Wildgoose

I am not a SCALP user either but I suggest saving a working file to the side or whole other file when practicing so if it goes badly you can quickly revert to the original starting place. I would also consider saving your work in a non-proprietary file type. Seems like SCALP can export or save as SVG or EPS or similar. If you ever need to send one to another person or change design programs you will be glad you did. I had a beta version of SCALP way back but just didn't ever fall in love with it. I am an Adobe Illustrator design guy but was attempting to use SCALP as my cutter interface because I run on Mac computers for the most part. They (SCALP) have made progress in their capability since those early days and there are some on here who know the idiosyncrasies and tricks to get it to perform fine. I wouldn't want you to think I was disrespecting them.

Paper tape is better IMO. I know you can't see through it to layer but overall application success is better. That's a large graphic so there will probably end up having some bubbles trying to get it stacked prior to application and then potentially along the edges where the two layers meet there often ends up a small line or rill of bubbles following that edge. If you have a simple application surface like a sign you can just install it in two layers but some things like race car bodies make that really hard to do. Good squeegee control is the key to reduce bubbles. Again, that is hard to employ when layering pre-install but still relevant. Search videos of actual pro's doing it, they make it look easy but there is a lot of skill you don't see if you aren't watching closely. You can use a pin to puncture and then deflate bubbles but if there are a lot it turns into a lot of work. If this is for a client it looks unprofessional. If it's for your own use the small bubbles will often disappear over time. My first big job was on my own suburban window and one side had a whole bunch of tiny bubbles because I sucked at the squeegee. A few weeks later they were gone from the heat and cool of day to night expansion and contraction. In my early days I had a few go a little rough. I made an excuse and told them if they didn't go away in 30 or so days I would replace the logo. They never needed to but I don't think I came across as a very experienced installer. I watched a lot and read articles about proper installation and things got better with time and practice.

A common misconception with new cutter owners is that the blade cutting depth is somehow related to the exposed length of the blade sticking out of the blade holder. Follow Skeeter's directions on setting the proper amount of blade exposed and then you adjust the actual depth of cut into the vinyl by the down force applied to the holder. The blade exposed should be only slightly farther than the thickness of the vinyl and not at any time far enough that it could cut all the way through the vinyl and carrier sheet. It's not much and most people have far far too much exposed. She suggests removing the blade holder altogether and drag it across a scrap piece by hand to verify that it can't quite cut all the way through. (Use a cutting mat beneath in case you do so you don't break a tip). I would also be sure your blade is fresh and not either broken or worn down. For many people when they aren't able to cut deep enough they think they need to crank the blade out of the holder farther and this is exactly wrong.

Another tip I would give is use some parchment paper (or even better if you happen to have any Gerber 225 vinyl it has a clear carrier that is totally amazing for layering) I submitted a video a few years back using parchment paper:

Welcome from Idaho. Great fun to own a cutter as I'm sure you are finding out. Takes a bit of learning but it's worth the effort.

I would add that the logo is copyright protected so be sure to get permission to use that and not get yourelf into trouble.

I do a lot of shirt work. Rarely have I ever had anything like a stain guard on regular tee's but there is always that posibility. The 150C is a bit on the low side by most standards. Siser regular easyweed is about that but most HTV is higher by another 15 degrees. I would try more heat and do exactly what Dakota suggested, verify your press temp with IR thermo gun to be sure it's actually giving what it's supposed to. Even my $2500 Fusion was way off when I first got it. (It was actualy high and cause scorches but still off). The techs at hotronix had me buy an IR gun and check so that's the correct proceedure and important. Pressure on the shirt is also important. I usually error a bit on the high side just to be safe. Typically if you overdo it you can see some adhesive ooze out at the edges of the vinyl (hard to see on anything except double layers thgouh). I have never had a failure from too much pressure either. The HTV techs get touchy with it, worrying that you can squish it all out the sides but like I said, never had a failure and I have occasionally over pressured significantly on accident. The only failures I have had were 1 roll of bad HTV (very very very unlikely but is possble) but that would only happen on one of the colors. And lack of either heat time or temp. Most often due to temp or something like a thick neck collar holding part of the platen up causing eneven pressure (baby onsies are the worst!) Heat most likely in your case. EDIT: Just saw that only the black is lifting. If you are putting the black on last and the others are getting more swell time it could do what you say.

hotrodz0321 my biggest advice is have a good tax accountant help you stay out in front of the tax burden. You will probably see a significant jump in earned income through your new venture. Also if you have not been collecting sales tax (assuming your state does that like most) be prepared to toe the line. I almost went down the first year I got some big contracts. With new equipment purchases you have a great write-off but after this tax season you may find yourself surprised how much money uncle sam takes if you don't have significant purchses to write off next year set some money aside. Most tax accountants can work you a forecast and you can and should pay quarterly estimates if it will be a lot of money. Not sure what Florida tax laws are like so gettting some sound advice from a good tax man would be smart. I can't give you much help on the printer. I've talked myself out of them several times just due to the need to keep them busy. My business model has shifted away from sign vinyl and I do primarily aparrel work now so the need for a printer has dropped.

