Beginner showing off some of my work. :)

[bbreault 0]

So, I got my cutter yesterday. Rushed to get it set up because I was so excited. When I got home I worked on getting the software on my PC and test cut and made a few adjustments to the speed and cutting pressure and blade protruding(cut right through the material first time....I wasnt happy about that cuz it cut into the cutting strip :-( . And today I went and bought a little thing of Oracal 631 from the hobby shop down the road cuz my vinyl hasnt shown up yet....another thing that is kinda worrying me. I had trouble getting the right port for the cutter and took me a while to find the driver cuz Im using USB (I dont have a serial port on my laptop)....BUT after all was said and done I made my first graphic!!! Its boring and easy but I think its amazing. lol. Here are some pics:

This is without the transfer tape

And with it

Also, I was wondering if anyone had some weeding tips? I bought an exacto knife for it but it still took me like a minute or so to weed it and I felt like I was doing something wrong or inefficiently. So anypointers would be appreciated. thanks

[MZ SKEETER 4,709]

whatever you feel comfortable using.  I just use an exacto knife. scissors,  pointed down tweezers and a needle. has worked for me for over 4 years  

[Guest Marek]

Good to see you are up and running .. It took me a bit to get the port figured out too . For weeding I use an exacto knife and I also made up a needle ..I used an exacto handle but instead of a knife I put in a large sowing needle . As long a you set up your weeding cuts right that works well .

[Booper 2]

Cograts!!!! Looks great! Weeding sucks regardless. Yer gonna learn to hate it with a passion. I picked up a set of teflon coated tweezers from Michaels that have razor sharp points on them and are reversed, so you squeeze them to open them and release them to close for like 10 bucks and they are by far the best weeding tool I have used so far. They have a bent tip so they are easier to hold.

[JoeCamaro 11]

Aint that nice? It took me a week to set up my cutter (bad usb cable) and the first thing I cut was a Jordan Flight symbol. I still remember the feeling!

Hope to see more of your work later! Success!

[tlzimmerman 11]

I second the needle in the xacto knife...I have 2 handles that have knives, 2 with blades, and then lots of pairs of manicure tweesers (with the tiny tipes, $4 at wally world). 

Most times I use the tweesers, tiny stuff I use the needle, I use the exactos to make manual weeding cuts when I need them so I remove smaller pieces.

[Guest kenya]

It's a great feeling.... I remember my first cut. 

Congrats. 

I use these picks that I picked up at Harbor Freight. All 5 in a little pack for $2.99.

The curved one is my favorite. They make weeding a snap. 

[windasm 0]

Nice Looking Work !!

I'm pretty new myself and found that using a compass that you draw circles with can be reallly handy for weeding. Hobby lobbyhas  a thing called a laptop desk that's really handy also. I use it more or less like a big clip board to secure the decals when weeding.

[bamafan2277 50]

It's a great feeling.... I remember my first cut. 

Congrats. 

I use these picks that I picked up at Harbor Freight. All 5 in a little pack for $2.99.

The curved one is my favorite. They make weeding a snap. 

I use those same ones Kenya!! I love the one in the middle the best!! I bought 5 packs when they were on sale for $2 each so I could have a bunch of the middle one.

[Guest kenya]

It's a great feeling.... I remember my first cut. 

Congrats. 

I use these picks that I picked up at Harbor Freight. All 5 in a little pack for $2.99.

The curved one is my favorite. They make weeding a snap. 

I use those same ones Kenya!! I love the one in the middle the best!! I bought 5 packs when they were on sale for $2 each so I could have a bunch of the middle one.

They are awesome, including the price... huh?

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

Great Job and congrats on the quick set up - you will love the machine

[blakdogs 0]

Nice job on your first cut!  There's nothing like the first time!!  :~}

Best of luck on many more...

P.S.  For weeding, I use tweezers, but I REALLY looked hard for a good pair with nice sharp edges.

[bbreault 0]

Thanks everyone for the kind words and advice. Like I said I bought an exacto knife specially for weeding but the needle thing def sounds like a good idea. Just out of curiosity, when weeding do you stick the exacto knife into the part you dont want and like do a shovel motion with it to get it off or do you get the blade underneath the edge? I find that I do both, but I use the shovel method just because I dont want to accidentally mark the vinyl I want to keep.

[MZ SKEETER 4,709]

I just use the exacto knife to make cuts between areas to remove separate and make smaller pieces,  then use a needle or tweezers to remove the pieces. I do alot of very large 20" x 12ft designs.  So I make a lot of slices to separate areas.  I never use the weeding function of the software on large decals.

[bbreault 0]

Hey Everyone,

Instead of making a whole 'nother thread I thought I would just post some pics of some vinyl Ive done today.  . Im loving this cutter, except the one problem Ive had with it, which I posted in the Copam thread. But all i wanna do is cut vinyl!!! lol. I love designing and making stuff like this. Here are just a few things I did today just messin around.

This is kinda what I wanna do for a business name in the future, but I dont like the "Breaults" font. The "B" is different because there is supposed to be a graphic above it that ties in but when I went to "precut" it, it was only a line and not like the lettering where it was filled (still gotta figure that one out).

