Wildgoose

I think we all do dumb things from time to time. I have pretty much quit layering pre-install unless it's going to someone who will self install. I have had a lot better luck layering right on the final product.

When I lived out there in the late 80's Middleburg only had like two paved streets and most folks got their mail at a little postal annex.

Check your blade depth. Siser is only a couple mil thick but the carrier is super tough and it won't hurt it to have the blade a little longer, it won't cause problems. HTV isn't as touchy about blade depth as regular vinyl.

yep, if you have re-loaded it, the program thinks it's in a new computer and they only allow 5 swaps during a certain amount of time. If you get in touch with them and tell them what has been going on they will probably re-instate you and hopefully fix the real issue.

Hate to tell you guys but that's copyright material you're playing with.

That's the big dude that you will have to assemble. It looks pretty nice if you have that much shop space. The gun and other parts are identical to the slightly smaller table top unit. They may have both versions there to look at when you get there. My store did but the smaller cabinet didn't have the gun inside and I asked the goofball working there if I need to get a blaster separately and he thought i did so that's how I ended up with two guns. I think that cabinet has a little more work space inside and it definitely looks like it has more slope on the hopper which should aide in keeping your media where you want it.

If you are talking the table top cabinet that is what I just bought over the holidays. It comes with a siphon gun which works great. They also have a large floor stand style cabinet that you have to assemble. The table top unit is big but all ready to go. The only complaint I had was the hole for the vacuum didn't fit my good shop vac and I had to build a pvc adapter. I used the opportunity to turn a 90* elbow down on the inside to help keep from sucking up all the media when it's running. The cabinet works pretty good but you may want to have some sort of work light that you can shine in the window. The media just goes in the bottom and there is a feed tube that sticks down in there and when you press the trigger the air passing through the gun produces enough siphon to draw media up into the air stream and fling it at your work. You are going to want quite a bit of media for the tube to stay buried well. I have a 50# bucket of stuff I bought that I still have to go rake around every once in a while. I had also purchased a pressure pot style blaster because I didn't realize the cabinet came with a gun. The pressure pot throws more media and may be better for some types of stuff but the cabinet siphon gun is fast and easy for glass work. I haven't used the pressure pot as much since I started to get used to the siphon gun. It's just easier, you just put your work in the cabinet and turn on the air and vacuum and squeeze the trigger.

USCutter really does rock. I have had nothing but good experiences with them from day 1. I HAVE had one or two things go missing in shipping but they have always made it right and I have also been the recipient of a few strange things that have been like a bonus. For instance I once ordered 5yds of Orange Siser HTV and I either got 10yds by accident or it was near the end of a roll and was not a full 10yd so they sent the whole thing, either way I got about 2 times as much as I paid for!

Be careful with sand. There is a real risk of silicosis from regular sand unless you get the "Garnet" sand that is silicon free. If you use regular sand you should go through a bunch of safety procedures so you don't end up killing yourself or dragging it in the house and effecting your wife or kids. Very tempting because sand is dirt cheap but the risk is proven.

That is a great rule of thumb. If you can see the texture you better hope you have it in the right place because it's not coming off. I bought a decent quality infra-red thermometer gun and was surprised to find the heat was off on my USCutter press. It's not in C or F it's somewhere in the middle. Once I got corresponding temps figured out I have had no more real issues. Also take note if you have a seam or collar in the near vicinity. Anything that is very thick at all can cause pressure issues nearby. I have had problems with small kids shirts that have the collar too close. I ended up buying a couple press pillows from Stahl's that work perfect. Also bought a press pad for front crest prints on shirts with buttons or zippers. I also press a little hot rather than the 305*. You can go WAY over the heat on Siser without any bad effects like glue seepage. Finally, if your design is still intact you can re-press it and it will be fine (been there and done that)

You know I design on a 21" iMac. My brother is a programmer and has the 27" and I actually prefer mine. I bought mine smaller because of cost but after trying to play on his the other day I had to scoot back a little, it was just too much. Maybe I would get used to it and it would sure be nice when I wanted to be zoomed in and still see the rest of the file but I was surprised to find it almost too much.

Ah ha. You were just bored and thought you'd kick a hornets nest didn't ya. That is definitely a topic of much speculation. The bottom line is when you really need to cut small it never goes smooth like the times you are just goofing off and get lucky. On a funny note, I did some small address labels for my nephew a few months ago (freebies) that had some 1/4" block text in three lines, overall height about 1" tall x 3" long. Not too bad to cut but the font was tough to get a clean weed and I had about 50 to weed and was getting upset when I'd loose a letter and mess one up. Well to make a long story more interesting I got pissed and grabbed a corner and just ripped one apart in my angst and I'll be danged if it didn't weed just perfect! So I just started doing the quick pull method and 80% of them weeded fine. I managed to salvage about half of the others by pulling a letter here or there and it worked out surprisingly well. He has since found someone in his local area to print some clear stickers to use so i don't have to bother with it anymore which makes a nice ending.

Wow what a question. I think that is dependent on the cutter and the vinyl. My P-Cut was safe down to about 1/2" with most vinyl types. My Summa can go half that consistently but some vinyl still likes to pick letters up others do better. No matter what if you are going much below a half inch you are going to spend more time weeding than you would on regular text.

