck. you can pretty well see through the parchment paper similar to a light box and slide your top layer around until it's exactly where you want it then I use a piece of tape along one side just like a hinge when applying the vinyl for real and hinge the vinyl up and pull out the parchment and squeegee the top layer back down now in position on top of the lower layer. If you are doing small enough stuff you can just leave enough of the app tape along one side to skip the tape part and use the app tape as the hinge. The parchment will slip right out of there easy without having to raise the top vinyl all that far, it's great stuff! I bumped across this application by accident last summer.

I keep a couple rolls of clear around. Some applications it's kinda nice to have and most of the ladies I sell wall art to prefer to be able to see it. What brand of clear did you buy? I don't like the Greenstar much at all. I have a 24" wide roll I have been trying to use up ever since I got it. It tears easy, doesn't come off the vinyl very good and causes all kinds of hate and discontent. The R-Tape Clear choice is much more manageable.

nope it's almost identical to regular vinyl other than being transparent

They have subscriptions as short term as by the month I think or you can buy a dongle and actually own the program and install it on multiple computers and platforms, in that mode it requires the dongle as a "key" to function. Try out the free trial, I really like the way it works and it used to come with the USCutter products (1yr free). It has some good cutting tools like weeding frame and weeding lines and step-by-step cutting which lets you decide how far along the project you want it to go and it will cut all the elements in that given distance then move on to the next chunk which is almost a necessity on real long graphics that start having tracking issues. You just have to design elsewhere like inkscape or illustrator and then open the saved file and cut it.

Like OW said, I don't think I would count on being able to see through it, at least not real well. If you put it on a backlit sign it shows up at night with a glow from the lights behind it.

I was looking to do some contour cuts around transfers on the regular JPSS and needed a backing material. I have an old cricuit cutting mat but it's too sticky and destroys the paper trying to get it off there not to mention bulky to work with. So I tried some of my R-Tape Clear Choice AT60 medium tack app tape and Whallaaa! Perfect! Has enough hold to provide a good backing but light enough tack to be able to pull up the paper after the cut. I didn't try any higher tack as this will work great for me.

I gotcha. That would pose a problem. That free CS2 download may work but it's for older computer systems so if you are running newer you may have to run in compatibility mode.

Well I'm the opposite of you, I struggle with the other side. One big rule with AI is that all the functions are working on a given object and a lot of times designs are made up of several objects in a group like a string of text so using the Pathfinder tools will work on just the first letter in the string. The key to this is to make those objects into a compound shape first. The easy keystroke is Command>8 or (Cntrl>8 on PC) you can look it up in the object menu as I'm sure you are getting used to. That will take care of a lot of your pathfinder woes. The only bummer being that AI won't always leave things in a compound shape so you have to keep an eye on things in the layers menu. Sometimes as you will learn you have to get done with other operations before you make the commitment to combine things into a compound shape but you can release it if you need to. I don't think it will take you as long to figure things out since you are already familiar with the Adobe train of thought. It will make hints from me easy since your running the same CS5 that I am currently running. Good luck and welcome to the funnest hobby/business on the planet! And a warm welcome from Idaho.

This is my turn to ask the million dollar dumb question. Why do you need to convert them? Are you having trouble opening or cutting them or something? You are in the SCALP forum so I am going to assume you have SCALP and I thought it would open them up. I'm just a curious observer.

You can cut with SignCut Pro on a mac easily.

I switched from gerber to cold steel. Been real happy with the edge ever since.

I'll play around with it a while. It looks like one of the springs is broken that lifts the platen but they look like just basic springs I can pick up at ace hardware. For $10-12 in HTV it will make a great back-up or possibly end up being my main workhorse we'll see.