darcshadow

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Everything posted by darcshadow

  1. darcshadow

    How can i get these designs out of this picture?

    Looks good. For future reference, if you can identify and find the font, recreating text is always better than tracing. And the design in that graphic would be easy enough to recreate as well. Someone that uses VM will have to chime in, but I'm sure VM has a bezier equivalent tool.
  2. darcshadow

    How can i get these designs out of this picture?

    When you resize, select just one of the purple shapes at a time. Here is the tail gate with the puzzle traced in yellow. I then copied both the purple and yellow, moved them up, and resized to 72x24. truck.svg
  3. darcshadow

    How can i get these designs out of this picture?

    Size is just the size of the original picture. When changing the size be sure you have the aspect ratio locked so that it scales both the width and the height. You'll want to copy copy or move the vector up or over so that's it's not on top of the raster.
  4. darcshadow

    How can i get these designs out of this picture?

    A manual trace would be the best way. Open the image in your editor of choice and use the bezier tool to draw the design over the top of the image. Here's a start, I've manually traced the purple part, took about 5 min. truck.svg
  5. darcshadow

    Plotter Cutter Letter Shifts

    Is it only letters that it does this to? Have you tried converting the text to paths/curves before sending to the plotter?
  6. That's the key, having something in the trace that is a known size then it's a simple matter of scaling the vector. SB has a great feature for this where you draw a line on the portion of the graphic that you know the size of, enter the size and bam, you've got your image sized correctly.
  7. darcshadow

    What to stock?

    While getting product to the customer faster is always better, they are ordering custom shirts and a reasonable lead time should be expected. I know if I were to order a one off, I'd wouldn't expect it to get shipped for probably a week. And if you get busy enough, you can place the order for shirts, and by the time you get all the orders ahead of it done the shirts you ordered will have arrived. Ah, the benefits of being too busy. lol
  8. darcshadow

    My Vinyl doesnt like sticking to the backing, if replaced

    It's usually called something like "extra weed lines". The guys that use VM should be able to tell you where to find it easily.
  9. darcshadow

    Okay about to do first shirt any advice

    I know that is what was asked for, but to me, that looks like it might be a bit on the wide side and the names will be wrapping around to the sides when the shirt is worn. For your own personal experience, ask for a photo of the kids wearing them so you can get a feel for how something looks laying flat, vs how it looks while worn.
  10. There should be multiple ways to accomplish this. I don't know VM but I can tell you what to look for. Option 1: You can node edit the image and delete all nodes you don't want. Option 2: Most programs allow you to break apart or separate an image. You will then be able to delete the parts you don't want. In Inkscape the tool is called break apart under the path menu. Option 3: As you said, draw a box around what you want to keep and use a tool keeps the intersection of the two objects. In Inkscape the tool is called Intersection located under the path menu
  11. darcshadow

    My Vinyl doesnt like sticking to the backing, if replaced

    Some cutting software has settings that will add extra cuts like this automatically to make weeding easier.
  12. darcshadow

    Help with cuts not being completed

    I just happened to post about over cut and blade offset just the other day. See the referenced post for examples of over cut settings.
  13. darcshadow

    My Vinyl doesnt like sticking to the backing, if replaced

    I'm not clear what you were doing with the packing tape, but in regards to sticking vinyl back onto the backing paper, yeah, that will never stick as well as before. The idea of the backing paper is that vinyl doesn't stick to it. I have had to do as you describe though, messed up a small part of a design so rather than cut the whole design just cut what I need. So long as you're not waving the backing paper around after you lay the vinyl on it, the vinyl should stay put well enough to get your transfer tape applied. I've actually built multi colored decals like that. I cut the entire design in one color, weeded out everything except that color, then cut the other colored parts and using the slight impression left on the backing paper from the first cut used them to line up the other pieces. This way I was able to get a multi color design that was a uniform thickness.
  14. darcshadow

    How much pressure do you cut with?

