thredz

From a personal view point,if it was me,and I knew there were going to be a lot of people potentialy using a cutter over an extended period of time,I would go with the copam.It's a better built machine and would stand up in the long term.But then I have had no problems with R2,and I use him and the copam a lot more than an hour a day.Just go ahead and buy both.That way the students won't have to form a line to the right to use the cutter.Jm2c.

Most of the people who buy the cutters use them for vinyl mainly,calendered,cast or heat transfer.That is why you don't see much in the way of other materials in the forum.But they both can cut a wide range of materials.The copam is a sturdier machine,but in all honesty it takes a little getting used too compared to the mh721.I never owned a cutter until last august when I bought R2 and I had half of my wife's truck covered in vinyl the first day I had the cutter.But I have been in the graphics business for quite a while and I was using flexisign to design with long before I bought a cutter.It shouldn't be a major task teaching students to use the cutters and I have put both of mine through hours and hours of plots and cuts with no problems other than the ones I created.As for the check thing,you would have to contact Marcus.But I'm shure the school could cut a cashiers check from their bank.The blades have different life spans depending on the material you cut with,but they will run quite a few cuts.You will need to have a few squeegees to last you for a years budget and application tape.You might also want to budget in some 4 x 8 sheets of different colored coroplast so you can cut them down to what ever size the project may be.And the razor knifes with the breakaway blades.I use a dental pick to weed.Some people use x-acto's,some use push pins.Hope that helps.

The reifnes that are branded are that way because they are bought in large quantities form the company,and they pay for the branding and the bundled software that is sold.It's kind of like science diet and iams pet foods are actually made by a company called menu foods,but the companies buy in quantity and have their name branded on the product and tell menu foods the way they want the ingredients they want.But copam is not branded by uscutter.And I don't think there is any company that offers a double warranty.It's usually the company you make the purchase from that covers the warranty and not the manufacturers themselves.

No,I never did the upgrade.I was going to,but I got the copam and it has 64 megs of dsp beffered memory,and R2 has been able to run everything that I've sent to him,so I haven't bought an upgrade. Sorry for the typo.I meant to say beefered memory.(thought I was gonna say buffered didn't you!)

I couldn't tell you on that one.You might email ken imes or selltopia itself.I would say they would be able to get one,but since I don't work for the company I can't say for sure.It would be nice if they stocked a couple of engravers.I know of one person that would buy one for R2.

THEY DON'T HAVE TO SAY ANYTHING ABOUT BEING AFFILLIATED WITH USCUTTER OR ANY OTHER DAMN COMPANY! Maybe everyone is angry because you are becomming annoying as hell! If anyone had a problem with anything it would show up on THIS forum! You have shown your theory which is nothing and you talk about other forums.Why don't you hang out in the other forums ! The problems that surface here are problems with the cutters or software to run the cutters.If you spend so much time doing research,why don't you do some of that in this forum! The only problem we have ever had about bidding,or heaven forbid a company having a different email,has been from you. When I get on this board it's to help and contribute.THe kind of help you need,I can't give!

Selltopia was originally created on ebay as a consignment sales store in washington.They started selling the refine cutters and had them branded with uscutter.They opened a website under that name and then started the forum.They are are seller of copam but they do not own copam.It is the company that makes that brand of cutter.And most people don't link a name to anything that is an off ebay site.I know people who have up to 5 different ebay store fronts all with different names.They also have websites that have different names.But I think they set the forum and web site up at the same time and it was just easier to have the selltopia email address than to set up an email account to have to check.I have 22 email accounts that I have to check numerous times daily and it's quite a pain at times.

Nice Job!And I agree on the wet.It takes a little more time to apply but it saves a lot more time in the long run.

Speaking of videos,how's that contest video comming Tater?

Thanks Tater!At the rate you're going it won't be long before you're there!

