Wildgoose

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.

Back to copy paste... You do that part in the design phase before you ever send it to the cut menu. Essentially the marks you place to use as registration marks are part of the design and they just need to all stack up in the same place. As Mike said copy the black ones and then paste them in the same spot you copied them from and change the color to match the gold or whatever color you have going next. Once you have them all in there when you ARE over in the cut menu and select a color they will show up with each color of your design.

This is what I do. I like a diamond or a triangle shape. I place them where I want them and then group and copy paste them on top of one another in each color layer so they are all on the same spot on the design.

Good to see some helpful input on the Prism Cut. They are fairly new to the forum and not a lot of users yet so your help is appreciated (or will be by someone)

Hopefully you got it figured out. It is also often helpful to look at your design in "wire frame" mode. All vector design programs have this view option. What you see in wire frame is what your cutter see's. The colors you choose to fill different objects lets your cutting software determine and separate out multiple color projects and send just the specific group to the cutter. (All the red, all the green etc...) Your cutter just follows along the paths that are sent. Good luck and if you still have issues post a screen shot of what you go going on. (no copyright protected items please) It's easier to help if we can see the problem.

I'd say a huge success for your experience level. Good job! Those adhesive cutting carrier sheets can be a little wonky when they are out on the ends. If you are going to do this a lot and have the space I would consider some sort of table on one or both sides to help support the carrier while it's working. Think table saw (although not necessarily exactly up at the roller level. Even just setting the cutter on a table may be enough to help with the drooping carrier. I occasionally use a stiff carrier I picked up at Walmart to cut up some craft items for you wife or kids and have seen what can happen when you are out near the start or end of them. Mine are extra stiff, some of those you can find ore more forgiving. I have also made my own carrier when cutting stencils from card stock by just covering the back with a couple layers of transfer paper (even better with some clear transfer but paper seems to work fine) if you have any laying around.

Not sure what brand go HTV you are planning to use. I assume that you'll use Siser because they claim to be home iron friendly. The HTV won't care what fabric unless its Nylon. If its a tri-blend you would be best going with Siser Stretch but they now have 320 as an application temp instead of 305 which you probably can't get up to with an iron. Read the application data on whatever brand you end up with because they are often a little different brand to brand and even type to type within brands. The elephant in the room is the hand iron. If this is a one off for you or your kids that's one thing but you will never get a good application that way. Consider purchasing an actual heat press. Even the very bottom of the barrel choice is WORLDS above a hand iron.

I would print every day. I don't think it has to be a whole lot but run a nozzle check so every nozzle get s squirt. I did for quite a while and then forgot to an soon had a plugged head. At one point I tried to set up a program on my mac that would strt up and print every day like the solvent/ecosolvent printers do but I had limited success with that. I was able to go on trips and come back several days later and not have any issues though, BUT the sublimation ink seems to have fairly high amount of solids floating. The main problem with the Epson is that the actual print head part stays in the machine and you just change out the cartridge of ink. (that is part of why the ink cost less) Most inkjets have the pintehead as part of the ink container so you ger a new print head every time you change ink. They are a real PIA once they get plugged. I was succesful on clearing one plugged machine but my other one ended up in a dumpster. The WF7710 was what I was using at the time I think I had only paid a couple hundred for and I did a sublimated set of jersesy for a softball team so it had paid for itself on one job. Things may have changed since then, I haven't followed prices or the latest printer tech. I have gotten so busy with tee shirts that I stopped taking on a lot of the peropheral things. I DO miss playing aorund with trinkets like dog tags and key chains etc...