darcshadow

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Posts posted by darcshadow

  3. Posted

    15 hours ago, candace0272 said:

    yea I was being lazy! lol ok will do

    thanks

    Sorry, but you do have to learn the very basics before we can be much help on here. Everyone has told you good information but I gather from your question of how to draw a box all the information they're giving you is over your skill level at this time.

    There are tons of great videos to get you started, or just start pushing buttons in the program and see what happens, that's usually how I learn a program.

    Once you can do the basics, then everyone on here will be more than happy to help with some tricks or more advanced techniques. 

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    to run the plotter and design software a 10 or 15 year old computer would work just fine so in today's standards anything off the shelf will do the job.

    As for video editing, the better the graphics card you can afford the better. The largest and fastest disk you can afford would also be good. A large SDD would be great. An array of SDDs might even be better but if you're not very computer savvy dealing with raided drives can be a bit to undertake.

    They're getting harder to find, but if you can find a computer with a serial port that'd be nice to have for the low to mid range plotters.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    Even heat resistant stuff has a melting point. :)

    And did it say heat resistant on the package? The green foam I'm looking at online doesn't mention resistant, only fire retardant, meaning it won't burn easily.

  7. Posted

    If you make that exact same design only smaller, say 8", does it work? If so, then file size is NOT your problem. Yes, these cutters have limited memory, but it's not the physical size of the design being cut, it's the number of nodes in the design. I've cut some designs on mine with tons of nodes.

    the 1/8" tacking error you saw with the paper can be expected on long runs. I did a 6' stripe one and the start and stop points were off by about an 1/8, maybe even a 1/4". Since it was a simple stripe I just used a knife to even out the difference and unless you look really close you'd never notice it.

    You have something more than just tracking causing your problem, the GT and the 86 shouldn't be overlapping that bad even with bad tracking.

    On 10/13/2018 at 7:06 PM, Urabus said:

    Wow seriously.  And I thought I was getting the faster transfer with the "USB".  Never would have imagined going back to a serial connection.  I think I have one of those adapters laying around at work from some older PC equipment.

    Transfer speeds for plotters don't need to be fast. You're sending typically on a few hundred Kb of memory. Don't underestimate a good serial connection. They are old, but they're still around for a reason. They are extremely reliable and cheap to implement. The main draw back to them is transfer speed, but as I said, that is not much of an issue with the file sizes typical with vinyl cutters. A big advantage of serial is range, you easily run a 50' serial cable with no problems. USB, anything over 6' and you can start to have issues with the cheaper chipsets and 16'5" is the max length per the USB specifications.

  8. Posted

    I don't know of any adhesive vinyl that you'd be able to peal off and reuse. The act of pealing vinyl off causes the vinyl to stretch slightly, so even if you get it off without ripping it, it'll never look the same when you reapply it. Vinyl is cheap, and the cheap vinyl is good enough for what you are doing, just make a bunch of stencils, use them once and toss them. The time and hassle of trying to reuse is not worth the few penny's it cost to make a new one.

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    Can it be done, Yes. Can it be done quickly and easily, No.

    Signblazer can export designs as EPS files that you can then open in most other vector programs but there is no automated way of doing this. Personally what I would do is keep signblazer around and if I ever need an old design I'd then find it and convert it to EPS. I wouldn't spend time converting every old design that I most likely will never need again.

    As for the fonts, they can be copied over to the new computer. I believe you can just copy them to the windows font folder and you're golden, I don't think you have to install each one individually.

  12. Posted

    Do you mean the box with the T next to it and a value of 4.925?  The VM support guy just posted a thing about this the other day. That is the height of the capital H. Presumable all capital letters will be the same height but some fonts do do some fancy things that would go above or below the H. You can't have every single letter be the same height, unless the font is designed that way. Some fonts are, but several are not.

    I am curious now though, what is the box with the A next to it for?

  13. Posted

    I don't think they really mean start, but rather layout. The N will be cut where the B was cut with the old cutter.

    But yeah, you don't need to change your design, just the way you think of plotter orientation. You say it cuts right to left, but if you look at the cutter from the other side it's cutting left to right. If I'm reading correct, the bottom right corner will be the origin point on the cutter so that when the job is done you'd be able to read the words as the vinyl hangs from the cutter.

    I don't know your software, but most programs you can change the orientation so that it will plot like your old one if you can't wrap your head around the different orientation.

    • Like 1

  18. Posted

    With the belt removed do you still get a grinding noise? If not, then I would say you do not have a control or motor problem. My guess would be something is not aligned quite right and getting bound up.

