Wildgoose

Hangfire, excellent feedback and information! It is really helpful to hear these kinds of things and your work-arounds. The new MH being out now I am sure there will be a lot of new buyers that hopefully do a little research and get a step ahead thanks to your efforts.

Sorry for the late reply. I bought some printed camo designs from Dakota when he still had his printer and was de-cluttering. They worked pretty good. There are several options out there for printed adhesive vinyl and even some on the US Cutter in the HTV vinyls: https://uscutter.com/12-siser-easypatterns-plus-heat-transfer-vinyl-with-pre-printed-designs/ About the only thing I had to adjust for was choosing designs that were thick enough that the pattern had enough coverage to show up good.

What software do you use with the P28 to interact?

Josh, Everyone on the forum is an end user. All volunteer. So far they have expended a reasonably high amount of effort to help you get rolling. We love cutters and are excited to help new users out. Please be respectful when responding and give everyone the benefit of the doubt that they want to help you. We don't tolerate flaming here so I can guarantee that none of the regular people here will mess with you in any unfriendly way. Please respond appropriately. This is a HUGE resource for the cutting world and there is a lot of information available on here covering almost every question. In my estimation you have a couple problems. 1. Does your cutter actually work or not? Sounds a bit doubtful but I can tell you from experience that getting hooked up and running is often the greatest hurdle and can be troubling even with a brand new very $$$ cutter. So it is entirely possible it's just a connection problem. If you bought this from someone far away from you you may be out of luck. 2. Connecting to software for someone unfamiliar is problematic almost every time. Don't get frustrated. Here is an option I would throw at you. I use SignCut Pro and they offer their program on a rented basis and will give you several days free use to try it out. They are based over in the UK and offer live help to get you connected. I will post a link to their website for you to try out. However this is only going to help IF the cutter actually works. https://signcutpro.com

Looks like fun! I have a good friend who rebuilds them here in my home town. Since you are already familiar with Adobe Illustrator I would definitely stick with that for design. (that's what I use too) When you export you may have to do a few preliminary experiments to see what your cutting software likes best. I use SignCut Pro 1 and it likes AI version 8 legacy files. I think this is due to the more modern file versions support multiple art boards and other things that don't need to be in a cut file.

Slice is correct. Your cutter should be able to cut most of the typical vinyl applications you will find. About the only things that can cause issues are when you get into thicker products that require a lot of cutting force such as "blast resist" or maybe diamond reflective street sign products. Most of the literature will tell you what thickness the product is and almost anything that is under 4 mils you can cut just fine. The budget vinyl types are usually 3-3.5 mil and the high-end stuff is 2 mil. Getting your machine "tuned" up can be a new user challenge but some time spent searching the forum will yield a lot of helpful advice. If you struggle and can't find the answer post a question and someone will try to help. This is an end user forum and all of us are non-paid volunteer help that happen to love the craft and try to pass along things that we have learned.

Welcome to the forum. I go one step farther than what Slice suggested and mirror my whole file when I save it so if I happen to open it at some later date I don't forget to mirror before cutting. You can probably figure out why I started doing that.

Pretty sure someone was able to get the MH to run from a Mac on the forum. Been a few years back though. The biggest issue is probably more along the line of needing design software too. If you have a lot of time and are comfortable with trial and error I would use InkScape and InkCut. I wouldn't be surprised to find that InkCut may be behind the times with the newest Mac versions. I have never tried it out but saw on line that there were quite a few questions about trouble with version 12.?? and I'm already running 14.something. I design in Illustrator which makes me pay to use. I own an older CS5 version but as the upgrades came along it eventually didn't meet the more stringent controls and started having issues and crashing AI especially with font searches. For cutting I have an old windows laptop that I take my files to and cut from a thumb drive. My old old old SignCut Pro 1 software for cutting is cross platform compatible but I still cut from the Win 7 computer, mostly so I don't tie up my main workstation when the cutter is running. Personally I like slice&dice advice to find an old laptop on the cheap and use it with your software and cutter.

Nes, Sign up to the forum for better visibility of your posts. I don't believe the Titan has dual pressure capabilities. There are a few brands that do. Some Graphtec models, Summa and a few others offer something like you are wanting. They are often referred to as a flex cut, perf cut or kiss cut and the concept is that they actually modulate between two pressures as they cut a simple outline around the rest of the decal. They leave a user defined amount of paper keeping the decal connected to the carrier sheet. To completely cut it free would cause a catastrophic failure because the integrity of the carrier would fail. Pretty high level stuff really.

Try converting the live text after writing it out and at that point it will be an object and you should be able to nail the size. I use SignCut Pro 1 (the old original) and I have to convert all my text anyway. That's why I asked the question. If the 3" object was spot on it pretty well has to be something to do with the interpretation of the text. If working on something that will need revised later I save a working file with some live text saved over on the side so I can recreate the overall thing if needing to modify. Then I save a cut file with the text all converted.

I don't run the cutter or program. Does that cut from live text or do you have to convert the text to lines and curves first?

Interesting. I often do just the opposite. I sometimes have clients who don't have a vector of their logo and only have an old business card or similar and it's small and perhaps messy or in an image file and not clear enough. When I need to do a trace I use a program called SimillaEnlarger that lets me blow them up much bigger. It uses some sort of engine to interpret what the edges probably should be. I find that going about 500% will let the trace program smooth out the fine details a bit better. Once I trace and expand as a vector then I'm good with less clean-up. Most of the time I actually just hand trace logo's for more direct control. Image trace engines always tend to do funky things in their quest to create a vector.

Agreed with you and darcshadow. The work-arounds are there if you are diligent and patient. I OWN an older CS5 Adobe Illustrator version for Mac that I used for a long long time and didn't have to pay monthly rent for the cloud based stuff that it has become. Once apple upgraded their intel it started causing issues with several things when running it. Namely it would crash AI if I was trying to scroll through the font list in a certain way (the way I usually do it). I lived with it until I upgraded to my current new iMac and finally broke down and started paying subscription to avoid the crash and fight that running the old CS5 was giving me. Don't love the payment but I write it off and the upside is I have access to AI on several computers now and can store my work in the cloud if I want to be able to mess with it from other locations. I pay the price because I am doing business and it works for me but if I were a hobbyist it would be a tough pill to swallow.

My biggest problem is I actually can't draw for crap freehand. Ha ha! I bought an iPad Pro a few years back and Adobe Illustrator CC is available for the pro. I use it occasionally but there is so much to AI that they have to modify to make work on the tablet that it's a whole new learning curve. I basically use it for emergency situations when I am away from a regular computer.

Welcome and nice design.