rxninja

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About rxninja

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  1. rxninja

    Decal Storage?

    I usually don't make anything until I need it either, but I try to use the whole width of the vinyl (12") every time I cut, so I'll do rows of 2-4 cuts even if I only need one. That often leaves me with extras that are pre-cut and just need weeding and those extras tend to pile up and become very difficult to sort through. A single drawer/box is definitely not cutting it for me.
  2. rxninja

    Decal Storage?

    I've been using my vinyl cutter for a while now to make small decals and etching masks, but I've found that storage is a big of a problem. I've got over 70 designs in my stable now, not counting size and color variations, and they currently reside in a cardboard box heaped together. There's got to be a better way. How do you store your spare decals, with or without transfer tape already applied? Hanging file folders? Categorized ziploc bags? Drawers of some kind?
  3. I've had my SC for about a year and I've never had this issue, so I'm perplexed as to why and how it has suddenly shown up and started happening. When I'm cutting a design, the first point in my design that touches the bottom edge causes a single back-and-forth cut from that point to the origin and back. If I'm cutting X number of copies, this only happens on the first copy. I've tried to attach a picture of this happening, but it's a little hard to see. If you look closely, you can see the first copy and then the first part of the second copy (it's the Terran logo from Starcraft) and the first copy has this weird underline-like thing going on. That's the extra cut I'm talking about. I truly have no idea why this is happening. I have weeding frames turned off, I don't have any crazy lead-in or overcut settings on, and I actually didn't change any SignCut settings between it not happening and when it started. As far as I can tell, there's nothing new/different about my vectors either. Any insight?
  4. rxninja

    Closing shapes, tails, and other such woes

    I have tried messing with the offset, actually. It doesn't seem to change much and I feel like I've tried a pretty fair range (.022 to .031). I'm getting improved results with a .3mm lead-in and .3mm overcut, but it's far from perfect and it's definitely not good enough to sell decals yet. @dakotagrafx : You don't think that level of accuracy is possible with an SC series? If that's the case, what kind of machine do you think would get that kind of job done?
  5. I'm using an SC-series cutter and SignCut Pro on a Mac. I've got the standard Roland 45 blades, though I've tried the 60s as well with no changes. I've tried everything from 200mm/s to 800mm/s (settled on 600 since neither extreme shows any change) and I've been going at 100g of force (125 peels up the smaller pieces and 75 doesn't cut all the way through). So here's the problem: I'm cutting relatively small designs (about 3.5" x 2" at the smallest, with shapes that are sometimes about 1-2mm long/wide). I have two problems that show up, sometimes together and sometimes separately. Sometimes the cutter cuts out the shapes I want, but it adds small tails to them. Sometimes the cutter cuts about 99% of the shape I want but then it doesn't close the shape, which can be very minor or it can be a large proportion of the smaller shapes (for instance, a triangle becomes a > instead). When I say tails, I mean that instead of a O I get a _O (a circle with an extra line coming off it that makes it look more like a Q or a P). I just recently found the Overcut option in advanced cutting settings and that seems to yield results on larger designs, but where a half millimeter or millimeter overcut is just fine with a large shape, it's devastating to something that's less than 1/4" long. This isn't a giant problem when I'm using vinyl as an etching mask (it's still a time-consuming pain in the butt), but it makes it utterly impossible to create decals that have very fine details or very small shapes. Weeding completely destroys my image, as the smaller pieces are either cut up or they're still attached to the weeded background. I don't really know what all of the SignCut settings do, but I've experimented with Settings > Cutter > Offset, Advanced Settings > Overcut, and I'm looking at Lead-In Length to try to figure out what that does. The problem is that nothing yields the results I need, which is no extra cuts and 100% closed shapes. I've also tried messing with the blade depth, using a new blade, and using the 60 degree blade. None of those really seemed to help, though setting the blade too far out does make the tails extra bad. Has anyone else had this problem and found a fix for it? At the very least, can someone point me to an instruction manual for SignCut? I thought Overcut was the setting I needed, but it just trades one problem for another. It works for larger designs, but for my smaller designs it's just not enough. There's something more fundamental screwing me up. Oh, one other interesting point: this does not happen with the pen plotter. It's something about the fact that there's a rotating blade cutting through a physical material that requires software correction (and it's not static, as this happens with all vinyls I've tried and it happens with or without the anti-static clip thing). Please help?
  6. So I've been using the SC 24" and it's pretty awesome, a major reliability upgrade from my dysfunctional MH 721, but I cut a few different materials and it would probably be nice to have different blades and holders for the various things I cut so as to avoid adjusting the blade height repeatedly. Are there options or can I only get the parts offered on the UScutter website? I like to shop around for my materials and it would be nice to know if I could use other brands (Roland, Cricut, etc.) and if there are other blade holders that would do the trick. Unrelated: Is there any way to not get roller marks on the vinyl? I always end up with faint tracks from the texture of the rollers where my roller clamps go. I'm not doing decals yet, so it hasn't been a problem thus far, but it would be nice to make it go away.