And no I couldnt resist, I made one for my car. lol. And if youre wondering about the whole timestamp thing in the pics. I want to put a portfolio together of the work ive done, and I wanted to make sure I knew when I did those graphics. I dont like how small the graphic is (length wise) but like I said the vinyl I ordered I found out was on back order and should be getting it this week. So Im going of these little 24" sheets for now.

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu237/braindomain333/IMG_2043.jpg[/img]

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu237/braindomain333/IMG_2044.jpg[/img]

This one here is a complete experiment. I REALLY wanted to learn how to do a multicolor graphic so I made this one up. took me forever to figure out the registration marks and now I feel really stupid because it was really simple. And I have the non-clear transfer paper, and I will tell you what!!! If end up doing more multicolor vinyls, I will be getting me a HUGE roll of clear transfe because trying to line up those registration marks when you cant see the one below it is a complete pain in the (you know what). lol But I thought it came out pretty darn good.

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu237/braindomain333/IMG_2046.jpg[/img].

So Let me know what you guys think of the few things Ive done. Pointers would be VERY helpfull. I take constructive critisism very well. lol Hope you enjoyed the few pics of my work. TTYL

[Guest kenya]

Oh Yeah..... your hooked. 

Nice work.

[sandman 5]

Congrats! The stuff you have done looks good.

On the weeding issue when you get the right vinyl and the right settings the larger stuff will be a snap. Still you will always find some that is a challenge.

I use one of those small disposable retractable razor cutters. I get them in packs with large and small both in a pack from the dollar store. I too bought an xacto set but I find them to be to sharp for my taste. I use the large one to cut material off after the design is cut. I advance it to the bottom of the vinyl guide and use the bottom of that to cut against for a straight cut. I also bought some metal dental picks at Publix I might try for weeding but the razor knifes have worked well for me.

When picking, I try to get the blade right under the edge and lift it. If that isn't working I will poke it in the unwanted part but not often. For little stuff where the good part wants to lift I will hold it down with a toothpick while pulling up the unwanted part. On long runs or large designs I will divide the areas to be weeded by hand cutting lines so the vinyl can be removed in smaller sections.

Hope these ideas help and have fun.

[Guest Marek]

Ohh you are going to go nut when you get your full rolls of vinyl..

[Booper 2]

Nice work! In the meantime before you get clear app tape, get a roll of clear packing tape and use it to mask just over the registration points and use your regular paper tape over the graphic, yer just gonna cut off the reg points anyway so it wont matter.

[bbreault 0]

Thanks everyone for the support. Yes Im definitely hooked. lol. I was telling my fiance last night that this is what I wanna do. I definitely want to turn it into a business now. And yes I will go nuts when I get my full rolls. But I dont want to go completely nuts with experimenting. Ive got alot of people already asking me to do stuff for them. lol. But it is only the greenstar intermediate stuff so its not that great. but its good enough to start out with. Im hoping that it cuts similar to the Oracal 651 Ive been playing with because I love how that cuts.

Booper: Last night when i was trying to figure out how to do the registration marks I found a thread where that was given as a good way to do that. And it mightve been you that wrote it, most likely actually. lol. I think I will def give that a try because like you said, youre gunna be cutting that off anyway. Might have to stop into the dollar store. lol.

Once again, thanks everyone for the support and hopefully I can post some more pics up later tonight when I do a little more experimenting.

[JoeCamaro 11]

Soon you'll have decals on your car, toilet, mailbox, trash can and any other smooth surface 

[bbreault 0]

Lol. I wont go to those extremes but I do already have one on my car, and I do have future plans for that. lol.

[bbreault 0]

So I decided to do something for my mom. Since its mothers day and all. Shes starting a theatre club so I decided to make this for her. This is the first image that I didnt make. I copied it from online, fixed it up and added the text. this single decal has me rethinking the whole "Price by the inch with disregaurd to weeding time" because it took a while for me to weed this one. So in the future I think I may have to account for setup time/design time and weeding time once i start charging. Hope you guys like it.

I also changed the subject of this thread to make it more appropriate because its no longer just my first decal. lol.

[bbreault 0]

So I did a couple of things today. One REALLY simple honda symbol. Im most certainly not a honda guy but I was bored and decided I needed practice. lol. The other one I did, was fun and considerably harder, but came out AMAZING in my opinion.

Honda Emblem:

I stuck it to my work table that I bought cuz I was going to just be taking it right back off anyway. lol

Here is something that my fiance helped me do up. She came up with the idea. I found a pic and added the text and star and let er rip. lol. We actually did two because we weeded one and we were like "yeah, it came out nice but you cant really tell who it is", so we made another one and it came out ALOT better but then we had a whole lot of blue around the pic, so I freehand cut around it. Yes its my fiance holding down the decals. lol. Here are the pics.

First crappy one:

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu237/braindomain333/IMG_2053.jpg[/img]

Second good one:

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu237/braindomain333/IMG_2056.jpg[/img]

and we decided to keep the lettering of the first one and the pic of the second one. lol

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu237/braindomain333/IMG_2058.jpg[/img]

Shows the freehand cut and the crappy transfer tape application. lol. Hope you guys like the new work.

[JoeCamaro 11]

Cool!  I like Gaga