jmas

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Posts posted by jmas

  1. Posted

    Minority racism? Segregation? I do not think these words mean what you think they mean. They're free to fly the flag all they want. Everyone else is free to let their opinions be known about it too. We are going through a period where people are deciding that since we don't all agree on it, we don't need it in our public spaces like courthouses and capitols. The flaggers can cry about it all they want but that's all that's going to happen. Try as I might, I can't see them as the victims here. The swastika was traditionally a good luck symbol until the Nazis ruined it, but nobody's flying swastikas off the back of their truck and saying "Oh woe is me, what's wrong with these Jewish people for being offended by my good luck symbol!!!"

     

    The Amazon and Ebay stuff is just corporations deciding that the next time someone kills people while trying to start a race war, they don't want to go back through their twitter feed and see the shooter recommending their site as a good place to get rebel flags. I don't blame them one bit. I don't make retail decals and, even if I did, the odds of selling to the next Dylan Storm Roof are small. But the odds of selling to a gun-toting redneck who wants to be all up in everyone's face about his flag are close to 100% right now.

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    I think I know the problem but I don't know what it is called in SCALP. I think you need to join the letter and it's inner part together before welding. Maybe by using that Path Union thing? Can you select the "o" and it's inner circle, do Path Union with the two of them, then weld?

     

    That's how Graphtec Studio works, but it's called creating a compound path. It might be called something different in SCALP, but I think you need to do what's in this picture.

    post-29371-0-81031300-1434604111_thumb.j

  7. Posted

    Anybody want to take a guess?

     

    I am doing some small work for this Arjo Huntleigh company and I might pitch some larger work. If so, they could supply the graphic, but I'd like to know the font beforehand to pitch it. They are part of the Getinge Group which also owns Maquet and they all use the same font, so I put all the images of their logos that I could find into this one.

     

    I've ran this through all the online tools and the only thing close is Foobar Pro, but that's still way off.

    post-29371-0-47544700-1433649314_thumb.j

  9. Posted

    I'm a body shop guy. I highly recommend a cutter with a servo motor such as a Graphtec. 24 inches is the standard size unless you think you'll be working with box trucks a lot or something. For material, you'll want to use Oracal 751 or 951 (or the equivalent in other brands).

     

    A servo motor is more expensive but they can cut with more detail. As a rule of thumb, a stepper motor can cut a letter 1/2 inch tall but probably not much smaller while a servo motor can cut things much smaller than that. A stepper might be fine for racing stripes and other large designs, but you'll find yourself wanting to cut things smaller. I'm working on two lettering jobs tonight, one is a few words of text that is less than 1/4 tall. The other is a Bible verse for a Harley saddle bag where the text is clear coated over. The text is about 1/2 tall but the verse number at the bottom is 5/16ths. On both jobs, I'm just replacing things that are already on the vehicle where we have to repair. Neither are very glamorous, and neither are what you get a cutter for, but when you have a cutter, you will keep finding little things like that to do. All told, I'm making $50 and the shop is making $50 for what amounts to 20 minutes of work and $1 of vinyl.

     

    That said, this is the kind of thing you will have to find interesting enough to learn. It's not hard, but it will take a little learning to do more than simple lettering, and if it doesn't look fun, you might be wasting your money. You can always have a local sign shop make things for you and you can mark it up. That's what we used to do until the sign shops in the area kept going out of business.

  10. Posted

    I was bored so I remade it, but I use Graphtec Studio and it can't export files without printing them to a pdf file then converting that into an eps. The resulting eps can't be cut because it's more like a regular image, you can't separate the objects. I made it huge so you can probably get an ok trace though.

     

    You might need to re-do some of the text. The fonts were RelayComp-Black for the "ANTSO" and Helvetica Rounded LT Std Black for the rest.

    post-29371-0-05870600-1432866439_thumb.p

    antso2.eps

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    Does anyone know the difference between DiNOC and 1080 carbon fiber (specifically, 1080 CF-12 looks exactly the same as Dinoc)?

     

    I second Metrorestyling, they have it all and you can get it by the foot. Just pay attention to the width because it varies between brands.

  13. Posted

    You can paint 3 coats of black, lay the stencil, then 3 coats of white. You just need to let the black dry first. How long it takes to dry depends on a lot of factors. Like jaybird said, there will be a hard edge that you'll need to clearcoat and sand to get rid of.

     

    I made the text and snake stencils for this one and, due to time constraints, put them on just as the bake cycle finished. It was the painter's car so he accepted the risk and he was a pro.

    post-29371-0-65054700-1432174112_thumb.j

  15. Posted

    I got the "holder holder", Sharpie sleeve and Space Pen sleeve and they all work great. I got them on ebay from mb20music (his name is different there but he's the only person selling these) and just wanted to leave good feedback here too. One of the sleeves was actually wrong, at least I couldn't get it to fit the pen, so I emailed him to figure out if it was wrong or if I was just stupid. It was Saturday afternoon so I figured I'd get a reply Monday or whenever, but nope, 5 minutes later I got a 'Oops, sorry about that, the correct one is on the way' email. And sure enough, when I got the envelope, there were not 1 space pen sleeve but 3! He said it was for the inconvenience and because they're small and easy to lose, but I think he was just trying to make me buy another holder.  :)

     

    Anyway, mb20music's holder and pen sleeves are all great and he's a good seller so go get some of his stuff. I wish I had gotten them earlier.

  16. Posted

    I don't understand what it does, does it just autotrace photos?

     

    I've looked for apps that might be useful for vinyl type work but the vector editing apps are impossible. There's nothing worse than trying to node edit a vector file with your thumbs. The only thing I've found useful is a mobile invoicing app.

  18. Posted

    Anyone know this one? My photo wasn't clear enough for whatdafont and I've gone through tons of fancy fonts but they're all too fancy, whereas this one is only "slightly fancy."

     

    Thanks

    post-29371-0-31065200-1428618840_thumb.p

  19. Posted

    I have a couple radios but haven't gotten around to doing the test so I've never hit the TX buttons. I'm a single dad so when I think I may have time to schedule taking the test, my schedule always changes. Plus where I live, one of the best arguments against getting into ham radio is listening to the local repeaters. But I'll get my license sooner or later, I want to actually do things with it instead of chatting. I'm a weather nerd and in Skywarn so I'd do that on the radio and I was talking to a guy yesterday who said he's assisted some search and rescues. That would be interesting.

  20. Posted

    Just because your wounded doesn't mean your handicapped...

    I am not a big fan of the project  as they were against firearms at one point.

     

    Oh, I thought they were only for severely wounded. But you touched on another aspect of it. It seems odd to have a reserved parking place for a specific charity instead of "veterans parking" or something like that. It would be like putting up "American Association of People with Disabilities" parking instead of regular disabled parking spots.

  22. Posted

    I don't know if you use Cutting Master, but for what it's worth, Graphtec Studio's cutting options look just like Cutting Master and I've always figured they're mostly the same bit of software. If I were trying to fix a problem with GS, I'd treat them the same and use any advice I could find for CM, and vice versa. Maybe they're actually very different deep down and that wouldn't work, but it would be worth a shot to treat them the same.

  23. Posted

    This probably isn't your problem, but I'm going to throw it out there in case it helps someone. My CE6000 started having these same issues the other day and I found that the problem was that I had selected the fiber pen instead of the normal blade in Graphtec Studio. Apparently, when you try to cut while it thinks you're trying to draw, it will give you the same problems that have plagued people in this thread.

    • Like 1