darcshadow

Is this what you're after? The trace is really ruff, but i did it all in Inkscape in about a minute.

I suggest Inkscape. It's a great free editor. Working with vectors does take a while to wrap your head around but once you get the hang of it I think Inkscape is pretty intuitive. The other big design programs are Adobe Illustrator, and Coral Draw. Both are extremely powerful but also rather pricey. You can also upgrade VM, a bit cheaper and it is a pretty good design program as well although it does things different enough from Inkscape that I still struggle at times trying to do what I think should be really simple. Not that VM can't do it, it just does it in a different way from what I'm use to.

I just noticed you have VM Cut, not sure if it has the ability to do this. I'd suggest downloading Inkscape, it's a very powerful free vector editing program. You can easily add an outline and get the desired result. To make it cut ready you would need to duplicate the black part of the design, add a stroke to the duplicated part, convert the stroke to a path, then subtract the new path from the grey. Union everything together and you'll be ready to cut. Save the file as an EPS, import it into VM Cut and cut away. note: you can also do a copy and paste directly from Inkscape to VM however the size will not be correct and you'll need to adjust the scale to the size you want.

Put a white outline around the black then punch that outline through the grey.

Also be aware that multi colored images are not always cut ready and you could have several layers of color on top of each other. Layering vinyl is ok, but the more layers you have the stiffer it will be.

The offset in the spooler image shouldn't have any effect on where the cutter cuts. You should be set your design space to the same size as your paper, center your design in your design space then pen right at the corner of the paper and turn on absolute position. Then it's just a matter of making sure you get your paper loaded straight and you should be good to go.

Inkscape is a great program once you learn how to use it. It can pretty much do everything you would need except cut. I do all my designing in Inkscape, get it laid out the way I want to cut, then save it and an EPS. Then open my cutting software, Vinyl Master usually, import the EPS file I just created and cut. You can put as many raster images into a file as you want in Inkscape, but you can only vector one at a time. So if you want to load them all into your design, that's fine, you then just need to select one, vector it, select the next one and vector it, and repeat as necessary. Also be aware, when you vector an image in Inkscape, the raster image is still there so you will need to move the vector image out of the way and delete the raster image.

The real question is what do you want to do. That will determine what you should get.

I've not looked into this further, but be warned, even this may not result in smooth curves. If you want truely smooth curves in your files you'll have to design in a vector program, not a cad program. If you're designing everything to scale you probably won't have any issues, but if you design something that has a circle say 1" in diameter and then want to scale that up to cut it to say 10" diameter, the tiny lines that made up the circle will now likely be long enough that you'll notice the circle is not a circle, but rather an n sided polygon.

Your plotter will never show up as a printer. Fusion 360 can not natively export to SVG, but it can be done with a plug in. https://www.instructables.com/Export-a-SVG-File-in-Fusion-360/

And to answer the first question, according to the LP Manual it can use DM-PL or HP/GL and it automatically identifies what is being used.

dxf files are not ideal for vinyl cutting. They don't actually have curved lines, the "curves" are just short segments, and often times lines are not connected so the blade lifts and drops at the start/end of each little segment. DXF can work, but if you can save off as an EPS you're life will be much easier.

Scrap the hoodie and get another one. Just not worth the time and effort or cost of the stuff to remove it.

Looks like CoCut Pro should work for you no matter what you decide, just a matter of setting it up for the cutter. If you can't figure that out, SignBlazer is a pretty decent cutting/design program and is free. Search the forums, there are links to where it can be downloaded from. The other popular program on here is Vinyl Master. Since you already use Corel for creating your images all you would need would be Vinyl Master Cut. It has limited design features but all the cut features you would need.

I think you'll find force doesn't matter match between materials so long as blade setting is correct. And speed will be more determined by the design your cutting rather than the material. Some on here run their cutter as fast as possible, others run it slow. I prefer slow, it typically does a better job and is not as hard on the machine.

Looks like the background is mostly gone already. Pick your fav. image editing app and just delete what you don't want. Converting that to a vector and cutting in vinyl is not going to be easy, or come out well, I'd suggest a laser. Using some tracking paper and getting a better image to start with might be a good idea too. A slightly thicker pin line wouldn't hurt either.

The null modem cable should be what you were using originally. Rather than plugging it into the serial port of your computer you'll be plugging it into the serial port of the adapter.

The thread is full of them. Replace motherboard, replace damaged USB port, use Tripp-Lite usb-2-serial adapter.

And actually you don't even have to group them, just select everything and resize. Grouping can be very handing through and can help prevent accidently moving a part.

I find the best way to learn something like this is to just start playing with it and then google how to do something when I hit a road block. Just can't be afraid to try stuff. There's not much you can do wrong to damage anything.

Unless the decal is on something that is going to have lots of contact, like on a table surface or something, there's not much need to clearcoat them.

All three of those are good and it can't hurt to learn how to use different software but from what I understand AI and Corel do things very differently and if you learn one, picking the other up can be a challenge. I use Inkscape and for a free program, it's extremely powerful.

Turn your head. Top/Bottom/Left/Right, they are all relative. You just have to change the way you think of orientation. Most software has the option to rotate a design 90 when it's sent to the cutter, that might make it cut to the orientation you have in your head but in reality, as long as it fits on your vinyl it really doesn't matter.

If you push the test button on the cutter what happens? What software are you using? What OS, windows xp, 7, 8, 10, etc? Are you connected through USB or serial?

Are you using the USB connection or serial? If USB, try serial. Assuming the computer does not have a serial port you'll need a USB-2-serial adapter, get the one from Tripp-lite. You'll also need a null modem cable, one should have came with the cutter, if not they are pretty cheap. If you use the serial option, you won't need a driver for the cutter. However, given that the screen seems fried you may have multiple issues and the computer may not be the only problem.