Siser says it can and even has hand iron install instructions. I can promis you that anyone doing it that way will NOT get the same quality of job even the poorest of clam shells can produce.

I tend to favor higher tack. There isn't many things more frustrating than trying to do an install and having some of the letters stay on the carrier. Or worse PART of a letter and having it get stretched or ruined. If they are sizeable they will be hinging and installing in place somewhere. 751 transfers pretty good but I still sometimes fight an odd peice here and there. Maybe a greasy hand print on my part when weeding who knows. That being said, if it's going on interiror walls all bets are off. LOL

Try some parchment paper, neatly trimmed. I'm slightly confused by the question since it's HTV rather than regular adhesive vinyl and am assuming you want to protect the sticky carrier around the edges so it doesn't collect dust bunnies. I do enough install that I just save two used backings and place them face to face to create a base and then stack on it. I do NOT sell to others for them to install so a bit different application. In fact I save most of my larger carriers for later use as weeding sheets to collect small weeded pieces. You could ostensibly even ship it un-weeded and let the buyer do some of the time eating work. just a thought.

Oh Slice, you're still just pissed that Santa didn't bring you a red ryder bb gun.

Excelent point haumana. The new chip is an issue for sure. I upgraded my imac last winter and my old hard copy of Illustrator CS5 became an issue. Even updating my old 2010 imac when I put a new HD in it had started to cause some program crashes in AI when scrolling through fonts. That's the price of progress I guess. I ended up biting the bullet and joining the darth vader team and now have an Illustrator subscription. It was nice not having a payment but the new digs are kind of handy because I CAN now run on multiple computers so I can save work from my home workstation onto the cloud and keep going at my day job if I need to. Or just use my AI skills to amaze my co-workers in the construction industry LOL. It blows their minds when I open a PDF set of drawings and make all sorts of notes and resave it and send it back to the dude that drew it. Tons of fun. Anyway your point that the M1 will probably come into play is a very important one that may kill off a few options out there.

I run on a mac. I have zero experience running parallels or any other conversion so can't help that way at all. I made the moveto get away from that platform for a reason. My best advice would be either switch to a mac friendly platform for cutting or just pick up an old windows laptop for just the cutting and still do most of your efforts on the mac. I actually have SignCut Pro 1 (the original old version) and it is just a cutting utility and is cross platform compatible. They have a newer version out now that also does some design. Oddly, I ended up settling in and doing my design on my iMac and then I just transfer the file to a thumb and go cut it on an old windows 7 laptop that I keep Quickbooks on. (because quick books does not make a good version for mac which sucks) In your case the old laptop may be the cheapest route to get going IF you can't figure out the parralells angle (I have no idea what expenses running parralels entails either). There are a few other mac compatible cutting utilities. I looked at them at the time I switched and like the SignCut Pro the best. It's not cheap so if this is for hobby cutting then it may not make sense. I like SC Pro because if my pc laptop fails I can roll the cutter over and plug into the mac and I'm back in action. I don't know of another program that will run on both. I bought the lifetime dongle for Pro1. I don't know if that is even offered anymore and I don't know if the new Pro 2 is even available as a lifetime program , they may have joinded the dark side and went subscription only. Good luck and hope you have success.

There are a couple brands that may be ok with thermal printing. I have went back and forth on buying a DC5SX myself but we live in such a dusty environment that I keep side stepping it. Plus being maxed out on production as well. I found a product that was ok to use the thermal printer but I can't find what it was. It MIGHT have been Thermoflex. Siser Colorprint PU gloss MIGHT work and I was planning on trying it out just to see what happened if I made the leap on the printer. They don't claim it will work but I'd love you to try in and chime back in with any information. Lots of MIGHT's in there.

Regular red Siser is red front and back. Bright red is white on the glue side. Both are available in stretch. Most of the time when people ask for red the bright red is what they had in mind. only a handful of times has someone wanted the plain old red. I still use both when the choice is up to me but bright red pops better especially on colored apparel.