They look good!But I like the red shirt/black lettering.The red lettering on the black dosen't define the ball caricature very well

I see the highest bids on your highlighted bids to be $130.50 by dirtcar.Schillbidding?The only other bid over .99 was $102.00.I think your research is flawed.And from the looks of the tabs,when I see the my proxy which must refer to you,you have $240.00.The highest bid highlighted is $130.00,I would say that your proxy shoots that bid all to hell!And if you think 240 is a good bid,then that right there could be your problem.I would bid that amount all day long if I thought I could get them for that and turn around and sell them for a huge profit!But I guess if you did that many proxy bids it would count you as a schill bid because only other people who would bid that many times must be schill bidders.And to me saying proxy bid is like saying sniper.But I don't have problems with snipes because if I have something that's worth a lot more money than I set the opening bid at,I'll close the auction two hours early if there are no bids.And you are aware that there are people who buy things off of ebay and turn right around and sell them for a profit on ebay right.I know of a girl up north who buys all the cheap guitars she can.Then she takes the necks off and sells them and usually the body as complete.But she has been know to completely break down guitars and sell them piece by piece,making more money than the original seller could have ever made selling that same guitar complete.Now if you can show me where those .99 opening bids are jacking the prices up,then I might consider you theory.But for right now,from the pics you've shown your theory doesn't hold water.Just my 2 cents!

When I tried to get R2,I had been bidding on the 721's for over a week.And at the time I bought mine,I had two other bids on cutters going off close to the same time.I'm sure there are others who do this as well because some of us were or are in a hurry because we are trying to buy something to make a living with.I have also placed multiple bids on embroidery machines when I went from digitizing for a company to doing embroidery myself.And at the price you can get these cutters for if you happen to win them at a low bid,I can see people buying two and having one as a backup.I have both brands of the 24" cutters,but I don't use one as a backup,I use the hell out of both of them.I have seen schill bidding before though.There was a company selling around ten hearses on auctions one week,and there was a guy with the user id of either ringostarkey ot richardstarr one of,but he had placed bids on eight of the ten hearses.I figured it up and he had over $125,000.00 worth of bids on those hearses.When I emailed the people selling them and asked about this guy holding all of the bids they said they couldn't tell me who he was,but they also cancelled every auction they had that day and I haven't seen the hearses or that starr starkey guy since.But those are used cars,and you would expect that to happen when it comes to used car sales.But I don't find it unusual for people to have bids on more than one cutter,or any other type of equipment that will earn an income. And Five,I'm not going to ban him.I don't really even care if he's a plant or not.Like Marcus said,these cutters will stand on their own merit.It's kind of funny really.He reminds of that guy dale gribble on king of the hill.Highly paranoid!

Here's text in bunting condensed.Red,with a .025 blue outline.I brought down the effects tab so you could see the effects that come with it.I would imagine the newer version has more.But I am more than happy with the results and the price of mine,so I haven't bothered to check out the addons.Sorry about that.It says the upload folder is full.Here's the clip from one of my sites. http://effindrums.com/clip2.jpg

You will probably have to wait untill monday to get a reply from uscutter.They have regular business hours mon-fri,and the only way they contact on the weekends is if one of them happens to check the board.And Tater's right,corel is not a cutter program.It's a graphics design program.If you are trying to cut from corel,then you would need a bootstrap loader program like signtools 3 or something similar.And I would say since it "went nuts" when you installed corel 12,that it is a settings or driver problem.If the settings or driver is not correct,it will make any cutter cut irradically or even stop running because they operate off of the commands sent to the cutter.If you bought a cutter from selltopia or uscutter,it came bundled with either signcut or artcut.I would try installing whatever bundled software came with the cutter and see if that doesn't help.

I don't know where you pulled that piece of information from.But I know of no shill bidding!All of us guys got our cutters from selltopia on ebay or uscutter.If you want to nuy one,do like every one of us had to do and that's keep placing bids until you are lucky enough to get one for the price you feel you could pay.I guess the popularity of the cutters is what makes you think it's schill bidding,but if it was that type of bidding you would find a lot of negative feedbacks on ebay and a lot of complaints about the bidding in this forum.Check the board!No complaints about the bidding,onyl people trying to help solve tech problems and show off the work they do with their cutters.But if you don't want to bid,go to uscutter and pay the full price!