I am by no means any kind of expert at this but since I started about 3 years ago I have figured out that bubbles come mostly from application error. I attribute it to bad squeegee technique. Don't use your fingers! squeegee in nice straight patterns without a skew on the leading edge. Go from the middle out in an up-then down pattern (or down then up). I'm right handed so I typically go from about the middle toward the right side then come back and go from where I originally started and work over to the left had side. place the squeegee in the near middle and pull it down using a good amount of force but hold it as flat as possible to avoid creating friction or drag on the transfer tape which will stretch the design and cause you trouble on your next pass. All this is harder to explain in writing than it is to do but you will find over time that you get less bubbles as you get more experience. I don't even mess with wet app much anymore unless it's a real large application that I think I may have trouble aligning. About the only time I fight bubbles much now is if the substrate is uneven.

LMAO! love it!

I think I would download the SignBlazer program that mb20music mentioned (and the patch). I have a copy on my work computer and have been pretty impressed with it. Or you could go with Inkscape which is also a free program and works great. You will still need a cutting program (like SCALP or signcut) if you go with the Inkscape option.

Looks like TGI Friday

Thats the old cool one I remember. Here is another version from around 1980 but you'll have to trace it out.

Same here. Hot tap water while you peel also warms your hands back up from this frigid temps we have all been whining about.

Funny thing about Florida. I was there in about 1988 or 89 when it actually skiffed a light snowfall in the St. Augustine area and killed half the orange crop. I'm from out here in Idaho where we expect several feet on the level at least in the high country but I don't know if I've been colder than when it was about 25* with 90% humidity. It felt worse than -20 below does here.

There are two schools of thought on that though. Just some big phone number isn't going to induce anyone to pay attention so you still need to grab the first look with what is being advertised. Anyone who lives in the western states equates anvils, horseshoeing and forges kind of in the same group and basically all but the horseshoeing is gone now-a-days except for a few history nuts so any or all three are good eye-catchers that relate pretty well with a Farrier IMHO. addieleigh - corel is a good program, sometimes catches some crap on the forum but it's all in good fun. I'm an AI guy personally and I tried a free x6 30 day trial to play with it but they are enough different I didn't have that much fun. I'm sure it goes both ways once you invest the time to learn a program it's hard to dedicate time in another direction.

You getting all reminiscent on us mopar? Speaking of Mopar my best friend from HS has a 71 RT Challenger. Has had it since we were in school back in the mid 80's. I think it's in storage in a shop on blocks. Has a 340 in in right now but it came factory with just a 318. He has considered doing a frame up restoration. It's actually still in great shape. His dilemma is setting on an engine stand right beside it is a 426 Hemi that he pulled from a 68 charger that he was going to rebuild and stick in there but then we graduated and he went off to college and it has set there ever since. That was in 85'

You probably shouldn't have to with a plug-in. I don't have my cutter connected to my design computer. I actually draw on a mac and just stick the files on a thumb and go plug it into a windows laptop over by the cutter so I don't even have a plug-in installed in AI. I just know that SignCut uses version 8 or lower according to the tech help people. It has something to do with some of the variables associated with the CS versions like multiple artboards etc. Just as an experiment save it as a different name as a version 8 legacy file and then open up SignCut manually rather than using the "send to SignCut" command and open the file from that side and see if it does any different. The other question I have is when you open it in SignCut have you looked at it in the preview mode? Do you see the areas where it is going weird in the preview and did you try letting SignCut do it's little preview cut run and watch to see if the little knife display does anything like what your machine is doing? I'm trying to think of ways to isolate the problem.

fuz - Upgrading is a wonderful experience. Having the time invested learning a budget model will pay off for you when you DO upgrade because you will appreciate all the niceties that accompany a good cutter and you will be able to dial in real tight because you had to do that just to get a reasonable job done on the cheaper cutter. Those same efforts on a higher quality cutter will produce awesome results. It's all the same concept, cutting depth, pressure, speed vinyl type, etc. The difference is you can ignore the tracking and once you figure out the settings I have about three minor changes I make depending on the products that I am working on and unless I am doing some minuscule text work I don't even have to pay much attention or worry about the cutter anymore. I throw some vinyl in, load my job in the computer, the program determines if I have wide enough vinyl, I push cut and walk away and come back to cut the roll off when I am ready to start weeding. No more hovering over it every minute or watching to be sure it doesn't run off an edge or worry about it locking up or trying to guess how many copies I can cut without causing a memory glitch or spraying anti-static spray around the cutter. I think you get my point. Heck I even had my laptop crash right in the middle of a huge cut and the cutter had already received the file so it just ignored the fact that the cutting program went offline and finished the job! All I am suggesting is don't short-change yourself. If you aren't able to upgrade to a servo motored machine I don't think it's even worth wasting the precious $$$ unless your current machine is not getting the job done. Of coarse that is just MHO. I'm not knocking the cheaper cutters. I still have fond memories of my P-Cut. Kind of like my first car, a 1972 International Scout. Still have fond memories about it but would I be driving one right now? Oh heck no! If I had unlimited garage space I might hunt it down for pure nostalgia and park it somewhere to threaten my kids with if they get a ticket in their regular car but that's about it. I kept the P-Cut for a few months as "back-up" but ofter a short time I realized it was taking up space and devaluing itself so i sold it on craigslist.

I run mine through quickbooks and if you keep the inventory within the program it keeps track for you pretty good. I use turbo-tax with good results. I try to error on the side of caution so if I am ever audited hopefully they will find the state actually owes me money. <unlikely>