Question regarding guidelines/grid

[Babysweetzoe 0]

Hi everyone - I am a newbie (one day with my MH series cutter now) and am hoping that someone here can help me out with what I am guessing is a very basic question.  I've watched every tutorial video I could find and searched this forum, which have all been extremely helpful, but I cannot seem to find the answer to my question.

 

 I had been using a cricut with SCAL, which I had installed before cricut forbid it.  I make a lot of decals and would fit as many as I could onto the SCAL working area in order to waste as little vinyl as possible.  When I sent it to cut, I knew that whatever was in my 12 by 12 or 12 by 24 inch SCAL working area, would automatically cut in the appropriate space on the vinyl/cricut machine.

 

The ruler/guideline on my MH cutter (28") confuses me because if I line my vinyl up with the 1" - it doesn't look like the blade will even cut that far over to the right.    I guess my question is what purpose does the ruler on the actual cutter serve and does it correlate at all to the SCAL ruler/guide?  Almost everthing I am trying to cut runs off the edge because I don't have it lined up. 

 

I know this is probably very simple, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around how to  use the rulers on SCAL to match up with the ruler on the cutter??

 

Also, there are three pinch rollers; two of them I am able to move, but the far right one  does not move.  I just wanted to make sure that was correct and not something I'm doing wrong?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Kelly

[slice&dice 2,450]

All three pinchrollers should slide.

Maybe spray some WD40 where it rides on the rail?

 

Don't use those ruler markings, just create your own with a stick-on measuring tape and position the beginning point ("0") where the cutter actually starts cutting. 

 

[Wildgoose 4,200]

I have a P-Cut machine which is similar. On your MH machine you will manually align the cutter blade with the edge of the vinyl and find the control to zero out the cordinates. I usually align mine inside the pinch rollers to avoid any damage but that's not absolute. I have never used a circuit but I think I understand the basics. On the MH you will need to pay attention to the available vinyl both width and length. Allow a couple inches at the back and I usually allow about 1/2" at least on each side. When I use SCALP I change the cutting mat size to custom based on those dimensions previously measured and then from that point go on with cutting and it should work out for you. If you have a pen attachment and some butcher paper you can experiment with that rather than learning at the expense of vinyl. you will have some learning to do but there is plenty of great tech advice here.