thredz

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Posts posted by thredz

  2. Posted

    I use flexisign.I had corel 8 a long time ago,but I never used it much.I am so used to paint shop and photoshop that I didn't want to take the time to learn the way it works.I do know they have a corel driver in the download section,but I couldn't tell you how to make it work.

  4. Posted

    I'm sure there are videos out there.But I couldn't tell you where.I learned about registration marks from screen printing.I think they have some videos and tips at signwarehouse.com,but I don't have the link.

  5. Posted

    This is a graphic on the south wall of the other post.It's 70 inches long and 20 inches tall.I put this on at two o' clock this morning.I would not recommend installing a graphic this large by yourself.It took about an hour for me to get this all lined and squeegeed.I felt like I had put in a hard days work in that hour.

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  7. Posted

    This is a small animation of three walls I painted and installed break line graphics in black fdc vinyl.The walls are in mustard yellow top and tan bottom.the mountains were a graphic that I took out half,keaving one set of mountains.I duplicated the mountains,then mirrored the duplicate,then brought it up to 52" for one side and 48" for the other.

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  8. Posted

    A sign I designed for an ebay store I have.15.5x5 ,5 colors,with clear vinyl overlay.The second  pic is a 15x5 4 color flamed maple top in 4 colors with a clear vinyl overlay.

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  9. Posted

    When you are stting up the design.Put a small square box at the bottom of each corner of your color.Do that for every color you are doing,stacking the boxes on top of each other.That way you will have the boxes as registration marks to line up your colors when you apply them.I try not to put a lot of squeegee pressure over the boxes so they will be easier to peel off after I have set the colors.

                                  Bill

  10. Posted

    Having read through the board,then I'm sure you have noticed how quickly these people work to try to resolve the problems.And I have not seen one complaint of being charged to get their cutters back up.When you have machine built with assembly line parts,like almost every machine made,there are times when the parts are not right.But like I said.I haven't seen complaints from anyone about service support or charges.Just my .02.

                              Bill

  11. Posted

    I have been doing so much better business wise with my cutter that I have stared shutting down a couple of my embroidery sites.I will probably sell my 6 needle "the Wookie" machine after the first of the year.I see no sense in keeping a machine that takes up one third of my shop and not making me that much money.Besides,I can buy a lot of vinyl stock with the money when I sell the Wookie.I think most of the problems people have with the cutters is actualy the software the is used to create the designs.They can only do what they are told.If they aren't cutting a nice straight line,it's usually because the design does not have those nice straight lines when it's sent to the cutter.When you do a large design,zoom it in and look at it to make sure it's the quality you want.And another thing I have found is that if I run the design on plotter paper with a pen before I run a cut on vinyl,it helps to make sure the design is the way I want it before I cut the vinyl.It just saves money on vinyl and it saves wear and tear on the blades.If you need any help,this board is really good at helping you out.

                                          Bill

  12. Posted

    I have been doing embroidery for the last couple of years.The embroidery business is a tough sell with the way money is right now.I saw these cutters on ebay and I thought I would buy one to see what I could do with it.In about three months,I have sold more vinyl just sitting here in my shop than I did going out and trying to push my digitized desgins.I have ordered a 4 meg upgrade for my cutter " named-R2D2",and sometime next year I hope to buy the large cutter they sell.I have put many many hours into R2,and he hasn't let me down yet.To me,these cutters are the best cutters for the money!But that is my own personal opinion.I think another strong point for these cutters is the fact that they are affordable enough that someone can buy them even if they aren't sure about how to use them,or worried about selling vinyl.You can buy a roland or summa or another name brand for thousands of dollars,but these cutters use a lot of roland parts and don't cost thousands of dollars to get you into a business.

                Bill

  15. Posted

    It depends on the vinyl and the detail of the vinyl.If I'm cutting a design with a lot of fine detail and corners,I set it down to 12 or 16 i.p.s. .But if I'm cutting a set of large flames or tribals I run it at 24 or 36.The blade tends to skip on the small things instead of cutting them at the higher speeds.And the thicker mill vinyl needs to run slower so the blade has the time to cut through.Most of the vinyl I use is 3.2 mill,so I can only tell you what I run at.

                                    Bill

  16. Posted

    If you will make a couple of small squares for each color, and place them at the bottom of your design stacked on top of each color.You will be able to cut as many colors as you wish using the squares for registration marks.After you have completed laying the vinyl for your job,just remove the squares.I use two at the bottom,but some people use three with one on the top.And other use four.One at each corner.I also try not to put as much squeegee pressure over the registrations when I apply the vinyl.It makes it easier to remove.Hope that helps.

