darcshadow

I've not looked too closely, but I believe the spooler files are just the cut info, not the actual design that you could go back and edit. You should be saving your designs as you create them, the spooler is just for a quick redo of a cut and not intended to be long term storage.

No, it's an inside thing.

If possible you'd be doing yourself a favor to get away from the dxf file format. Several cutting programs can open them, but they never seem to work as well as an eps. dxf files seem to have disconnected nodes quite often, so while it looks good on the screen, the cutter is lifting and dropping the blade unnecessarily and you can end up with cuts that have a lot of points still connected.

I have a little treasure box for my boy that I put a map decal then polyurethane over. It has held up well.

If it's ripping the backing paper I would guess you are cutting too deep. Follow Mz Skeeter's instructions for setting the blade depth, posted a few hundred times here, then if you're still having issues it's likely a process problem.

No, but it doesn't have a specific area to keep the roller out of and it's right in the middle where you would think would be a good spot for a roller. Either do not use the middle roller, or be sure it is actually over the grit roller and not in the "dead zone".

The solenoid doesn't control how deep the cut is, it controls the pressure applied to the blade. The length of blade sticking out of the blade holder controls how deep the cut is.

Reflective stuff and heat transfer gets weird. You'd think it'd reflect the light and keep things cooler, and it does to some degree, however, it also reflects the heat inside the car, back into the car. Where as black while it does get hot in the sun, it does not reflect the heat in the car back into the car, so black can actually result in cooler interiors.

Reminds me of Captain Dave from The Bob and Tom Show. "Arrr cheese sandwiches 8 bucks, 20s and 50s only. NO change!"

You actually have two options in Inkscape now. There is a plot function that is built into Inkscape, and there is InkCut, which is a separate program that can be integrated into Inkscape. The instructions to install InkCut on windows are not very clear but I was able to get it setup over the weekend. I didn't try to actually cut anything with it but first impressions of it, it felt rather clunky. But it's one of only 2 free cutting programs I know of, SB being the other, so can't complain too much.

Hmm, I might have to look into Inkcut more. Last time I looked at it, it was a linux only thing.

True cut programs such as VM have extra function like auto weed boxes, auto weed text, nice graphical representations of what is to be cut and the orientation of the cut on the plotter/vinyl, cut by color, are just a few. All this can be done by changing the design and therfore you can do it all in Inkscape, but a true cutting program can make things quite a bit easier and faster. For a hobbiest, Inkscape works for me but I'm not running a business and have time to play with settings and break images down to cut the way I want. Sounds like for what your wanting to do Inkscape will work as well. Getting it all setup initially can take some doing to figure it out and understand what is going on, but once it's done, it's not hard to cut from Inkscape. It took me awhile to wrap my head around how the orientation setting of the plot option was working. Once I figured that out, I made a temp. cut file with the page size set to the width of my vinyl and the "home" corner marked. Then when I do a design I copy and past it into my temp cut file so I don't have any confusion on how it's going to layout on the vinyl when cutting. One other oddity of Inkscape, is it will NOT cut text. Text has to be converted to paths before Inkscape will "see" them and cut them.

I'm that one person. As Skeeter said, I do it as a hobby and have a lowly MH cutter. I started using Inkscape for cutting because it was the only free software I could find that allowed me to add a bit of over cut. I had been using Signblazer which worked great but did not offer any overcut and the MH really needs a bit of overcut to work well. That being said, yes, pretty much any cutter that uses HPGL and a serial port. Inkscape can send a cut file to it. It's not ideal, and not something I would try to setup for a makerspace as it's not very intuitive to someone not familiar with how cutters and Inkscape works. Best bet is as skeeter suggested, using Inkscape, or any design program really, save the design off as an eps and import it to the cutting software that comes with the vinyl cutter.

Be sure the proportionally lock icon is set to lock.

ah. cool. My suggestion then, if wanting to stay cheap, ie free, would be to go with Inkscape and Signblazer.