    The blade offset is to account for the fact that the point of the blade is not actually in the center of the holder. To test if an adjustment is needed cut a a simple square, look closely at the corners and compare them to the image below. Overcut is how far past the start top point the blade will travel when completing a cut. The value cutters will not always complete a cut, the overcut setting compensates for this by traveling the specified distance extra to ensure that the start and stop points meet or overlap. Advance after plot is a nice option, it simply advances the vinyl out so that you can easily cut it off. Not sure about the SC, but I know the MH when it does this, the origin does not change. So unless you reset the origin the cutter will back up the vinyl, and since you've cut it off, the vinyl will fall out of the machine and the blade will cut into the cutting strip.
  15. darcshadow

    HTV Settings for SC2

    I don't have an SC, but I'm pretty sure you should be able to cut pretty small scraps with no problems. Just needs to be big enough that the rollers can hang onto it through the whole cut.
  16. darcshadow

    HTV Settings for SC2

    Two obvious things to check, blade exposure and pinch rollers. Make sure you have the pinch rollers position over the ruff part of the lower roller. If it's not, or it's on a smooth part it'll cause problems as you're describing. Follow Ms Skeeter's instructions for setting blade depth and pressure. Speed settings start slow and step it up till you're not happy with the cut results then slow it back down one step. More detailed designs usually should be cut at a slower speed.
  17. darcshadow

    how to cut multi colors with VM? Help

    Sorry, can't help there. Don't know anything about VM. There are flag vectors all over the place though so I'd suggest looking for a vector to start with. Tracing a flag image is not going to produce great results, the stars will not have crisp sharp points and the edges of the colors will be rounded a bit. On laying vinyls, get some parchment paper. Apply your application tape to the top layer, then peal the design off the backing, lay the parchment paper down over the background, lay the vinyl and app tape on top of the parchment paper. Slide it around to get it to line up just right then just slide the parchment paper out. A light box is also very helpful.
  18. darcshadow

    how to cut multi colors with VM? Help

    Something like this? Not sure the terms used in VM, but in Inkscape, I simply put the cow image on top of the flag, duplicated the cow twice so that I had 3 copies of the cow, then did an intersection merge with the each of the cows and each color. So pick a cow and red and do an intersection and you're left with just the red part of the cow. Select another of the cow copies do it with blue and again finally with white, or you could just make the full cow white and move it behind the red and blue.
  19. You could just cut the individual colored puzzle pieces then put the puzzle together.
  20. darcshadow

    SCALP help!

    You only want white and black? If you add some color this looks pretty good I think.
  21. darcshadow

    crazy question about how the decals are cut?

    Yeah, Union and Weld are the same thing, just different terms for different programs. The purpose of welding is so when you have things overlapping it still cuts as you want. For example if you draw two rectangles and have them cross each other to create a cross what you see on screen will look like an X. But if you do a preview you'd see the two rectangles crossing each other so that when it cuts you'd have a square in the middle. So when you weld it and cut it, you'll get the X that you intended.
  22. darcshadow

    crazy question about how the decals are cut?

    Yeah, I don't weld till ready to cut and often times I'll duplicate the image and weld it so that I have a welded copy and an unwelded copy that way if I need to go back and make changes later it can be done easily.
  23. darcshadow

    Store Front Pricing question

    Could be a ordnance thing. I know around parts of town here you're not allowed to cover more than a certain percentage of the store front window.
  24. darcshadow

    crazy question about how the decals are cut?

    Correct, the preview will show you the path that the blade will take. If you look closely at the S in your first photo and this last one you'll notice there is no longer a line going through the middle of the little loop on the left side, that is a result of the weld. Had you not welded the image the cutter would have cut a line through it and made a mess out of it. One other note, depending on how big you're making this design, that font may not turn out well. You have some very thin lines so unless you're cutting the font pretty big the sliver of vinyl may be too small and not cut well, or if it does, may not stick well when applied. You'll have to play around with your cutter a little to get a feel for how small of things it can do but I usually try to stay away from anything too wispy.
  25. darcshadow

    DIY thread - show us some DIY projects

    Here's my DIY powder coat booth, not specifically vinyl related, but I use vinyl to create masks for powder coating.