VinylMaster

Also try setting it to Direct COM which is easy to set up in the Vinyl Spooler. First make sure the cutter is switched on, has vinyl loaded and ready to cut a test file. You can open the Vinyl Spooler from the File (menu) > Cut/Plot > Vinyl Spooler. In the Vinyl Spooler, click on the: - Connection tab (top right corner). - Then in the Connection Method > Port Type, select Direct COM Port from the drop down. - Next in the section directly below this, click Detect and follow the instructions in the wizard. Note: Occasionally the Flow Control and Emulation may also need to be adjusted.

Also see the Help (menu) > About for Product and Build Date.

Punch Out, Stamp and Common are available in VinylMaster Ltr V4.0 and above. The higher levels have more shaping and welding tools.

VinylMaster Cut works the same as Flexi etc. i.e. no need for the a laser pointer - just use the blade and Ultra Marks, here is a lesson:

You can also use .ai and .pdf if the other software supports these formats.

From all of us at Future Corporation - it's our pleasure Thank you,

Font Detective is certainly the answer but it is only available in VinylMaster Xpt. That said, if you are receiving PDF files the text should be razor sharp vectors. If not then they are just using PDF as a wrapper for images. Ask them to save as Adobe Illustrator V8 as text remains as text in this format.

From the screenshot you have VinylMaster Cut... you can drag and drop the PDF file into the software and then load that into the Contour Cutting Wizard... there is a very comprehensive manual under the Help (menu) > Help Topics - use the keyword search to find topics.

When you send to Cutter look for the Tiling tab or send it to a Cut Document and use that special design area to create an overlap...

Be careful when you do this as you can inadvertently give away your artwork so they can just have someone else cut it out... the best solution is to select the artwork and click the File (menu) > Export and select Jpg and set it to low quality i.e. 50% - save this to a known location from where you can attach it to an email... You cannot cutout a Jpg and it will be too low quality to trace. But your customer will be able to see your design well enough to approve it.

An image is made up of very small colored squares (pixels) that form a picture when viewed from a distance. These pixels cannot be cut out as there are no vectors paths for the blade to follow. As such, vectors must be Vectorized (traced) so the resultant vectors can be cut out with a vinyl cutter. To do this is easy by selecting the image within the software and clicking the Vectorize button from the second row of tools or from the Images (menu) and using this specialist module to convert an image into cuttable vectors.

Yes it does sound like it is an image i.e. a picture. An image is made up of very small colored squares (pixels) that form a picture when viewed from a distance. These pixels cannot be cut out as there are no vectors paths for the blade to follow. As such, vectors must be Vectorized (traced) so the resultant vectors can be cut out with a vinyl cutter. To do this is easy by selecting the image within the software and clicking the Vectorize button from the second row of tools or from the Images (menu) and using this specialist module to convert an image into cuttable vectors.

VinylMaster Cut is the basic level of the software and does not include tiling/paneling - for this you will need VinylMaster Pro, which is the Professional level of the software and includes Cut Documents with simple and advanced tiling and paneling for over wide and long cut files.

The key to obtaining good to excellent results is working with artwork that contains at least 1000 pixels both across and down, that hasn't been resampled up from very poor quality artwork. If you use Bing or Google images make sure to search for Medium to Large samples of what you wish to trace.

The Vectorizer in VinylMaster Cut does not have all the tools and features of the higher levels which improve traced results.