    The grinding noise is the belt slipping at the motor. 

    Is the machine new? If so call tech support and have them trouble shoot it for you.

  21. Posted

    17 minutes ago, The Zaar said:

    Hmmm... If the command language is HGPL, then it's likely there are drivers out there that will work. HGPL is a widely used standard for plotters, 3D printers, and CAD (computer assisted design). Macs can drive a lot of those things. Something else on my list of things to look into. Thanks for the info!

    Except the driver you need, is for the chip that is doing the comm connection inside the cutter. The USB connection on the cutter is nothing more than a cheap RS-232 converter. HGPL is just the language which is why I said if you can plug directly into the comm port on the cutter you should be able to make it work on a mac as you don't need a driver.

    1 minute ago, The Zaar said:

    Thanks for the clarification. I was thinking "steps," but do all cutters have the same number of steps per inch or cm? If the program thinks it's cutting to a machine that has, say, 1000 steps to the inch, and the machine actually has 2000 steps to the inch (i.e., higher resolution), the design will come out half the size it should. Maybe that's one of the things the driver does... tell the program how many steps it takes to move one inch or cm. Sorry, I'm into SWAG territory here. I'm better off to just plug it in and watch it work. :-)

    No, but most do seem to be 1012 steps per inch. This value is determined by the type of stepper motor used. Driver has nothing to do with this value. Again, the driver is nothing more than a usb to rs-232 converter. The step count would be a setting in the software being used. Most cutting programs have a drop down list to select your cutter and have settings such as this preset just to make it easier for the user. Inkscape for example, at least the windows version, just has the settings, it doesn't care what model of cutter you have. You set the step count, the comm baud rate, and a few other things I can't recall right now and that's it. 

  23. Posted

    2 hours ago, Meucow said:

    I really try to buy what I can, locally, using cash and not spending on our credit card. Funds are crazy tight and when I get paid for jobs, I use cash to buy supplies. 

     

    Lots of people use this logic but I never really understood it. If you have $10 cash in hand. Just put it in the bank, or a mason jar, and and don't touch it then spend $10 on your credit card. At the end of the month take the $10 out and pay the credit card. You're still spending the same amount of money. The only difference is you just keep track of what you spend vs what you make and don't spend more than you make. And if you get a good credit card you get cash back so using the credit card will actually save you money.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    1 hour ago, The Zaar said:

    I will look into getting a Trip-lite USB2COM adapter. But frankly, I can't believe that here we are, 18 years into the 21st century, with the USB standard on its 3rd iteration, and there is still hardware being offered for sale that is not compatible with even USB2. The USB standard is not rocket science. Even China makes USB chips that are up to the current standards. Printer drivers are not rocket science. It's not like someone is asking to run a cutter with their Commodore 64 or Atari. Macintosh computers have been around since the 70s, and unlike Commodore 64 and Atari, thousands of Macs are sold each year. And Apple is no minor player -- it is the most highly valued company in the world (stock value). Sorry for the rant, but it's inconceivable to me that USCutter is offering a product that is incompatible with millions of computers people use every day. And they can't blame "China" for that. That would be like buying a computer that's not compatible with WiFi and the company saying, "Sorry. The WiFi chips in China are not up to current standards, but you can either use dialup or buy a Trip-lite USB2WiFi adapter."

    It's not USB that is the problem. It's the conversion of USB to the comm chip. Basically the cutter has a USB2COMM chip in it, just like the trip lite adapter, only the version in the cutter is cheaper and not a robust. It does seem odd that no one has created a mac driver for the chipset used in these cutters but I'm not a driver developer, it could be more work than I'd think. The cutter itself at it's core runns on the protocol RS-232 and uses HPGL as it's command language. Which is why I say you should be able to get it to work using a usb comm adapter that is supported by macs.

    And don't be fooled by the age of RS-232. It is an extremely robust and a very reliable communication protocol, superior to USB in several ways actually. It's biggest down side is speed, and for devices like a cutter, CNC machine, 3D printer, etc, communication speed is not really a factor and 9600 baud rate over a serial cable is more than fast enough.

  25. Posted

    If you have a specific goal in mind with what you plan to use the cutter for I'd skip the bundle. Get the cutter and software, should be included, a stand for the cutter (not absolutely necessary but very worth having) and get a roll or two of vinyl in the colors you want. That's all you really need. Everything else you might need can be found a local stores or improvised with stuff laying around the house.

    • Like 2