darcshadow

Static would be my first guess, and easiest to remedy. Ground the stand that the vinyl rest on. You can either run a grounding wire from the stand to a ground point on the cutter, or to a local ground such as the ground pin on a standard outlet. Second possible problem is that you're using a mac. The MH cutters are sold as not compatible with macs. I suspect this is more an issue with the cheap usb chipset than anything else. which brings us to the 3rd thing. Are you using USB or serial? Serial is recommended as the USB-2-Serial chipset built into the MH is cheap junk. If you don't have a true serial connection you can get a tripp-lite adapter. It is the only one known to work every time, all the time.

It's a streaming service, a little like Netflix or Hulu, but it's people playing video games.

Bit late now I realize, but this is one of those reasons why you always make note of the settings you start with before making any changes.

Also, what software are you using?

I know how to account for the cone shape of a cup to get the image to go straight, my question is does anyone have a formula that accounts for how the image looks on the vertical curve. For example, if you place a square on a cylinder and then look at it straight on, depending on the radius of the cylinder and the size of the square, it will look like a rectangle. It will appear to be taller than wide. Anyone have a calculation to compensate for this?

Don't think I'd want to try reflective as a stencil, that stuff is a pain in the butt to removed, rips real easy.

This only accounts for the cone shape and getting the design to be straight, does not account for the perceived width verses actual width of the image.

A string and straight edge would work. Lay the straight edge across the top of the cup and set it for the width of your image, then take the string and wrap it around the cup to get the length of the arc. Then just stretch the image out to the length of the arc. That should work, I like knowing the math as well.

That'll get you close, but not exact, and there's the question of not knowing both blue and red, you only know one or the other. I edited my previous post so you might have missed my equation that I came up with.

Wildgoose, I don't think we're talking about the same thing. Here's a diagram. In order to get the red square to appear square on the cylinder, it will need to be stretched to the size of the blue rectangle. Go-C, after doing the math, 10% is pretty close to what the math comes back with. It'll vary some depending on size of cup/cylinder and size of image but 10% is a good ballpark. After some more thinking I think I decided I want to shrink the height rather than change to width so here is my new equation. H = h/w*D*sin(w/D) h - height of image w - width of image D - diameter of cup H - new height for image

Are you wanting to use the vinyl just as a stencil? If so, I've found that if you put the cup in just long enough to get the powder to flow, then pull it out, let it cool a little then remove the vinyl and stick it back in for the full cure it works quite well. Timing on removing the vinyl is key. If it is too hot adhesive residue gets left on the cup and is a pain to get off after the full bake. However if you wait till the vinyl and powder are too cold removing the vinyl is harder and the lines are not as crisp. For designs with a lot of pieces to remove I will use a heat gun to keep the vinyl and powder in the sweet spot for removal. If you're putting the decal on to stay and then clear coating over it, I have not tried that yet, but I've read online where most powders can be baked at a slightly lower temperature for a longer period of time. There are also some lower temperature clear coats that cure as low as 325 to 350.

Did you try google and if so what did you search for? I simply put in snowmobile tracks graphics and found tons of different tread patterns. None of them have the ski tracks from the front it, but that'd be easy enough to add manually.

Getting is straight isn't my problem, The pattern along path in Inkscape takes care of that for me. The problem is say a 3" square when applied to a cylinder will not appear to be 3" wide anymore because of the curve, it'll appear to be slightly less. So you either have to make the image shorter or wider to keep the original aspect ratio. This is not usually an issue for most designs but I have one that is, at least it is to me, because I have noticed it, and now every time I look at it I see it.

After a bit more thinking I don't think this is as complicated as I thought it might be. Dusting off my high school geometry I think the following will give the width you'd need to stretch an image to get it to appear at the correct aspect ratio. Stretch Width = arcsin(image width/Diameter of cylinder) Need to experiment, but I believe if I stretch the image as specified by the equation and then run it through the cone correction tool when applied to a glass it should be straight and have the desired appearance.

No, what you have now is plenty for vector graphic design. Inkscape is a free vector program you can download and give a try. It is a bit slow starting up, but once is running it runs great.

You might try letting the glasses sit a day or two with the decal applied and give the adhesive time to really setup. Also, a good cleaning of the glass with rubbing alcohol will help get a good stick.

I'm usually around 50psi. It really depends on air flow and how well the siphon pickup is working. Different setups will need different setting. The lower the setting you can get away with and still get a good etch the better so it won't rip through the vinyl. One thing that took me awhile to discover, and made a big difference, on the siphon pickup, the top of it needs to be above the media. If the entire tube is under media you'll get a surge of media, then just air, then another surge.

I'm still curious why you want to convert to dxf. Most every program I've seen that uses dxf can also just as easily use eps, ai, or svg.

Recheck blade depth first, search for mz skeeter's instructions on here for the proper way to do it, they are everywhere, she post them a lot. Will probably post them here before long. If you're cutting too deep you have too much blade out, if the blade is set correctly, it's not possible to cut too deep. Once that's done, double check the cutting strip, has it gotten damaged.

You're going to have to provide more info than that if you want help. What software? How are you connected, USB or Serial? Using a Keyspan adapter? How do you define "hissy fit"? What do you mean "won't work"? What have you tried?

The MH, while a decent cutter, is the bottom of the barrel of cutters. Doing something that big the tracking is going to drift. Pulling the vinyl off the roll so that the cutter is not pulling can help but no guarantee that I'll solve the problem. Some software will let you cut in segments so that you're only feeding say 6" of vinyl at a time, this can help improve tracking but it also means that your long straight lines will be made up of several short cuts, that may not line up perfect. If you're only problem is the long straight boarders, I'd suggest changing it so the cutter only cuts one side of the boarder then lay the vinyl out on a table and with a straight edge cut the other side of the boarder. That way, even if the tracking is off a little on the cutter you can make the boarder the same width all the way around.

You might give Inkscape a try. It's a free vector editing program and does quite well at vectoring graphics. Just remember, as you found out, a vector file may or may not contain a vector drawing. Vector files (eps, svg, ai, pdf, etc) can have raster images (bmp, jpg, giv, etc) embedded in the file. They'll open and look great on the computer but can't be cut.

Like a baby monitor/security camera? They typically have IR emitters to "light" up the room so most anything can be seen.

Depending on how the PDF was created, it may or may not be a vector. However, if you can get the original power point file, you can simply copy and paste into your vector program, although I believe the if you do not have the fonts installed the Power Point will go to a default font.

A raster image (jpg, bitmap, gif, etc) can not be cut and must be converted to a vector file first. Simply saving a file off as an SVG, EPS, etc does not mean the file is a vector. Vector file types are capable of having raster images embedded in them. If you look at your image in wireframe mode and see nothing then you have a raster image, not a vector. I'm not sure what a bitmap flexi file is. You said you traced the jpg, which should result in a vector, but the term bitmap implies a raster image. So either Flexi has some odd names for things or you've gotten a little mixed up. No worries, people new to vector images tend to have a hard time wrapping their head around it at first.