darcshadow

Cool, use it to ring from the grounding string to the ground wire on the stand. They should be electrically connected. If they do ring out then ring from the ground wire, to the 3rd round prong on the power cord. If that rings out, and assuming your house is properly grounded, then you are good as far as that goes I have no idea why static would be biting you. To "ring" something out, most DMMs have a setting that when you touch the two probes together it makes a tone, or rings. Put it on that setting and probe away. If it does not have that setting, set it to measure resistance and measure between the two points. A connection should be 0 ohms ideally. But in this case anything under say 10 ohms should be fine.

What is is grounded to? Maybe you've lost your ground. Edit: I see the photos now. In theory where you have it connected should work. Ideally you would want the ground connection to be to bare metal. Do you by chance have DMM? Most people don't but I'm always surprised how often someone does.

That's a very strong indication that it is static. Is the anti-static string making good connection with the vinyl and a solid ground?

The random start when cutting sounds like a memory corruption. Possibly not all the memory was purged when it completed the cut and when the command to start a new cut was sent there was still something from the last job in the memory and it gets confused. My guess is the command to move the cutter head back to the start, or advance after cut, is likely a single command and not a specific coordinate command. If that is the case it sounds like the cutter does not recognize that command. Different software/driver could possibly fix that. Although with the MHs it's best to reset, or even power off and back on to clear the memory and ensure you get a good cut. The version of windows you're running can have an effect as well. I was using windows 7 with no problems, upgraded to windows 11 and the cutter would behave like you're describing with the random cuts if I tried to cut two designs in a row. I just power cycled it after each cut and eventually upgraded to a used Graphtec. Night and day difference.

I've never done this type of print/cut but have double checked the cutter calibration? If you design a 5" square, does it cut a 5" square?

How about you do it in reverse? Cover the entire sign in the reflective vinyl then negative weed the white.

If it was working fine before the computer crash then it's unlikely to be a problem with the cutter and more likely an adjustment in the software some place. Have you recalibrated your software, does say a 4" square truly come out at 4"?

That was my thinking as well. But the whole process is so much faster and easier with a higher end cutter. I was like you, and completely understand your stance. Until you experience a good cutter it's hard to comprehend how much better they can be. Engineer here as well, and I too hate throwing stuff out that I know should be a simple fix. Best of luck, just don't throw too much money at it.

And at $100, I'd look at a new/new to you cutter. You can find some pretty good used cutters pretty cheap. I'd read on here for years people talking about how much better higher end cutters are and I always thought how much of a difference could there really be. I'm here to say, there is a huge difference. I went to a graphtec I found used and it was night and day difference. Detail designs were no longer a fight to weed. Thicker stuff like glitter cut amazingly well. I did a design on the MH and weeding took me over an hour because of the glitter vinyl I hated working with glitter vinyl. Same design with the graphtec and I was done in like 5 min. I couldn't believe it. Don't be afraid to walk away from the MH and get something better. From what I've heard, even the SC is a big step up from the MH.

You can't, photos are not made up of nodes. You can only node edit vector files. If you have a photo, you can vectorize it, and then edit the nodes. What software are you using?

I don't have that cutter but I do use that software. Post the file if you can and I'll take a look at it. Are there multiple colors in the design? If you don't have the settings right, that can cause unexpected results.

I've not been impressed with the Studio program for design. I use Inkscape for design and just use Studio for cutting.

Finally got around to playing with the software. When you type out the text., the box that appears around the text is not the size of the test. It extends above and below. I'm assuming below for lower case letters and above for super script or some sort of punctuation maybe. As far as I know, the only way to get the true size is to convert the text to curves then resize it.

Webpage says it's a Roland compatible blade.

Static would be my guess as well. And to be clear you need to ground the vinyl. Most people accomplish this by grounding the stand. USCutter also sells a grounding kit that basically draps a metal chain across the vinyl to dissipate static.