haumana

Never tried it, but it might be worth watching.

.... and ya didn't even know it, until it was too late. great job Stacey!

MOPA Fiber Laser will get you different colors, but you'd have to go through a trial and error process to adjust the laser frequency to get the colors you want based on the type of metal being engraved. You might also look for something who has a UV Printer, they might be able to help you.

It doesn't have to be an .eps, i can be any kind of vector file - .svg, .ai, even a .pdf would be more helpful to you. If you're willing to pay $10 for it, then you can hit up the Vector Magic website. There's an online edition that's $10/month, but it will allow you to upload the image and see what it would look like after their engine has vectorized it. It's a free preview. If you like what you see, then you can subscribe (for a month), but it will allow you to download the file in a few different vector formats.

Is it cutting the entire graphic twice, or just some areas? You have some smaller pieces in the layout that are the same color as the larger, are they meant to be cut outs? I've recolored the smaller pieces that are embedded. If it's only going back to cut the pieces I recolored, then the cutter is doing it's job, because you have those cut line in there. If it's re-cutting the whole job, then it's probably something in the VM settings that you need to take a look at. Which version of VM are you using? If you do not mean to have those recolored area in your graphic, then remove them completely.

So no dice so far? My original LaserPoint (I), still looks brand new, protective film and all. Since you don't know the age of it, I would suggest download SignBlazer and give that a go. There are a ton of cutters listed, and it might take time, but it might be worth it to go one by one and send a small test file. You only need one to work!

In another forum *cough* *cough*, a user stated that, "It Is a pair of faulty motor driver chip on the motherboard. Located under the heatsink." Not quite helpful, but at least informative. It is probably time to find a replacement cutter though

In a perfect world, that would be great . Unfortunately, I learned a while ago, that when it comes to my cutters, never to rely on anything auto detecting, even if it appears to be a feature in the software. I will always manually select the appropriate comport. I do wish it was more intuitive and it could just be a total plug and play thing, but the tech on the cutters is so far behind any current operating system. It is truly a fairly simple machine, just dressed up and all fancy on the new ones

check the comport that it was assigned to, and make sure it matches in VM.

D4 - I have an LP(1), the driver I used was Creation PCut CT735. Although, admittedly - I have yet to use a Win10 machine on it. SBE will run on Win10, that I know for sure.

Thank you for keeping everyone updated. Glad that you were able to get it situate and everything is working properly.

Hey guys - most of you know that I'm more of a hobbyist with my cutters, however, I agreed to take a job as a favor for my brother. I'm almost done with cutting and weeding the 300+ decals for his company, but will soon need to hit the app tape and final cut steps. That being said, I'm thinking that I might take some of the money from the job and put it towards a decent rotary cutter. I already use a manual OLFA rotary and an aluminum ruler, but wanted to make it a bit easier for the finished cut process by using a fixed rotary. Wanted to get your thoughts on if it's worth it, or if I should suck it up and do the 1200+ sides manually. Anyway, here are the two that I would be considering. The 4" difference is inconsequential to me. I just want to say I am not looking forward to doing 1200+ cuts manually Rotatrim Pro 24" Dahle 554 Pro 28"

Happy to hear that you've found a method that works best for you, and thank you for sharing it.

I guess I'll be finding out. I just put the order in with Amazon

If only I had room, and maybe a distributor in Hawaii, although something that size is a bit overkill for me. Nice to see that they do make a desktop version, but I don't think I'll be able to find anyone will to beat Amazon's price, since Prime ships for free. Maybe when I finally get some real working area, in a real workshop, I'll have room for something like that

I think the clear tape is a little more rigid, so getting it to lay flat will be more difficult. If I'm doing the application with the app tape on the table, and laying the decal into it, which is my preferred method, and if the app tape is not laying flat, then I will over pull the length, and tape the corners down. I'd be cutting it off in the final cuts anyway. I also prefer to use paper tape. Most here prefer paper tape. I will only use clear if the client specifically asks for it, and I never offer up that info.

"What am I doing wrong?" is a little hard to troubleshoot, when we don't know what and how you're doing things. Would be helpful to know what version of AI you're using, and how you're exporting/importing to DS. File format, etc. Have you tried to export it in another format that is DS friendly? What formats are DS friendly?

I would just do this in 2-layers, black on red, or vice versa, since the elements seem to crossover a bit. Just make sure you registration marks are on point when layering.

It's a 2-color layout, I can understand getting accidental bubbles in the top layer, but how did you manage to get bubbles in the bottom layer too? The bottom layer is never lifted from the backing. As previously suggested, did you troll YouTube to find other videos on how to layer vinyl? Because that's one of the fastest ways up this learning curve.

If you're willing, post your file so others may inspect it to see what's going on.

The hollow core rods are functional, but the first thing I did was swap them out for solid rods, it doesn't flex as much under the weight of a new 50-yard roll of reflective. I don't have a lot of working room, so I while on a good day, I can cut about 200-yards of vinyl, I will only do it in 3-ft. to 4-ft. increments, especially since the "guaranteed accuracy" length is just under 7-ft. I take the time to roll what is finished before I have the cutter do the next set.

I don't prefer not to have the vinyl jump, and to put the grit rollers under unnecessary torque, so everything gets pre-fed. If the vinyl roll is too light, there's a chance that the torque alone can cause the roll to jump and come off the rods.

It's the Microsoft way.

Q1: Why is it, when I use the copy feature on the control panel, the X never starts at the original X position? The carriage is just a smidgen to the left, and continues to progressively scoot the left. Q2: The carriage, is starting to make a physical humming sound when it goes from left to right (but never right to left). The humming is almost to the point of chatter. When the machine is powered off, the carriage will slide easily back and forth with no out of the ordinary resistance. I've checked the guide rails were the various bearing make contact, and everything seem to be normal. From what I can see and feel, all the bearings will roll without any stuttering in both direction. Do I need to take the top off or remove the carriage cover for a better inspection? Ugh, I just want to get through this job without a hitch. Mahalo in advance! Graphtec Humming.MOV

Hmm ... i wonder if that's what happened. Last month there was a power outage while I was out of the house. I keep the cutter on a battery backup, and have a remote switch for on the plug for the cutter. I didn't really think anything about it, until I needed to use the cutter, and the it wouldn't switch on. I guess when the power kicked back on, for whatever reasons, the battery backup didn't catch the surge and passed it on to the switch and fried it. Still didn't think anything of it, but when I went to cut, everything was as if it was factory reset, all the conditions I had previous set were missing, and it was just weird. On another note, I did hear back from Graphtec, and while I was able to get the humming to go away with the change of the blade holder, tech support said, "This suggests a failing cutting head, and possibly a bad motor. I won’t know until we get in a bit more. The only thing I can think of that would relate the humming being caused by a blade holder is if the blade holder was one of the metal, after market holders." I will be letting them know, that it was actually an aftermarket blade holder that made the humming go away, since I only had the original one that shipped with the cutter While I am extremely happy that I got the cutter to stop humming, I'm almost wanting to be able to recreate it the issue. I hope the power outage didn't do anything wonky to my machine. I don't want to have to unplug / re-plug each time I need to use it.