darcshadow

Even with the pressure way up high, you shouldn't have cut through the backing like that. You have too much blade exposed.

You don't want both USB and Serial connected at the same time, just one, ideally the serial.

This would be a pretty easy one to hand trace and the way to go. In the future, for dealing with gradients, I'd open the image in something like photo shop and work on it there to try and get it as close to a solid black and white image as possible, then do your trace.

If you have a serial port on your computer no need for a keyspan. Keyspan is just a way to convert USB to serial.

Learning to trace is a great thing, but in this case, if you do a search on the forums you'll find all 50 states already in a vector file. Most states also have a Wikipedia page with a vector drawing as well.

yeah, if it won't cut anything now sounds like a setting was changed. Are you using the USB? If so, did you plug into a different USB port on the computer? Once you setup the plotter and get it working, you want to keep using the same USB port. If you change ports you'll also have to change settings in the Cutter Setup screen mb20 posted above.

Do you have multiple colors in the design? If so be sure to have the color you want to cut selected in the cut preview screen. If you post a screen shot of your design and the cut preview screen we might be able to help more.

Yeah, your math is good. If you're just wanting to know the profit at the end of the year just look at expenses vs income. Basing cost of decals off of size alone is foolish as often times larger decals can actually be easier and faster to produce than small ones so in reality you could sell a large decal cheaper than a small one. But people don't think that way and are willing to pay a higher price for a larger decal even though it cost you less time and time is money. As I said, most of what I sell I charge what I would be willing to pay.

To keep it simple, just figure the cost of vinyl per inch. For example a 24"x10yard roll of vinyl is say $20. That works out to 5.5 cents per inch. Now lets say you make a decal that is 10"x5". take your 5.5 and multiple by 5 and you're at 27.5 cents double that to cover cost of app tape and you've got 55 cents of material wrapped up in the decal. In reality there is actually much less so as you can see unless you are making huge decals, the material cost is pretty irrelevant and the price really comes down to how much time do you spend to make the decal and what do you want to pay yourself per hour. If you're doing the install that is additional time, and you want to account for travel.

I just do this as a hobby, but anything I sell I just price at what I would be willing to pay for it. A little more professional way to do it would be to simply figure up the cost of the material you are using and then add in your time at a reasonable hourly rate and you have your price.

SB doesn't do it very well, Inkscape does a decent job. Import your image into Inkscape, then select it and choose trace bitmap from the Path menu. The better the image is to start the better the trace will be. Editing the image in photoshop or something to clean it up prior to vectorizing it can help a lot.

You are trying to cut a raster image. You'll need to vectorize the raster(bitmap) image before you can cut it. Just saving an image as an EPS or SVG it doesn't make the image a vector.

you using the serial connection or USB? If USB, be sure to have the correct driver installed and the correct plotter selected in the SB setup screen.

Inkscape can be used to cut as well. although not a true cutting program it lacks a lot of features, and only works via a serial connection, it does allow you to set blade offset and overcut. Signblazer is an easy program to pickup and work with but it does not offer overcut and with a MH, overcut is practically a necessity.

You shouldn't need a blade offset when using a pen, a setting of 0 should give the best results. Blade offset is to account for the fact that the tip of the blade is not centered in the holder. That would not be the case with a pen.

Question, why mylar? If it's because you can reuse it multiple times, that makes sense when buying the stencil, but if you have the ability to create stencils when ever you need them vinyl would work, would be cheaper, and any cutter could do the job. Depending on how detailed you may want something better than a value cutter, but even those can do pretty decent work.

You have to find a program that can open it in the first place then save it as an older eps version.

I've not done it, but I would guess, yes, depending on the coarseness of the etching.

That would give you a ruff guess, but the data format that is being sent to the machine is different than the vector file in question. If you save the file off as an HPGL, that would give you a closer estimate on actual memory size needed by the machine.

I would say static is more likely than memory. While memory can be an issue, I've cut some very node heaving graphics on an MH with no memory issues.

What exactly are you meaning when you say "scan"? If you truly mean scan, you need hardware, software alone doesn't scan.

From what I can find on google the old JD font was custom, however, Forbes Pro Bold is pretty close and with a little editing could be made to work.

Not sure what the name of the tool is in vinylmaster but you simply need to select all the objects that make up the aircraft and weld/merge/join them together. If the aircraft is already a single object, there should be a tool to break apart an object. Once you do that you can then select all the pieces and weld them together. That should give you the look you are going for.

Slice, It's a pretty basic car/stick figure drawing. galaxy, what have you tried and what are you having problems with? An auto trace of the image should give you decent enough results and you can then tweak it with your program of choice node tools. The text you just want to recreate, vectoring text should only be a last resort option.

What sort of glasses are you etching that have a 6" or greater diameter? You need to factor in the angle of the glass, assuming flat sides. I noticed over the weekend that the Ozark Trail 20oz cups no longer have a consistent slope, they actually have two slopes and are slightly curved at the top. For straight sides you need the radius/diameter of the top, the bottom, and the height. You can also just wrap a piece of paper around, tracing the lip and bottom and then scan it in. I like the math, but the paper method works just as well.