darcshadow
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Posts posted by darcshadow
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You might try letting the glasses sit a day or two with the decal applied and give the adhesive time to really setup. Also, a good cleaning of the glass with rubbing alcohol will help get a good stick.
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I'm usually around 50psi. It really depends on air flow and how well the siphon pickup is working. Different setups will need different setting. The lower the setting you can get away with and still get a good etch the better so it won't rip through the vinyl.
One thing that took me awhile to discover, and made a big difference, on the siphon pickup, the top of it needs to be above the media. If the entire tube is under media you'll get a surge of media, then just air, then another surge.
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I'm still curious why you want to convert to dxf. Most every program I've seen that uses dxf can also just as easily use eps, ai, or svg.
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Recheck blade depth first, search for mz skeeter's instructions on here for the proper way to do it, they are everywhere, she post them a lot. Will probably post them here before long.
If you're cutting too deep you have too much blade out, if the blade is set correctly, it's not possible to cut too deep.
Once that's done, double check the cutting strip, has it gotten damaged.
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You're going to have to provide more info than that if you want help.
What software? How are you connected, USB or Serial? Using a Keyspan adapter? How do you define "hissy fit"? What do you mean "won't work"? What have you tried?
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The MH, while a decent cutter, is the bottom of the barrel of cutters. Doing something that big the tracking is going to drift. Pulling the vinyl off the roll so that the cutter is not pulling can help but no guarantee that I'll solve the problem. Some software will let you cut in segments so that you're only feeding say 6" of vinyl at a time, this can help improve tracking but it also means that your long straight lines will be made up of several short cuts, that may not line up perfect.
If you're only problem is the long straight boarders, I'd suggest changing it so the cutter only cuts one side of the boarder then lay the vinyl out on a table and with a straight edge cut the other side of the boarder. That way, even if the tracking is off a little on the cutter you can make the boarder the same width all the way around.
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You might give Inkscape a try. It's a free vector editing program and does quite well at vectoring graphics. Just remember, as you found out, a vector file may or may not contain a vector drawing. Vector files (eps, svg, ai, pdf, etc) can have raster images (bmp, jpg, giv, etc) embedded in the file. They'll open and look great on the computer but can't be cut.
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Like a baby monitor/security camera? They typically have IR emitters to "light" up the room so most anything can be seen.
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Depending on how the PDF was created, it may or may not be a vector. However, if you can get the original power point file, you can simply copy and paste into your vector program, although I believe the if you do not have the fonts installed the Power Point will go to a default font.
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A raster image (jpg, bitmap, gif, etc) can not be cut and must be converted to a vector file first. Simply saving a file off as an SVG, EPS, etc does not mean the file is a vector. Vector file types are capable of having raster images embedded in them. If you look at your image in wireframe mode and see nothing then you have a raster image, not a vector. I'm not sure what a bitmap flexi file is. You said you traced the jpg, which should result in a vector, but the term bitmap implies a raster image. So either Flexi has some odd names for things or you've gotten a little mixed up. No worries, people new to vector images tend to have a hard time wrapping their head around it at first.
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Ok, your problem is not with the cutter, but the vectoring of the image. Unfortunately I have no experience with Flexi but I would guess you need to adjust some setting in the trace settings. You could also download Inkscape, it's free, and give it a try. It's vectoring abilities are really quite good and you can't beat the price.
Another option would be to recreate the image. The NFL shield should be easy enough to find and vector then just redraw the red no symbol.
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Do you actually need a driver? The manual I found only shows a RS-232 connection and the plotter runs on the HP-GL protocol. So all you should need to do is set your comm port up correctly and then the software should be able to talk to it.
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SB works just fine on Windows 7 64-bit. You might also try some of the free trial version of software to help identify if your problem is hardware or software.
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I seem to recall reading or being told once that the Air Force logo should have a white border/background if it's being put on a dark surface. Does anyone know if that is true? Naturally a white border would make it pop better but is it required per air force logo guidelines. This web page doesn't mention a specific format based on background color.
http://www.trademark.af.mil/About-Us/The-Air-Force-Symbol/Display-guidelines/
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Knifeless tape would be an option as well. Although I believe it is intended more for wrap vinyl, it should work with cast vinyl.
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I'll have to double check my home computer but I believe all my SBFs got moved to the windows font folder and they work just fine. It is a bit annoying when selecting a font as it has the SBF_xxx name but with a font viewer you can quickly look at all your fonts then pick the one you want and look at it's name.
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Does it always do reverse of what you want? If that's the case I'd look for a setting in the software someplace, sounds like your tool head IDs have gotten swapped.
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What software are you using?
Did it cut completely through the backing paper? If so, you're cutting strip is now damaged, at least in that area, and will cause issues down the road. No need to do anything about it right now as you need to figure out the double cutting problem first. But once that is taken care of you'll want to replace the cutting strip.
Till you get it working, I'd suggest switching to a pen and paper so that you don't waste any vinyl and don't do any additional damage to the cutting strip or blade.
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One of the down sides of SVG is that it is open source and not strictly controlled. As a result different programs do slightly different things with the SVG format. The copy and paste is one of those that I've noticed. As you found, the only work around I've found as well was to group all the objects before pasting, in my case I was pasting into SignBlazer. The size was never correct either, but since the objects were all groups resizing them was not a big deal.
From the description of your text problem, sounds like text is another thing that Inkscape and VinylMaster handle slightly different. Did saving the file as a plain SVG make any difference? Inkscape can also save files off as eps, might try that then importing the eps into VM.
One other option, it is possible to cut straight from Inkscape. It's a very basic setup and you don't have all the various tools of a true cutting program, but it can be made to work, and it's pretty much all I use. Note, I only do decals as a hobby so I don't really need the various tools of a true cutting program.
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If you watch the machine closely, you'll like see it's not cutting each shape seven times but rather the lines where the various colors meet is being cut multiple times. I do not know of any way to quickly get rid of the over lapping lines. It will require a good bit of welding, punching, and node editing to get the desired results.
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Inkscape is a decent design program. It is free, but like a lot of free software, can be a bit clunky at times, but it's pretty powerful and can be a great learning tool before buying something though.
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Yeah, missed the Mac thing. Still though there are various free trials of programs that could be tried before completely giving up on the cutter. Inkscape can also be configured to cut, although it's not as straight forward as most would like.
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You might also look into finding a maker's space that has a laser you can use. They seem to be popping up quite often these days.
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That kind of sounds like a software problem to me. Before you give up on the machine I'd try a different cutting software and see what happens. Signblazer is free, I"d download it and give it a try to see what happens.
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New Business Laptop
in General discussion
Posted
No, what you have now is plenty for vector graphic design. Inkscape is a free vector program you can download and give a try. It is a bit slow starting up, but once is running it runs great.