                                        Bill

  17. Posted

    I think the best way to adjust the blade is to take a scrap piece of vinyl you are going to use for the job,and set the blade at the depth you think it should be.Then press the test button on the cutter.You can move the vinyl back and forth and just keep testing until the blade is cutting through the vinyl and leaving a line mark on the backing sheet,but not going all the way through.You might check your software and see if you have an option to specify an overlap.That way the blade will cut how ever much you specify past the end of the fill,or circles.I have even set mine to run a very shallow cut,with 2 passes around the entire design.I think if you play with it a little,you will find that these cutters really cut.At least I have had no problem with mine,and I have logged many many cutting and plotting hours on it in a very short time.You have to check your design for those tiny holes and lines through the design.The low resoultion graphics tend to leave a stipple pattern when converted.And when the cutter tries to cut the pattern,it just looks like an area of dots.The crab art I posted was from a low resoultion pic,and it has a stipple design covering 40% of the design.It's a nice effect when you are doing a plot,but the cutters just can't cut those small circles.Or maybe it's just that I don't want to try because I don't like to spend an hour weeding a design.It may help your cuts if you slow down the cutter as well.If it's running at 24 i.p.s. or better,it tends to skip across the smaller cuts rather than actually cutting them.

                            Bill

  18. Posted

    I just finished this piece.It took half a day to work it up,and another three hours to plot and finish out.It really turned out well with a sharpie poster paint gold and a fine silver.I ran the bags,seat,and handle grips in brown to complement the gold.It took almost an hour for the flexi program to seperate the colors.I started out with a 16 colors design,and stripped it down to 6 colors.

            Bill

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  19. Posted

    I use flexisign to do most of my work.I also do embroidery digitizing,and I use the software on that as well.In flexi,you have to select all the design and then go to effects and click on seperate overlap.That will split the blacks away from the colors.Sometimes I have to use the point edit tool to bring the colors to the black.But the crab was a mistake.I had set it for a dark and light red with the black outline and shading,but I forgot to seperate the overlap and got a two color red effect just from the multiple passes on the first red.Sometimes, a mistake can turn out to be better than the image in the mind.I also have my plot pen set to .010 ,so it does go back and cover the area.It takes a little longer this way,but the quality is much better.

                                                  Bill

  21. Posted

    Look in the drivers to see if you can find one with refine mh**** ,If not,I would try the roland pnc1000 driver.It is the universal driver for most of the uscutters.I don't think I've heard of using a graphtec driver,but I haven't seen the guide you are using.Try the roland,and if you are on the serial port make sure it's set to com:1.

                                                    Bill

  22. Posted

    I tried the vinyl through the printer thing and it just bubbled up on the vinyl.I let it set for over 24 hours and wiped it right off with my hand.I think you have to go with a thermal or solvent printer for the vinyl to take ink.If you are doing a design with fine lines in it,the ultra fine sharpies are the way to go.I think they are around .25mm,compared to the fines,which are close to .07mm.Hope that helps you out.

                                        Bill

  23. Posted

    The only kind of sharpie to use is the one with the sharpie brand on them.All of the others I tried were either too transparent,or they would smudge when you rubbed your fingers across them.And the high gloss vinyl doesn't hold the color as well either.If you print on high gloss vinyl,you're really printing over the gloss coat and not into the vinyl.If you are going to do stickers,buy a matte vinyl.That way you will actually be printing into the vinyl and it will hold color better and more smudge resistant.If you can work your design to an outline design lettering included,then you can run the job as a cut job and not a plot.It will go a lot quicker that way.When I first ran the guitar parts usa,I ran it as a plot,which took almost five minutes @ 24 i. p. s. .When I ran it as a cut job,it took two minutes at the same speed.And when you are running 500 stickers less time is a factor.I look forward to seeing your pics.I hope you get as much enjoyment out of your cutter as I do mine!

                                                    Bill

  25. Posted

    I have around 35 hewlet packard plotter pens I bought off of ebay.They are .7 mm and .3 mm in size,but I have had to cut the rib edge to get it to fit in my cutter.The .3mm's are the ones I did the 500 ovals with.Most of the other large plots are done with the .7mm's.You can also use just about any pen style permanent marker.I took an old sharpie and cut the bottom one third off of the bottom of the pen cap and then I sliced the side to make a rough type of collette for the pens to sit in so you could tighten them in the blade holder.I have marks on my collette so I can set all of the pens to almost the same depth.I try to keep them high enough so they don't leave drags lines when they cross the designs,and if it's higher,you can set the downforce at 10 to 20g's where it's barley touching the paper.The more downforce the more you dull the tips of the pens.I've got four to six motorcycles I ran yesterday that I will probably put up on my plotter art page tonight that were done mainly with an ultra fine black sharpie.By running those 500 ovals with the pens,I was able to offer my customer 500 designs done in ten different colors.And I even ran 125 of them in two colors,which was only a little more time for the extra pen change.I wouldn't buy too many of the old plotter pens though.The ones I got were made in 85 and 88 and some of them had dried out even though they were in sealed packages.So,if you see hp plotter pens for sale real cheap,it's because hp quit making pens in the late 80's to early 90's,so buy them at you own risk.Hope that helps you out.It's definetly worth the time involved in setting up a way to run the pens!