Wildgoose

DON"T turn your back on the 18 month old hanging out with you as you are building a project.

I bought the cabinet that has no stand and is just a cabinet to control the dust and media. I bought the small 20lb pressurized blaster to use with the cabinet. The bigger cabinet appeared to be a suction type unit. Being unfamiliar I opted for the one my feeble brain could comprehend the best. (also the cheaper option and a little less permanent) I did some more reading tonight and it looks like neither the Alum Oxide or the silicon carbide are considered hazardous by way of silica so that makes me feel better. I think I'll try starting out with a few cheap glass objects to give out for christmas and experiment from there. Hoping the aluminum Oxide will still be able to cut natural river stones and floor tiles so I don't have to mess with different media right off the get go. The sites I read from were unclear. Sounds like it will work but probably take a little more time. Also sounds like as the alum oxide breaks down I can still use the finer product for glass etching and stuff that didn't need the raw cutting power of 70 grit. I'm excited! Love to learn new stuff!

Try this version to see if it will cut it. It's in illustrator version CS5 but last time I was using SCALP it would cut CS5. If it will cut this then that may eliminate any weirdness that may have happened during the trace. Disc Golf trace.ai

Welcome from Idaho. My niece is Sarah Hokom, maybe you have heard of her. LOL I did a few vinyl masks for her last year.

I agree with the crew, double check the depth. You should barely even be able to tell there is a blade sticking out. I sometimes take a flash light and watch from the side at vinyl level as its cutting to be sure that the holder is just barely clearing the top of the vinyl. Looking at the text you cut I would bet your off set if wrong, not sure what that is for the SC model. I would also double check that you are keeping the hold down rollers over the grit rollers on the drive shaft. The text looks really horrible and that is very suspect.

I am definitely going to be wanting to do some stone so I will look for some Silicon Carbide. Thanks Graniteguy, There are four different tips in the kit. I assume going to be using the largest with the 70-80 grit media? Do you screen your media before re-use? Can you even re-use it when you are cutting stone? clhyer- In your opinion do I want to grab a hepa rated dust mask or will a typical particle mask work? I have a good shop vac that I will buy a new filter or and hook it to the cabinet. It's winter so I planned to do this in the garage but maybe I better think about braving the cold ad having a little more air movement around me. I don't want to die of silicosis! Also good tip on the air dryer. I have a pretty good compressor but no air dryer and I can see that would cause issues real quick. I think the HF box comes with a few plastic window protectors but I didn't see any replacement ones for sale in the store.

Ok so I got the bug thanks to you guys and ran out and got a 20lb Harbor Freight unit and the table top blast cabinet. I bought a 20 lb container of aluminum oxide 80 grit media which was about all they had in stock besides some walnut (and some soda blast which looked like you need to convert over to use) Is this aluminum oxide 80 grit going to work for most applications or is it too course? I plan to do a mix of mirrors and glass and hopefully some granite and floor tiles. Some river rocks too. I probably won't be able to get this together and try it out until early next week.

I haven't moved up from CS5 but I don't think anything drastic has changed. On a lot of tracings Illy will have underlaying layers. You may be able to get this to stop by the tracing preset. Look in the live trace menu options (right above the workspace on CS5) after you have traced and see what the preset is. Don't know what your final output is but for vinyl you're usually going to be wanting one color. There are a bunch of presets that will get you close and you can dial in from there with number of colors or threshold and minimum size of the smallest object etc. You can play with these to make changes before you expand it. Once you have expanded the object be sure and look in the layers panel, usually set up on the right hand side. click some of the little pull down triangles and see if you have any objects that don't show any color (in the little preview box). If you find a non colored or white object select it by clicking on the square to the right side of the item in the ;ayers panel and then go to select similar objects which should also be somewhere on the top of your workspace and select "objects with similar fill" and it will select any objects that have no fill or white fill. then just delete them and see if anything bad happened. If no elements you wanted disappeared you should be good to go. (If this goes through I will have posted a pic of my layers panel and one of the similar object selection pull down.)

You are right on track. I just lay it right over the whole window and then either mark the cuts and take it back off or if you're careful you can slip an exacto knife right there in place and slice it. Thats what I usually do. I go ahead and put enough tape on it so the alignment stays straight and carefully cut it in place then your overall look stays in the proper line.

This is great! Makes me feel a little more normal. DON'T forget to reset the zero origin if you rolled your vinyl forward or back or shifted the starting point.

Great job on that mb20. I just had to grab a copy! Thanks!

Alright here is a DO: DO buy your buy your Exacto blades in the hundred pack right here at USCutter! A sharp blade is real nice.

Ouch! I've dome several one at a time but a dozen would hurt the pocket book. Always seems to invoke Murphy's Law when its the last few inches of the color you need.

Your format looks a little different from mine but I would try what Mopar suggested and also see what that "use the sign concept" button does. I actually don't recommend resizing at cut time because if you ever have to replace something or if you screw up an install its real tough to remember what you set things at. I build it to scale every time and if there are multiple sizes for a certain customer I label the file with the size in the file name for distant future use. IF I do resize, in my version I watch the numbers and if I constrain the height I make sure the length number jumps accordingly and I've never had a problem like you are seeing. SignCut has a great support team that responds quickly, If you can't figure it out go to the website and put in a request.

Never know when those could come in handy. Grabbed a copy. Thanks for the link!

Nice tail compilation! I grabbed a copy too! Thank you!

Another trick I have learned is that if you are layering smaller vinyl and need it to be perfect you can pull the transfer and vinyl off the backing and lay it on a piece of parchment paper which is nearly see through and then get it right where you want it. I usually leave a little hanging off one end and once I get it where I like it I tape that end down and slip out the parchment for perfect alignment. I use this with or without registration marks but mostly on smaller >14" designs.

Those are all sweet!

Ya fellow Summa aficionado! My standard blade is actually a 36 deg. I don't know what model you ended up getting but kudos man!

Ya man paper is where its at. Each machine seems to have its own quirks. I ran a P-Cut for a couple years and I couldn't do more than about 8 or 10 copies of anything or it would just freeze up. Also had a lot of static electricity issues like Darcshadow mentioned. Try a Dryer sheet to remove static in the area. I eventually bought a can of static guard spray and would do a shot around the back and under the machine before I cut. That pretty much cured the worst of my craziness.

Welcome from Idaho. This is a great forum and we help each other out. Sounds like you will be a great resource to the forum.

That's a real cool font. Here are some similar fonts, maybe something will work for you. http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/list/classification/script

Isn't Georges Ice Cream over there in Orange Park? I wonder if my pic is still on the wall from 1989.

Ya a lot of CS5 files will be too big especially if they have a raster image in there or even if they were there and were removed it causes a larger file size. Well. For a test run go into AI and write some text and then convert it to outlines by the keystroke shift>control>O (all three together) or shift>command>O on mac. There is also a pull down menu on the top in text where it will give you the options to convert it from that direction too (and shows you the keyboard shortcut). Once you have the text converted save it and it should pull up the first save dialog box where you can name the file and choose the destination then after you do that it will give you a second dialog box where you can choose the file type. It will have CS5 as the default but there is a pull down and choose Illustrator 8. After that it will probably give you a warning about saving in a legacy format but you can ignore the warning. Once you have done these steps go to SignCut and open the file you just made and is should pull it right in. If you can get to that point then you will be over the first hurdle. Continue to give us feedback.

I hate how everything has went to cloud based programs. I lived in the Englewood area for a little while then moved down to Middleburg for a while too. Middleburg was awesome, redneck heaven! I'm from Idaho so I fit right in.