darcshadow

Also, don't confuse vinyl drift with poor tracking. If you load the vinyl in at an angle, it will drift as it goes through the cutter, HOWEVER, so long as the whole piece of vinyl is moving though the cutter at the same rate, which is should, then the tracking will be fine and the cuts will line up. The only "problem" with not getting the vinyl loaded straight is if you have a design that uses the full width of the vinyl, then you need to have things lined up straight to start with to eliminate the drift.

Regarding your use of contact paper vs vinyl. I've not dealt with contact paper much, but I would imagine it will wear out a blade faster than vinyl. You can get a 24"x10 yard roll of vinyl for about $30 including shipping. That works out to about $0.003 per square inch. Not sure how large of rolls you're getting from walmart but a quick check on their web page and it looks like most of them come out to a little more than $0.003 per square inch. So other than convince of running down to the store vs ordering online you're not really saving anything. And if you want to stick with local vs web, you might look around town for a sign shop and see if they'll sell you vinyl.

Just to be clear, you don't need to ground the machine, you need to ground the vinyl, usually accomplished by grounding the stand the vinyl sits on. Cuts not lining up wouldn't be a static problem, that'd be more of a tracking problem. Not finishing the cuts could be a static problem, could also be a comm problem. Are you using USB or serial? If using USB give serial a try.

Are you trying to make something long term or short? Short term you could probably just use coroplast or something like it.

Several on here have a dedicated cutting computer. Often times it's an older computer that still has a comm port and running WinXP and just keep it off the internet.

Isn't that a double negative?

Seems to me the easiest option would to buy a cheap computer that can be dedicated to the cut/print process.

This looks kind of close https://www.ebay.com/itm/24-X-10ft-Cherry-Red-Metal-Flake-LVG-InterCal-Sign-Graphic-Vinyl-Film/321223265051?_trkparms=aid%3D555018%26algo%3DPL.SIM%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D53210%26meid%3D98a265ba97a344ecb3a9e346539507a3%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D300848397244%26itm%3D321223265051&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851

The next step, and you can get started on it now, is to learn the software. If you've never worked with vector graphics before it can take some time to wrap your head around vector vs raster graphics. Inkscape is a free, and extremely powerful vector design program. Download it and start playing around with creating designs. Another plus for Inkscape, it can be downloaded in a portable version, meaning you can put it on a thumb drive and run it on any computer without the need for admin rights to install it.

What do you mean the test cuts look a bit off? A photo would help. I'm not failure with artcut but I'd go through it and double check all the settings and make sure they are correct for the cutter. The baud rate would be the main thing. If there is a setting regarding the comm protocal, your cutter uses HP-GL. Other option would be to try different software. Signblazer is free, search the forums, links to it are posted several placed. There are other, newer, free to try software that you can use as well to at least determine if the problem is hardware or software.

If that is what you were using for the 721 I would expect it to work for the 871. I was using the RedSail RS720C for my MH but I rarely use SB anymore and cut directly from Inkscape using the comm port.

I don't see anything in the SBD that jumps out at me as being the cause of your problem but the file itself is pretty messy. Looks to me like it was an auto trace that was then never cleaned up. Although I did just look at the EPS, it is a lot cleaner and looks like what I would expect, so it might just be the conversion to SBD that makes it look funny. Personally i'd go through the EPS file and clean it up. It has several layers and strokes. I'd go through the EPS and flatten it all to a single layer/object and remove all strokes.

Typo there, should say Null Modem.

More often then not googling a part number/model number and the word manual will find a downloadable PDF.

When you set the blade height, did you do it with the white or one of the other colors? Reason I ask, while rare, different colors can be slightly different thicknesses.

working fine on small designs and not on large would indicate static to me. My thinking is the smaller designs the vinyl is not moving as much so not building up as much static. Although from my experience when static is the problem the cutter just goes off into the weeds. Ground your cutting stand, and switch to the comm port to start and see if that makes any difference.

I've always wondered why they say they don't work with Mac. Even if the cheap USB chipset doesn't work with mac, there should be no reason you couldn't use the comm port. It is a standard RS-232 comm and you don't need drivers to talk to the plotter when using the comm port so all you should need is software that sends the correct cutting language to the plotter over the serial port and you should be good to go. Inkscape can do this actually, so in theory, you should be able to run a MH over the comm port from a Mac, or even a Linux system. (I might have to try that one of these days)

Paper will dull the blades much MUCH faster than vinyl.

Sorry for the delay. I opened my cutter and I can confirm the yellow is your Hot wire. In mine, the Yellow/Green is earth ground, so I would assume the green in yours is your neutral. In mine, it is black.

I have seen that sort of problem, plugging something in and the computer seeing it, but not recognizing it and the problem turned out to be the USB port. It was a pass through port on a KVM and they had wired it wrong. Pin to Pin was correct but they were using the shield as a signal line so the computer was able to see that something was connected but the communication was so bad that the computer couldn't do anything with the device. Have never heard of that being the problem with a plotter, but if all else is ruled out, that might be something to look into.

After thinking about my statement in doing the measurements I realized that would be of no use in this situation. Typically the wire running to the switch and fuse should be the hot wire. I found a chart with various wire colors and it does look like Yellow is pretty common for a hot line. Green and Green/Yellow are earth ground, not seeing either color referenced as a Neutral. Now electrically, both neutral and earth are tied together back where it comes into the house, so for functionality, you should be ok with either wire in either location. HOWEVER, from a safety standpoint, you really need to have the correct wires connected. You take your meter and set it to measure resistance, the omega symbol, and measure from the end of the green/yellow wire to bare metal on the cutter and measure from the green wire to bare metal, once should be nearly zero, the other will be a bit higher. The one that is nearly zero would be your earth wire.

You're guesses would be what I would assume as well. However looking up the Australian color coding the Green/Yellow would "normally" be the earth wire but who knows what color scheme the MH uses. Can you trace where the wires are connecting to further in the machine? The earth ground should be easy to spot, it usually just runs to a random looking screw connected to bare metal. If you have a meter, the voltage between earth and neutral should be 0 or very close to it. If no one responds with better info, I'll take a look at my cutter tonight when I get home.

Is that not just two rectangles?

Even if you don't hit big and rake in lots of money the higher end machines are still a good idea as they will pay for themselves eventually even if you do nothing more than use them as a hobby and sell stuff to friends and family. And if/when you decide you want to get out of it all together they'll have a higher resale as well. Basically what I'm saying, is don't worry about throwing the money away, it'll come back eventually. Regarding amazon vs person web page, I can't speak much to that other than to say when I think of custom/personalized stuff, I don't think of Amazon so i question how much traffic would you actually see.

Never used that software, but just some general troubleshooting steps. Do you have the correct plotter driver selected from the list in the software? Do you have the software pointed to the correct USB port every time you change where you have the USB plugged in you'll have to change the software accordingly. Do you have the plotter turn on? You'd be amazed at how often that is the problem.