Wildgoose

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Posts posted by Wildgoose

  1. Posted

    hotrodz0321 my biggest advice is have a good tax accountant help you stay out in front of the tax burden. You will probably see a significant jump in earned income through your new venture. Also if you have not been collecting sales tax (assuming your state does that like most) be prepared to toe the line.  I almost went down the first year I got some big contracts. With new equipment purchases you have a great write-off but after this tax season you may find yourself surprised how much money uncle sam takes if you don't have significant purchses to write off next year set some money aside. Most tax accountants can work you a forecast and you can and should pay quarterly estimates if it will be a lot of money. Not sure what Florida tax laws are like so gettting some sound advice from a good tax man would be smart. 

    I can't give you much help on the printer. I've talked myself out of them several times just due to the need to keep them busy. My business model has shifted away from sign vinyl and I do primarily aparrel work now so the need for a printer has dropped.

    • Like 2

  3. Posted

    I tend to favor higher tack. There isn't many things more frustrating than trying to do an install and having some of the letters stay on the carrier. Or worse PART of a letter and having it get stretched or ruined.  If they are sizeable they will be hinging and installing in place somewhere. 751 transfers pretty good but I still sometimes fight an odd peice here and there. Maybe a greasy hand print on my part when weeding who knows. 

    That being said, if it's going on interiror walls all bets are off. LOL

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    Try some parchment paper, neatly trimmed. I'm slightly confused by the question since it's HTV rather than regular adhesive vinyl and am assuming you want to protect the sticky carrier around the edges so it doesn't collect dust bunnies. I do enough install that I just save two used backings and place them face to face to create a base and then stack on it. I do NOT sell to others for them to install so a bit different application.  In fact I save most of my larger carriers for later use as weeding sheets to collect small weeded pieces. You could ostensibly even ship it un-weeded and let the buyer do some of the time eating work. just a thought. 

  7. Posted

    Excelent point haumana. The new chip is an issue for sure. I upgraded my imac last winter and my old hard copy of Illustrator CS5 became an issue.  Even updating my old 2010 imac when I put a new HD in it had started to cause some program crashes in AI when scrolling through fonts. That's the price of progress I guess. I ended up biting the bullet and joining the darth vader team and now have an Illustrator subscription. It was nice not having a payment but the new digs are kind of handy because I CAN now run on multiple computers so I can save work from my home workstation onto the cloud and keep going at my day job if I need to. Or just use my AI skills to amaze my co-workers in the construction industry LOL. It blows their minds when I open a PDF set of drawings and make all sorts of notes and resave it and send it back to the dude that drew it. Tons of fun. 

    Anyway your point that the M1 will probably come into play is a very important one that may kill off a few options out there. 

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    On 12/14/2021 at 9:02 PM, BrianSal05 said:

    Hi, recently mi mom's old computer died because of a motherboard failure and instead of trying and build her a new pc, I convinced her to buy one of the new Mac's.

    I been having trouble setting her back up, because the software we use to cut VinylMaster Cut is not available on Mac. Looking at this forum user haumana says he runs his cutters on a m1 mac with parallels and win10, I wanted to know if someone has more experience running it like this and a maybe even a tutorial for drivers and such idk if it would require any extra steps. This is the option I been considering the most. 

    Also if someone has any insight if Sure Cuts A Lot  works fine with the new Mac's or how have people been running their cutters in this new Mac's. And if someone has experience with the bridge version of the software as a illustrator plug in, sounds interesting.

    Some other info: 

    - Software is only used to cut, all design is done in Illustrator.

    - Cutter is a LaserPoint II.

    - Plotter connected on a USB-C dongle.

    - Mac in question is the 24 inch Mac.

    Thanks in advance. 

    I run on a mac. I have zero experience running parallels or any other conversion so can't help that way at all. I made the moveto get away from that platform for a reason. My best advice would be either switch to a mac friendly platform for cutting or just pick up an old windows laptop for just the cutting and still do most of your efforts on the mac. I actually have SignCut Pro 1 (the original old version) and it is just a cutting utility and is cross platform compatible. They have a newer version out now that also does some design. Oddly, I ended up settling in and doing my design on my iMac and then I just transfer the file to a thumb and go cut it on an old windows 7 laptop that I keep Quickbooks on. (because quick books does not make a good version for mac which sucks) In your case the old laptop may be the cheapest route to get going IF you can't figure out the parralells angle (I have no idea what expenses running parralels entails either). There are a few other mac compatible cutting utilities. I looked at them at the time I switched and like the SignCut Pro the best. It's not cheap so if this is for hobby cutting then it may not make sense. I like SC Pro because if my pc laptop fails I can roll the cutter over and plug into the mac and I'm back in action. I don't know of another program that will run on both. I bought the lifetime dongle for Pro1. I don't know if that is even offered anymore and I don't know if the new Pro 2 is even available as a lifetime program , they may have joinded the dark side and went subscription only. 

