darcshadow

Just guessing here, but maybe a baud rate problem? Or could be a memory issue, was the test file that you ran, than 137kb?

Personally I'd paint the wall where the vinyl is to be placed grey, then cut black vinyl in the design and lay it over the grey.

Watching that video, it appears VM has a combine tool, that may do what you want in one step. At time 1:48, the video selects the Weld tool, in that same menu there is a Combine tool, that judging from the icon of the tool it will do what you're after in a single step. I'm not a VM user, just going from what I'm seeing in the video. If that doesn't do what I think it does, the punch method I described first will get the job done.

Like this? I use Inkscape, it has an Exclusion tool that removes the parts of two shapes that overlap. Don't know if VM has that or not. If not you can still do it using punch and weld. Take your image and duplicate it then slide it off to the side. Punch the wording through the background image on one, and punch the back ground image through the wording on the other, then slide the two back together. You can then weld them if you want, but that's not necessary.

Just curious/nosey, what you going to be doing that will require a 54" cutter?

From the image, and your description it sounds like you have two. 1. From the image it looks like it's cutting ok on the bottom, but not towards the middle/top. That could be a cutting strip problem. Is the strip worn/flattened down more in one place than the other? 2. From the image and your description, your cuts are not actually finishing. A small gap can be expected and the blade offset and over cut advice given above will help with that. But in the case of the K from your image, it's missing a large portion of the actual design. That seems like a software problem more so than hardware. If you could post the file you're working with we can take a look and let you know if there is anything wrong with it.

Keep in mind, once you do this, the letters are no longer letters, but rather shapes, and as such can not be edited using the text tool.

If that's true, someone needs to update this webpage, http://www.vinylmasterxpt.com/vinylmaster-xpt-home/features-and-comparison-list/, as well as the PDF on USCutter.com, http://www.uscutter.com/static/PDFs/VinylMaster_Comparison.pdf Both say Drop Shadow is in LTR, but Block is only in Pro and above.

Black and white is easy, most any photo editing tool can do that. But I'm guessing what you're actually wanting is an image that can be cut. No easy way to do that. It's going to have to manually traced or redrawn.

I don't know anything about VM, but the effect you are wanting is called a block shadow and according to VM's comparison page, that option is not available in VM Cut. Do you have any other design software you can use? I know this effect can be accomplished in Inkscape, although it's not as easy to do as in other programs.

The two keys to operating a computer, being able to read, and read everything that pops up on screen, and not being afraid to mess with things. For the most part the computer will warn you before you do anything really bad, and if you're not sure, just google what ever it is you're not sure about. Nearly ever problem I've ever had on a computer someone else has had it too and there is usually an answer out there. May not be the answer you want, but it's out there.

Never understood that from people. If you don't actually know what you're talking about why are you trying to tell someone how to do something.

Any basic design software should be able to recreate that for you. Just pick any font you like, draw a box through the middle of it and punch it out. Add the black box borders and you're done. Pretty simple. If you post exactly what software you're using I'm sure someone on here can give you exact step by step instructions to do it.

If you want to use Inkscape to auto trace, open the image in Inkscape and select it, then from the menu bar select Path, Trace Bitmat. The default settings are ok and you can simply hit the OK button to get a pretty good trace. The trace will be directly over the original so you'll need to click on the original image and drag the selection off to the side. If you adjust the Brightness Cutoff Threshold you can improve the trace results, 0.450 is the default but I've found that 0.65 typically gives me better results to start with. Virtually all auto traced images will need some manual touch ups to get it looking just right. This image for example, the eyebrow will need some work as well as the lower part of the face/head.

24" is probably the most common size of vinyl rolls and even designs larger than 24" can usually be broken into pieces so that you can create something much larger. And if they can't you can simply tile the design so that it's broken into 24" wide stripes that you just need to line up when installing. You're question has been asked over and over again on the forums, and most people that have or have had a large cutter say they rarely needed the full width, and 24" was usually more than enough.

very cool

That's what I was thinking as well. Can't think of any other options really. If the acrylic is already white, what's the purpose of the vinyl? The light too bright?

Judging from the screen shot it appears you bought a file that contains individual letters, and from the image of the letters it appears to be that Harold's Vine Font I mentioned above. Don't know for sure, but to me, this seems like a copyright violation on the seller's part. Appears what they have done is bought the font, then typed out each letter/symbol, converted them to shapes rather than a font and saved the file off in multiple formats. Just for future reference, be wary of "fonts" that are not an actual font format, .TTF or .OTF are the two most common.

Just to be clear, you are selecting all the objects before hitting the weld button, correct? Does the weld option work for other files or shapes you draw yourself? No idea why it wouldn't work with this file, but it could be something weird with the svg. FYI, that font appears to be from the Vine Monograms Font Family from Harold's Fonts. Don't know what you spent already, but you can buy the font for $20 and make as many different monograms as you like. http://www.fontbros.com/families/vine-monograms/?code=harold

License Plate USA is pretty close but I'm guessing California is actually custom and was based off of License Plate USA.

Pretty sure he's just being funny.

If you could take a screen shot of what your monogram looks like in both normal view and wireframe view that might give us a better idea as to what is happening. Or post the SVG file and we can take a look at it and try to figure out why when you hit weld it disappears. Also, if the monogram is just a simple vine font, you could create it yourself rather than buying it from some one. There are several vine fonts for free, just need to install one and start playing around with it.

In SB you will want to draw a box over the area you don't want to cut and then use the punch command. This will delete all but the portion of the drawing you want to keep, you'll need to delete the box I believe also. Do this 3 times with a bit of overlap on each one and cut the image as 3 separate cuts. I would also suggest making the boxes cross the design at the small points like in the drawing I'm posting. Also, I would suggest adding alignment marks, I like diamonds, to help line everything up when you piece it together.

Maybe slow the cutter down. I know on mine if I try to run it to fast I can get a stair-step kind of cut on diagonal lines.