Try going to the file tab and click cut out instead of using the sissors.That icon has never done anything but bring up the bar graph in mine.If you can't get it to go on com1,and it keeps bringing it up on com3,then you have something that is allready dedicated on com1.I would try setting it on lpt1,with the port set to ecp.I don't know which driver you are using,but there are 2 drivers for the refine cutters.One is refine and the other has refine selltopia,or vice versa.You might try changing to the other driver and see if that helps.

When I do text,I do it in flexi.If I want an outline I go to the effects tab,then to outline.It brings up a box with the outline dimensions and color to select.It also has a couple of markers on the outline path that read width.I grab that marker and drag the outline to the width I want and then click the green check to create the outline.As for saving files,I never save any of my work as an .ai .That file extension causes me nothing but time and trouble in every program I try to use it in.

In flexi,go to the default job properties in the production manager - go to the last tab with the knife icon on it and go down to knife offset and set it from .025 to .032.I would start with .025.At least that's what I use.I can't help you with the other program because I've never seen it.

Okay,Marcus,don't put the review on the auction up untill fivestar gets the money to buy a Copam.

I like the water effect.Have you tried flashing it off with a hair dryer?I know that it helps set the colors on t-shirts when I airbrush them.I think with low heat and constant movement,it wouldn't take long to heat set into the vinyl.

I guess you're right.I'm very PRO USCUTTER!!!!! I push these cutters every chance I get.And I don't work for the company,I'm just one of the people who bought a cutter with the only knowledge of cutting was watching a guy run one while I was on my way to the pit to clean out a silk screen.And,as you all ready know,(Since U B Da Man!) I don't get any kind of commission if someone sees the pictures of the most super fantastic works of art ever created on the planet Earth!,and decides to buy one the cutters you sell.But yet,I push them like a used car salesman.And on the posts,the only good post out of that whole batch was the review where they rated the Copam above a roland.Now that was a must read.So,the next time someone asks how it compares to a roland,I'll send them that link.And I guess contests are good.But not everyone has the time for videos.I think that everyone in this forum should get off of their collective asses and post some pictures of their work.Hell,I'll bet if everybody started posting pics,you would have to buy more file storage.And,I think you should put the link to the Copam review in the Copam auctions and website.It would be a definite plus on sales.And I understand your commitment priorities.But you should understand not only mine,but Tater,Beardown,Fivestar,BannerJohn and quite a few others.Our priority is this forum!We are here to try to help.We don't do no sales or stocking or unloading them damn trucks.We are merely people trying to help.

Yes Ken,they're ignoring you!(hehehe) Actually I think it's part of a great conspiracy.They are upset because their software used to be bundled with the cutters and now they are bundled with signcut.So,they sent a seeker virus to find and disable all of the artcut running on uscutters.

I use the hewlet packard hpgl driver.And so far ,no problems

Well I find it very frusterating and irritating.This board has been up since september of 2006 and I have seen nothing in the way of videos to show how to run the cutters.We get a post about someone having problems with a roland,and the next day I see multiple posts of videos showing how to cut with a roland.I spend my days and night checking this board to help people out.And if you don't believe me,check my stats.There are 3 1/2 to four hours in the a.m. when I haven't made a post on this forum.And that is only because I sleep during those 3 hours.I link graphics of the cuts and plots I do to my websites.I promote uscutters in the t-shirts I sell in my route 66 guitar parts ebay store.I promote uscutter as heavily as I can.You may think you giving people examples of how to run a cutter,but to people who have never had any experience,they will watch the videos and wonder how to set their cutters that way,or they may even go buy a roland instead because at least they can see videos on how to run them.The only thing I see out of it is more confusion!