    Good luck and hope you have success. 

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    There are a couple brands that may be ok with thermal printing. I have went back and forth on buying a DC5SX myself but we live in such a dusty environment that I keep side stepping it. Plus being maxed out on production as well.  I found a product that was ok to use the thermal printer but I can't find what it was. It MIGHT have been Thermoflex.   Siser Colorprint PU gloss MIGHT work and I was planning on trying it out just to see what happened if I made the leap on the printer. They don't claim it will work but I'd love you to try in and chime back in with any information. :lol: Lots of MIGHT's in there.  

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    On 12/9/2021 at 2:44 PM, Dragonomine said:

    I've been purchasing my Siser Easyweed Stretch from USCutter for years.  I decided to try a different vendor because they offer free shipping.  I ordered red from the other vendor and when it came today it was a completely different color than what I usually got.  

    I went to check my order history but it only goes back so far.  Maybe I have been ordering the bright red instead of the red?  All I know is I need to order and now I'm not sure what I've been ordering.  Am I right or am I losing my mind?  Here is the difference between the reds.  The  red on the right is what I've been getting from USCutter

    red htv.jfif

    Regular red Siser is red front and back. Bright red is white on the glue side. Both are available in stretch. Most of the time when people ask for red the bright red is what they had in mind. only a handful of times has someone wanted the plain old red. I still use both when the choice is up to me but bright red pops better especially on colored apparel. 

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    1 hour ago, Guest newme said:

    what is the other way so i can use the AnyCut V3.5 vinyl cutting plotter

    i purchased a plotter but he didn't deactivate the software to his computer and he uninstall it and the problem he cannot see the computer number so i can deactivate on my own

    anyone can help me 

     

    I don't know. It gets sticky when you aren't the original owner. A lot of this kind of software is not transferable to another person. The developer would assume you don't have permissions to use it, and probably be correct by their terms and conditions. People sell their programs often but it's pretty much buyer beware. I have not investigated VinylMaster to see what their policy is.  

  15. Posted

    On 10/30/2021 at 12:10 PM, storm2313 said:

    I figured out the issue. When in doubt reinstall VM, and install your new cutter upon it asking you when going over adding your cutter.

     

     

    Glad you got it running. I keep wanting to upgrade my old Summa to a T series but I haven't made the leap yet. Always seem to have other things that I need worse. That's the problem with the Summa, It just keeps running and running so it's a want rather than a need. 

  16. Posted

    haumana is awesome with the Mac tech. I hate windows but DO have an older windows 7 laptop that I do my books on and usually run my cutter. Most of my design work is on an iMac but for simplicity I transfer my cut files via a thumb drive over and cut on the laptop. This is as much because I don't have the cutter near my design work station as anything. I use Illustrator for design but use SignCut Pro 1 as my cutter interface. I chose it because if you buy a lifetime dongle you can run It on Mac OR pc. Super handy. It's not cheap so if you are just starting out it may not be worth it but I love it. It has plug-ins for several design programs (not Canvas I'm sure) but I prefer to just open a cut ready file with the program itself. It will cut from several vector options including svg. 

    Not trying to sell you on it but if you are considering spending any kind of money it might be worth doing the free trial. They offer a week free I believe. The old Pro 1 version I use is about obsolete and I don't know much about the new version but I see it has some design capability whereas Pro 1 is strictly an interface, but oh so sweet with all the bells and whistles like nesting and weeding lines etc. They also have real live tech help which NO ONE else gives to my knowledge. 

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    I have learned to be very precise when I do a final clean-up cut after applying the app tape. I use one of the see through craft ruler (Fiskars) and I cut as straight and square as possible. I usually try to use a common offset like a half inch around each side. (enough to be able to hinge without overlapping the vinyl with my masking tape.  I have found that being able to use the outside of the masked decal to align with is easier than trying to see through the app tape and figure out if it's hanging straight or not. Having a nice square decal works wonders on simple things like flat glass and signage.

    If it's going on a car, keeping it looking straight is a whole other art form with all the wild body lines these days. I usually find a window or door bottom or something like that to match and hope for the best.  

