stuffnthingz

Well, I bought my LP24 last fall. I made some decals, took them to a couple of shows and made $60. Then I spent the winter figuring out the software and the cutter. Last weekend I went to a new "event" I have not attended before as a vendor and to get more interesting product for them to buy I cut out a whole bunch of 1" phrases in white and navy flock. I already had some nice silhouettes cutout, but I thought the phrases might be a hit with this bunch. Oh my goodness! It was a feeding frenzy. I made enough to pay for the cutter AND all of the vinyl I have purchased for testing etc. It was great. I was able to heat press a hoody on site in 15 seconds! I sold 20 hoodies in a day and a half, not including all the other products I sell. I was sooo tired sunday night. It was a very good tired. So this weekend I had a minor setback. While preparing flock vinyl for the next eventI tried to do the same thing, but alas my cutter kept stalling out mid cut... constantly. So, by sunday night I was pulling my hair out and I read up on this issue on the boards. I use a USB port on my laptop so I wanted to try the easier fix first, I made my poor (commercial electrician) husband, ground my cutter to the outlet. What a difference! Where I could not get through more than 2 cuts of a design if I was lucky (very small like 4 x 13") I was able to tackle my next big chore, my business BANNER! Last fall I had picked up the 2' x 6' blank gussetted banner (at USCutter of course), and just today I put in a Will Call order for more flock and thought to snag some black for the banner. I picked it up in the afternoon, got home by 5pm, setup the LP to cut out the HUGE graphics (huge by my standards anyways). My LP finished the 2 color job in like 5 minutes total. Since I've never tackled anything large, I watched a video on sign making and went to work. I see lots of flaws for my first job, I tore the vinyl a tiny bit in a couple of places, there are still some air bubbles, etc, but the deed is done! Now I get to have a sign up in the arena like the big time sponsors:) I have one more cutter success story. Last week when I presented a client his design for 50 t-shirts, I had cutout the design in white vinyl as a sample and he liked it so well, I am making him 4 navy hoodies in addition to the 50 T-shirts (I am not cutting those, they will be plastisol transfers). Had I not had the cutter to make up the sample, I would not have had the opportunity to upsell $80 more product for him to buy. Thank you all who post in this forum and to US Cutter for all the help. I am sure there will be many more bumps in the road and tons more to learn, but it sure is a fun ride along the way.

If anyone follows up with this product and uses their LP to cut the rhinestone stencils, I would like to know how well it goes for them. I do alot of rhinestone work and would love to make my own templates rather than buy them:)

I was sent an email asking some details about my vending arrangement and I thought they might be helpful for others. I get my flock from various sources because certain brands have colors I need. I buy "decoflock" in pink and brown from an online store, and now I get white and navy from UScutter, they are local to me so I can pick it up:) The Siser Splitflock from USCutter is priced well, and I save on shipping fees by using will call. I press the flock using a 15" press. I bought the press for travelling as it is light. I started with a 9 x 12 but it was too small, it made me a mint, but I had to give it up for something bigger. I find the 15" is perfect. quick to layout a T-shirt or Sweatshirt.

I have to give another quick update. Yes Virginia, over the weekend with my problems of the cutter sitting at "waiting" mid cut, I came to these forums. I read all the "resolutions" for my problem. I picked the easiest (for me) to implement, which was to ground to remove static and I have been madly cutting ever since. I have not had a single failed cut since grounding my unit. I had my doubts, but I am a believer! I read some posts where the customer wants to return their unit and Ken says sure we will give you a new one but typically that problem will persist as it is not a faulty unit. He is soooo right. Cut on!

I am able to take my color images and vectorize them in Inkscape. When you click on the conversion menu (cant remember what it is called) you get a pop up window with some radio buttons and a preview, play around with those until you hone in on what you want. I am not an Inkscape user, I downloaded it specifically for use as a vector tool. It is always a trick to get the vectors that SB can read in properly. Many images I put in to SB directly, I monochrome them and vectorize with in SB, SB does a decent job of single color vectoring.

