wetstuff

A lady who does embroidery for me asked if I could ..so I quickly thru a sticker (Oracal 651) on a glazed coffee cup, filled with water and put it in for 1min. ..not hot enough to make a tea, so I did another 1min. 'With exception' of some truly, micro bubbles - it worked great. I didn't even bother to prep the cup like the suggestions in the topic below about glass... A friend has this massive oven and a fancy silkscreen setup to do cup/glass screening but this takes 2 seconds! So the question is: is there a better vinyl for things that go into the microwave? Thanks. Jim

SUU ... How old is 'too old'? I heard adhesive ages poorly. Jim

Sorry SUU .. newbie mistake: I am using 651. One of the local cutters uses it. ..just looking for that 'optimum' film. Goose, I can't heat this stuff - shrivels up bad. ..a thought tho' .. Maybe a flash of warmth (pass over with heat gun) will help 'activate' the film's adhesive? .... there's also some 'adhesive activator' that 3M uses when you use those structural adhesives tapes, but it's only in little packets - and expensive. Thanks. Jim

I cut letters to make name tags on a soft, reflective vinyl tape to sew on jackets. I have used Oracal 631, Avery SC900 and a 3M Marking Film. The 3M is matte ..and I really like the contrast of the matte with glossy background tape. BUT.. Oracal seems really easy to lift.. and I don't remember the other too much.. None the less, I am afraid that I am not using the brand with the best adhesive for the application. I used to clean/prep the vinyl tape with alcohol but seem to get just a good results with a hard rub with a microfiber towel. With any luck one of you has plowed this field before and can offer some advice. Thanks. Jim

Gentlemen .. Mile Grazie! That's perfect... 'A rectangle - is a rectangle'. ..and the program will even let me make 'cutting copies', so now all I have to do is get my Summa to track all these... Thanks. Jim

I can cut letters all day long.. even some fun imagery, but I don't even know where to start to cut some 36" x .39" strips. I would love to cut them out of 15" material. Thanks. Jim

Ah Soooo... I was under the impression that Inkscape was automatically a Vector app... I printed out your instructions. Many thanks for the help. Jim

SD: I did get Corel for Mac but that is a lot harder to do something simple than within Pshp. (I use Pshp daily) I saw a post that mentioned INKSCAPE and dnld. that. It is quite easy to use (no RTFM) and pretty easy to simply import my Pshp image and then pick from lots of formats to export ..but none, that I see, are clearly vector. I've tried to open a number of them in F-S but it 'won't see them'. .. I just tried .eps - No Go. Is there one specific, export format that you would pick with Inkscape? Jim

I love this program. I can cut, my usual jobs - simple letters - in my sleep, but I need to bring in a solid image from Photoshop to set atop a line of type I am setting. I save it as a Tiff, but no can cut?! I can see the image in Starter's makeup window .. I try both Solid Fill and No Fill .. wire/no-wireframe, but when I send it thru Production Mgr. ...all I get is the outline of the image area - no image. Is this a speed brake in 'Starter' .. or is there another format I can import. Nothing fancy, but I'd surely like to scan something into Pshp and cut it. Thanks in advance for the help. Jim Salisbury MD

.... I guess instinctively knew any azzh/le can trash our work. 651 sticks reasonably well. I think this customer was expecting embroidery which I did for 10yr prior. I'm glad I sold that machine! In the Old Days I used a stencil machine (still have it) but that font is waaay too 1940 for my products. Shrike .. the surface is that 3M reflective ribbon you see on safety vests, etc. The reflection comes from glass beads, and tho' not sheet glass, it still is pretty smooth. Thanks guys, I'm glad you were there to ask. Cheers. Jim

I have been cutting simple letters/numbers for a couple of months using a Summa cutter and Oracal 651 running Mac/Flexi Starter ...everything is easy and fine.. Except .. I have been putting some of these letters on 3M reflective cloth tape. It seems to stick pretty well...but, I had one customer 'pick' at the letters and bitch that; "I can peel these off?!" Soooo .. have you folks found a gloss Black that is more gummy that 651? I can overlay some clear plastic on the letters, but would prefer not. 'Hope you have some advice. Thanks. Jim/Salisbury MD

I don't tend to use YouTube much, but if there's something I am really interested in, I let it buffer (I think that's the word..) once and then go back and play it. Low res is also faster. I have used Macs since the mid-80's so do not know the other system to compare. Jim

Well after such a long journey, I thought I'd at least share were I was headed... I started with a Pos. (for screen printing) which came off a 3rd Gen. Xerox .. scanned the Pos. in my old Epson flat scanner .. imported into Photoshop output'd as a .tif My Mac version of CorelDRAW 11 does not have a trace function (PC does) ..but there is a very nice, stand-alone TRACE app that seems to work great. I should be able to do almost everything in Pshp where I am more comfortable. Classic Chinese Curse: Weeding this little sucker was a chore. I have the Summa's pressure set at 40g with a 36deg Clean Cut blade.. cutting Oracal 651. I might try the 60deg, CC blade with more pressure next time ...but at least I know how to do one thing, so it's on to the next hill. Thanks for he help. Jim

Sorry H-G .. it's on a non-conected computer. ..the files kept coming over as bitmaps tho'. BUT .. I'm getting a little farther. In my CorelDRAW 11 for Mac I simply could not figger how to 'save as' a fricking vector file. All the export formats in history are useless if it leave DRAW as a bitmap. Ah-Ha... Corel TRACE !!! ..I had it all the time, as a stand-alone app. It took 10sec. to 'save as' a vector. I imported it into Flexi .. can see it in the production window, etc. I just need to figure out how to trace it so the Summa will cut out the centers of things like the letter 'O'... Right now I get a great outline, but my Xacto skills are not good enough to do all the centers of my object. ... "A journey is comprised of single steps." Aw' Hell.... Jim

.... I have to take a break from this! I can either export or save about 20 types of files from three programs ... incl. a 'editable EPS' out of Freehand ... (oddly, no .eps available in CorelDraw?) .. I can get them in the window, but they simply do not make the jump into Production Manager?! I have a little time on Friday morning.. I appreciate your patience. It's a pisser when I can't make the leap from letters to art. Cheers. Jim