Yeah they got a bonk on the head. No spammers allowed!

Have you cut or plotted ANYTHING? If you haven't I would be sure to play around with basic operation and make sure everything is working correctly before heading into the much more complicated world of countour cutting.

Auto Corrupt! I love it. LOL

I don't know. It gets sticky when you aren't the original owner. A lot of this kind of software is not transferable to another person. The developer would assume you don't have permissions to use it, and probably be correct by their terms and conditions. People sell their programs often but it's pretty much buyer beware. I have not investigated VinylMaster to see what their policy is.

Glad you got it running. I keep wanting to upgrade my old Summa to a T series but I haven't made the leap yet. Always seem to have other things that I need worse. That's the problem with the Summa, It just keeps running and running so it's a want rather than a need.

haumana is awesome with the Mac tech. I hate windows but DO have an older windows 7 laptop that I do my books on and usually run my cutter. Most of my design work is on an iMac but for simplicity I transfer my cut files via a thumb drive over and cut on the laptop. This is as much because I don't have the cutter near my design work station as anything. I use Illustrator for design but use SignCut Pro 1 as my cutter interface. I chose it because if you buy a lifetime dongle you can run It on Mac OR pc. Super handy. It's not cheap so if you are just starting out it may not be worth it but I love it. It has plug-ins for several design programs (not Canvas I'm sure) but I prefer to just open a cut ready file with the program itself. It will cut from several vector options including svg. Not trying to sell you on it but if you are considering spending any kind of money it might be worth doing the free trial. They offer a week free I believe. The old Pro 1 version I use is about obsolete and I don't know much about the new version but I see it has some design capability whereas Pro 1 is strictly an interface, but oh so sweet with all the bells and whistles like nesting and weeding lines etc. They also have real live tech help which NO ONE else gives to my knowledge.

I have learned to be very precise when I do a final clean-up cut after applying the app tape. I use one of the see through craft ruler (Fiskars) and I cut as straight and square as possible. I usually try to use a common offset like a half inch around each side. (enough to be able to hinge without overlapping the vinyl with my masking tape. I have found that being able to use the outside of the masked decal to align with is easier than trying to see through the app tape and figure out if it's hanging straight or not. Having a nice square decal works wonders on simple things like flat glass and signage. If it's going on a car, keeping it looking straight is a whole other art form with all the wild body lines these days. I usually find a window or door bottom or something like that to match and hope for the best. Another worthy piece of newbie advice... go find an Auto Paint & Glass supply store and splurge on some PG grade masking tape.(3/4" or 1") I'm pretty sure the PG stands for Professional Grade. It adheres about 10 times better than the regular stuff you get at normal stores. It also comes off clean without leaving residue. It's not cheap but you'll use less and when the wind catches an edge and tries to take off with your work about the time you have the backing off it just may save your day.

Ha ha. Probably an "oh crap" moment where someone realized theyd forgotten it. Back to the original info. I have a couple programs that will addd thse registration marks like you did here. I still don't use them because they don't always put them where I want them. I still make mine manually and add them to the design in the same spot and each with the colors that associate. Still a good skill to learn, it may help you one day. I don't know the graphtec studio program but there SHOULD be a way to copy an object or group of them (your home made registration marks) and then paste them in place so that they are pasted back into the design right on top of the very copy you made. You then change the color of the new set that are on top of the originals and you now have built in registration marks.

First I suggest joining the forum so you don't have to wait for each post to be approved. I have a D75R. Congrats on the T series, I am jealous, seriously. I don't print and therefore don't do much OPUS contour cutting but have played around some when I got the machine so I'd be at least a little familiar with it. I am not sure exactly how VM Expert will interact with the Summa. I recommend putting in a support ticket with them and probably one with Summa. You should have received the free basic cutting utility WinPlot with your cutter. I had good success using the OPUS with WinPlot although I did not care for the interface and I also run on Mac so I went a different way and have used SignCut Pro. Even in SignCut Pro I seem to remember there being some roadblocks with the OPUS and I ended up just building the file and sending it through Winplot on my windows laptop. I am pretty sure that had I really needed to use it I could have found whatever skullduggery was causing the glitch and you should be able to with VM Expert. The Summa support team is awesome (and Live) and they may have some experience on their end. If memory serves me I believe the problem I was having was related to SignCut not adding the OPUS registration marks appropriately and therefore the cutter didn't like them. I don't know if I've helped you much but good luck and when you find some answers please do future searchers a solid and report them back on this thread so it will help the next guy.