haumana

if it's that big, and the graphic details were meant to be seen from way above, I don't think you really need to use a cutter. You can just mask with paper and tape, like they do on vehicles.

Welcome! first and foremost, make sure you have the right blade depth. there are several ways to try and tighten it up - make sure your blade tip is in tact and not broken off (it can be mighty hard to see) slow the cut speed use a 60* blade for the more intricate cuts what type of vinyl are you cutting? what's the size of your font?

congrats on the new equipment!

I'm in need of picking up some (most likely 24") app tape. My brother sold a job, and after working on the graphic layout, the most efficient layout has me doing the job on 24" vinyl. Not super happy, but cost wise, there's less wasted vinyl going this router instead of going with 15" vinyl. That being said, I'll be shipping in some 751, just as soon as they can choose the right color blue they want. Just wanted to know what y'all's preference is for app tape, and why? I've used Oracal MT and RTape medium tack, with each I got mixed results in tack, and peel. I'm hoping to find something a bit more consistent. TIA!

Good to know. I cut a few sample decals for them, just so they can double check to see if they want to run with the color they initially chose, and once I have either a confirmation on the chosen color, I'll be putting in my order. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed that I can get the vinyl fast enough to give myself some time and not be in a complete rush to finish the job. The one and only store that sells vinyl locally only two 10-yard rolls. The only 751 50-yard rolls they carry are white, black, and red; all other colors are in 10-yard rolls, and they only two in stock. That's not even enough vinyl to put a dent in the order.

Thanks. I don't plan on holding on to them. It's just going to be a quick as possible turnaround time for me, then all 300 decals to the customer. I'm not sure how long it's going to sit on their shelves. Nothing I can do about that though. Sometimes I wish I had more business to turnover my inventory faster, but then I think it would feel more like a regular job and might suck all the fun out of it for me Clearly I've been self-employed way too long. Hahaha.

That being said, would it better to go medium tack, or high tack, if the customer hangs on to the decals for a while. I have no idea how they are distributing the decals, so there might be some shelf time after the final decals are delivered to them. When I use Oratape medium, on the roll, it only gets stickier and stickier as it gets older, because I don't have enough volume to go through rolls on a regular basis. So once those tapes get too ornery for me to use, it goes downstairs and is repurposed as masking/mock-up tape for my laser engravings.

Yah, I've heard that happening too. I am amazed at what people are willing to try though

I love the unweeded idea! Although, it is interesting that someone would have a heat press, and not the means to but HTV

Image placement/alignment in small increments. It's helpful, especially when working on multi-color/layered designs.

Process of elimination. Try the cable(s) first. You don't want to just change settings and swap cables out without trying them one at a time. USB and serial cables can go bad, so can the keyspan. Did the OS update? Did the software update? What OS are you using? How are you currently connected from computer to cutter? Are you running it through a hub/splitter/switch? Besides turning the computer and cutter on and off, what else have you tried? Skeeter offered up info about a cable replacement, because she has years of experience, and when things like this happen, that's the first step she would try for troubleshooting. Heck, the would be the first step that most of us would try to troubleshoot.

Thank you for posting your work around. No doubt it will come in handy for future inquiries.

The inline/outline is giving you a consistent width, naturally using the feature on a font that is inconsistent in width will give you the result you got. If I am understanding this correct, youʻre wanting to put a 1/2" width strip in the middle of each letter itself?

What's the font that you used for this?

Wild Goose and I are in very similar OS boats. Although the LaserPoint II (LP2) is compatible with Mac, the machine was discontinued long before Apple's M1 chip introduction, so whether that machine is still compatible, will most like come down to software. If you choose to go Parallels or VM Fusion, you will most likely need to run Win10 (minimum), because the versions of Parallels that can run on the M1 is not backwards compatible to Win7 (regardless if you have a disc (or flash drive) for the 64-bit OS or not). I can only hazard a guess that Fusion will be the same. To the best of my knowledge the M1's will not Bootcamp . I'm not a fan of Bootcamp, because I don't care to have to shutdown and restart my machine to get to the OS anyway (on my older Macs). I would reach out to SCALP and see if their Bridge software will run on an M1, and if you have the compatible design software to pair with it. Although, their website says that it's Intel based Mac compatible, so it leads me to believe that some where along the lines, they've tried it on an M1 and it was a no-go. Now if SCALP were willing to send me the Bridge software, I'd be more than happy to test it out for them on M1 with CorelDraw 2019 Force feeding software on to my Mac have gotten exponentially more difficult with the M1 chip My original LP has been out on loan since before I picked up my M1 machine, so I cannot speak to whether is it could cut directly from Mac to LP, nor do I have SCALP. I have been able to run Sign Blazer, Vinyl Master, and Graphtec Pro Studio via Parallels to my Graphtec. The main thing is that you have a working cutter. Worst case scenario, you try to find a machine that runs Win7 and have that be dedicated to the cutter. In deed, Quicken for Mac sucks, and it's really not that hard for them to do a Home & Business version for Mac, instead of a watered down Quicken, or needing to jump to the overkill and over-priced QuickBooks. But then again, I'm not surprised since they too have gone the way of subscription based software. Boooo!

Send a trouble ticket to Graphtec. I just tested out Graphtec Studio 3.0.35gs on my M1 (Big Sur 11.4), and it allowed me to both open, and import (merge) a .png file. The .jpg files were greyed out, and I don't even think I have an old .bmp or .tif file to try to open/import.

I vectorize using different software. I can't say that I've ever used the Graphtec software to do so. Nice to know that it can though. How about that, I just learned something today .

I have to honestly say that I've not tried to import a raster image into the Graphtec software for Mac. I found it useless since I it'll only cut vectors.

Well said, and I totally agree. Auto update anything can be the bane of my existence ... for example, when Win10 auto updates, and then nothing connected works after that.

Have you also tried reaching out to VM with this issue?

If it's a paid font, chance are you will not find it for free anywhere. You can try and look for something similar. What website did you see the font for sale, because there are a ton of fonts with "stout" in the name and/or descriptor. Have you tried to ask the designer or the graphic for the file?

Do you have a finished product for us to see?

what software are you using?

Could you vinyl have static? What happens when you turn the machine off and on again, does it still do it?

You might need to take a really good look, and see if you can find a suitable replacement on eBay.