darcshadow

Yes, the help section in VinylMaster is one of the best help menu's I've ever come across. Loads of great information in there.

Regarding the advance after plot, I don't know on yours, but I would assume it behaves the same as mine, be sure to hit the origin button again if you're going to do another cut. If you don't it will try to go back to the origin where the first cut started and either ruin your first cut, or if you cut off your vinyl, it'll feed back, unloading the vinyl and then cut the cutting strip.

Contour cutting is typically used with printed decals so unless you're printing and cutting you'll likely never use contour cutting. Between the MH and the SC2, go with the SC2, or if it's in your budget go for the Titan. I have an MH and while it can be made to work ok for a hobbiest, it is a lot of work to get it to cut well and not suited for any sort of business. The one plus side to start with a MH, you will learn all the little things that need to be adjusted and monitored for the perfect cut. Higher end machines just work. Neither of these machines are designed to cut card stock. If that is what you're wanting you should look more at the craft cutters such as the cricut and the cameo. As for size, that just depends on what you plan to do with the cutter. 24" vinyl rolls are pretty common and often time large designs can be broken down so that they can be cut on a 24" roll and then pieced back together. However if you're going to be doing large designs often then it would be faster and easier to cut the full design on a large cutter.

Regarding the auto-weed stuff, turn it on and take a look at the preview to decide if it would be of any use to you or not. Typically I find the auto weed does not help me much, but I often times manually add weed lines to make weeding easier. The auto weed text can be pretty helpful if you leave the text as text. Typically I convert my text to curves for one reason or another so then the auto weed text doesn't work for me.

Yeah, I've found for me 120 is about as fast as I can go and still get good cuts. I'll slow it down if I have a overly complex design. Yes, Pressure and speed are both control on the cutter. I forget the name of the button, the second from the left, think it's labeled as pause or something, press that and you'll get the menu option for setting speed and pressure. The up/down arrows adjust one, the left/right arrows adjust the other.

Weird that it keeps going back to that corner, but it kind of looks like your blade is not picking up. When you turn the cutter on, does the blade lift up?

you have to be careful with DXF files, they don't always come out correct. Complex designs can loose odd details.

If the eps files can't be saved so that all the lines are actually connected, you might try the plot to PDF. The fact that it says plot would indicate to me it is "drawing" the PDF and therefor the lines might be connected.

How about if you cut a 1" square, is it exactly 1" on each side?

From your screen shot, it appears your computer has a comm port, have you looked on the back of your computer for a 9-pin sub D connector? If you have one, there is no need to use the usb adapter, you can plug directly into the computer through the comm port.

As a MH owner I can attest they are not a very good cutter, however, they can be tweaked to cut pretty decent for a hobbyist. Software will not help with your problem of cutting funny or vinyl slipping. The only way software can help the cutter is if the software has the ability to set blade offset and over cut. Adjusting blade offset will square up the corners and adding a bit of over cut will ensure cuts close completely. I suggest we pick one problem to start with and trouble shoot it, then move on to the next one. Setting blade depth, speed, and pressure will be the first steps to getting the cut right. On mine I have my speed set to 120 and pressure to 70.

One thing to be careful with if you do that, vinyl stretches easier than you'd think so take care pealing the vinyl off the backing.

Bit late to the party but congrats on getting things up and running. SignBlazer is dated true, but it is a very good program and you can't complain about the cost. Be sure to check out the library in SignBlazer, tons of great graphics in there. SignBlazer is great for basic designs and sign layouts but if you want to get into more complicated designs and graphics you're going to need something else. I like Inkscape, it is a very powerful free vector program. Just something to keep in the back of your mind, right now stick with SignBlazer and get your feet wet in the world of vector graphics.

I know a guy who was doing the food delivery thing, got into an accident and his insurance wouldn't cover it because he was "working" and the delivery company didn't cover him cause it was his car. So now he's basically out a car.

Well by simple I meant not a design like flames or tribal or something. The knifeless tape you put on like pin striping so you'd have to do it by eye, but in many cases putting pin stripe on by eye can be easier than trying to computer cut the compound curve. It's just another way of doing the same thing and a different tool in your tool box. Might be worth getting some and playing around with. Some jobs it can be much easier/faster, other jobs, pre cut is the way to go.

If you're just doing simple straight line stripes, you might have an easier time using wrap vinyl and knifeless tape. You put the tape on kind of like pin striping, then the vinyl on over, then pull the tape up and it cuts the vinyl. No application tape needed.

As a owner of a MH, I can agree that it's best to skip it and go to SC or better. Not saying the MH can't be made to work, but it takes quite a bit of tweaking and fine tuning to get it to cut well and it'll never cut as good as the higher end machines. Also, while the startup kit deals are attractive, in general they are not worth it. Just get the cutter you want, some app tape, and a few colors to start and you can figure out what else you need/want as you go along. There are a lot of tools that are nice to have but often times you can made do with stuff from around the house.

Found this but the specifications sheet says"Plotting needs to be tested as this is a laminated product". They offer free 5"x7" samples. Might be worth a try. https://www.decorativefilm.com/plain-frosted-colors

Signblazer is free and works well with the mh. Inkscape is also free and can be used with the mh. Although setting it up does require a little more computer comms understanding.

I'm pretty sure tint places just hand cut the stuff slightly larger than the window then put it on and trim to exact size by hand.

If you want to get your feet wet with software you can download Inkscape for free and give it a go. It's a very powerful free vector program. Vector graphics are one of the biggest hitches people new to the field have getting their head around. Understanding vector graphics is about half the battle in learning to use a cutter.

Yeah

Inkscape does a nice job, Vinyl Master is also quite good. As for work after, that depends on how good of an image you have to start with as well as various settingn in the vectoring software.

Are you wanting to print on paper and contour cut that? Or print on vinyl? With the software, and manually aligning your cutter you can do it, although not as easy as other machines. If you're wanting to cut paper you'll need a carrier sheet and I don't know how well any of them work with paper.

I believe how the eps is saved has an effect. I have SageThumbs on my windows 7 machine and I can see about half of my eps files as thumbnails. I seem to recall seeing someplace an option to save with or without a thumbnail in some program but I don't recall which one.