I would love a copy of the LP 24 manual, pls send to sales@stuffnthingz.com. thanks!

You know I just feel silly now... this is a great revelation and will save me the trouble of pulling up the dowel to "reload"... that's what makes this forum so great!

I found some instructions from 2007 on making a vector in Inkscape. I trace bitmap and save as eps, it is a solid black image. SBE will not open it. It processes the image but then has nothing on the screen. Any thoughts on this problem?

This is my first post. I thought I would contribute my experience with setting up the LP 24" to work on my Dell XPS 1535 Laptop via USB. First when I plugged in the cutter, Vista went merrily along installing the driver not asking my opinion, I didn't like that very well as I had the CD in my hand and wanted to use the CD I was given. I had the pen tool in and attempted a simple cut from SBE and of course nothing happened. I should preface this story with the fact that I am highly technical having been an IT professional for, well, forever now it seems. I am new to Vista and so far I don't like how it "does" things on its own. I peeked at the device drivers and saw a Serial connection with a ? on it looking decidedly not right. It was late and I has shirts to finish up for a show I have this weekend so I stopped there. However, for being a complete cutter n00b, I did get the cutter fired up, the blade in, did a test cut, then put the pen in for further testing. I have never seen a cutter in RL before so all this has been an adventure. I didn't even tackle the stand having already read how bad that experience is, I will deal with that after I get the cutter working. So, Wednesday, I ran home from my day job and was diligently packing for the show, and I just coud not resist, I fired up the laptop, plugged in the USB and got an immediate blue screen. Darn! Again, I'm sposed to be busy packing and stopped there. Finally, this morning, I emailed USCutter support asking for a way to undo the drivers since I knew they were installed wrong. Ken emailed back a solution but I wasn't too keen on the "restore" option so he suggested using the "uninstall" on the CD. I got home and did that, then, when I installed the FTDI driver I got from the US Cutter support site, the install didn't behave right (2.02.04). The install window flashed too fast to give me a warm fuzzy feeling about it, so to be sure I had the latest driver, I went to the Website that makes the driver for the USB Serial port these cutters use and I saw a new version available 2.04.06 (http://ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm). I DLed that driver and the install popped up the very familiar DOS prompt with a message, Installing driver.... It finished up and I then held my breath as I plugged in the USB to the cutter and voila, it assigned it COM5 just as nice as can be. I immediately opened SBE, set it to COM5 (note it calls it : BLAZER:COM5) I opened my first vectorized bitmap I made and drew it with the pen...WOOHOO! I went back to packing for a bit, and then the moment of truth, I had to do it. I put in the blade, loaded my cheap starter black vinyl, tiled my image and printed it out, it came out AWESOME! I then put in some Siser gold and made a quick press on a sample dark sweatshirt, ooo I got goosebumps:D I know now the fun begins as I really learn to cut. I also travel with this laptop so it cannot be a dedicated machine for the cutter. I do have an older XP machine that I plan to dedicate to cutting once I have time to get serious about it. I have been reading about the folks who have troubles with the install and I would say I had some trouble, but I could tell that the install was not as it should be. For a non-technical person this could be frustrating and I hope my experience will help folks, and I think the newest driver should be tested and added to this support site:) Thank you all for listening, I am going to head out for the weekend a smug new vinyl cutter!

Bah... 5 minutes more tinkering and it works... I spoke too soon:)

Update, USCutter now has 1 yard samples of Siser and Oracal that are dirt cheap... I don't think they were up on the site last week... only 4.99 and 3.99 respectively. I admit, I went to USCutter's warehouse and had a field day shopping and spent more than the cutter on vinyl...eek!

I just purchased an LP 24. I have been making 4" window decals with wording that is quite small and scrolly. Weeding is simple, no cuts have been left open. I usually print one to two rows of decals at a time. I also have a very fine line about a 1/16" inch curve and it has come out perfect every time.