    Another worthy piece of newbie advice... go find an Auto Paint & Glass supply store and splurge on some PG grade masking tape.(3/4" or 1")  I'm pretty sure the PG stands for Professional Grade. It adheres about 10 times better than the regular stuff you get at normal stores. It also comes off clean without leaving residue. It's not cheap but you'll use less and when the wind catches an edge and tries to take off with your work about the time you have the backing off it just may save your day. 

    • Like 2

  18. Posted

    On 10/31/2021 at 3:26 PM, Worble7 said:

    I went back and downloaded ver. 2.90 has the reg marks put them in and it worked great. Now why would they change this is my question?? Thanks everyone for your help. Jeff

    Done!!!!.jpg

    Ha ha. Probably an "oh crap" moment where someone realized theyd forgotten it. 

    Back to the original info. I have a couple programs that will addd thse registration marks like you did here. I still don't use them because they don't always put them where I want them. I still make mine manually and add them to the design in the same spot and each with the colors that associate. Still a good skill to learn, it may help you one day. I don't know the graphtec studio program but there SHOULD be a way to copy an object or group of them (your home made registration marks) and then paste them in place so that they are pasted back into the design right on top of the very copy you made. You then change the color of the new set that are on top of the originals and you now have built in registration marks. 

  19. Posted

    First I suggest joining the forum so you don't have to wait for each post to be approved.

    I have a D75R. Congrats on the T series, I am jealous, seriously. I don't print and therefore don't do much OPUS contour cutting but have played around some when I got the machine so I'd be at least a little familiar with it. I am not sure exactly how VM Expert will interact with the Summa. I recommend putting in a support ticket with them and probably one with Summa. You should have received the free basic cutting utility WinPlot with your cutter. I had good success using the OPUS with WinPlot although I did not care for the interface and I also run on Mac so I went a different way and have used SignCut Pro. Even in SignCut Pro I seem to remember there being some roadblocks with the OPUS and I ended up just building the file and sending it through Winplot on my windows laptop. I am pretty sure that had I really needed to use it I could have found whatever skullduggery was causing the glitch and you should be able to with VM Expert. The Summa support team is awesome (and Live) and they may have some experience on their end. If memory serves me I believe the problem I was having was related to SignCut not adding the OPUS registration marks appropriately and therefore the cutter didn't like them. 

    I don't know if I've helped you much but good luck and when you find some answers please do future searchers a solid and report them back on this thread so it will help the next guy. 

  20. Posted

    Back to copy paste... You do that part in the design phase before you ever send it to the cut menu. Essentially the marks you place to use as registration marks are part of the design and they just need to all stack up in the same place. As Mike said copy the black ones and then paste them in the same spot you copied them from and change the color to match the gold or whatever color you have going next. Once you have them all in there when you ARE over in the cut menu and select a color they will show up with each color of your design. 

    • Like 1

  21. Posted

    14 hours ago, MZ SKEETER said:

      Don't know what could have happened. You can still use any other type of shape as a registration mark.  Star, circle etc.   Place them where you want. 

    This is what I do. I like a diamond or a triangle shape. I place them where I want them and then group and copy paste them on top of one another in each color layer so they are all on the same spot on the design. 

    • Like 2

  24. Posted

    On 10/2/2021 at 9:37 PM, Helmut said:

    I know this is an old post and the original poster hasn't logged in since February 20th, but this may be helpful to future readers. Concerning the Prismcut not reading the registration marks and stopping short of the third registration mark, I believe it's a lighting issue since this cutter uses a camera to read the registration marks. Make sure the RGB lights are off and turn on the camera light and it should read the registration marks just fine. As for the second question, if I'm understanding the question, the OP wanted to contour cut in the landscape mode instead of the portrait mode. If this is correct, then all one needs to do is to click on the "properties" tab and go into "print setup" and just change to landscape mode. Once you click "OK", you will see the page has turned sideways and you're now in the "landscape" mode.

    Good to see some helpful input on the Prism Cut. They are fairly new to the forum and not a lot of users yet so your help is appreciated (or will be by someone)

  25. Posted

    17 hours ago, Breed445 said:

    That is exactly what I was looing for . Thank you so much!

    Hopefully you got it figured out. It is also often helpful to look at your design in "wire frame" mode. All vector design programs have this view option.  What you see in wire frame is what your cutter see's. The colors you choose to fill different objects lets your cutting software determine and separate out multiple color projects and send just the specific group to the cutter. (All the red, all the green etc...) Your cutter just follows along the paths that are sent. 

    Good luck and if you still have issues post a screen shot of what you go going on. (no copyright protected items please) It's easier to help if we can see the problem.