PhaedrusZen
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Posts posted by PhaedrusZen
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I actually like that Ink in the Meat font, but I'd NEVER suggest it to a customer! =)
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I'm dealing with one called Sudtipos Feel Script right now that sucks because I'm in the habit of weeding from right to left, and it has a ton of huge looping capital letters that don't weed at all going that direction, especially the capital B's T's and F's... =/
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Just curious what any of you think... what is the worst font you've ever had to weed? I've run into a few that aren't much fun and a couple that have made me want to bang my head against the wall. Anyone else experience this?
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That's a bummer. It's always tough dealing with curveballs, especially when you get so used to the feel of a certain vinyl. I'll be messing with Chalkboard vinyl for an upcoming order, and wonder how that's going to go...
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I ran a couple test cuts with that logo, and was able to get everything up in a single pull except the insides of the "O"s and "D". Are you having more trouble than that? If you're cutting a bunch on a single sheet, just weed the top decal, then refer to it when you're trying to locate the insides of the letters on the rest of the decals... does that make sense? I don't have any camo to work with, but I'd assume that unless it breaks apart as you weed, it should still be mostly a single pull if you place a weeding box around each decal.
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I order the free USPS priority tubes in both 25" and 34" long. They are triangular and give nice room inside. Shipping is never usually over $7 and comes with $50 insuranceI'm paying just over 50 cents a tube (Sometimes cheaper when I can order more at once), and am able to ship First Class, so shipping is between $1.93 & $3.47, with very few exceptions. My rates for priority with a "free" priority tube would cost me $5.75 minimum. The extra room and insurance would be nice, but for the added cost plus assembly time for the triangle tubes (it's minimal, but adds up when you have to put 200 of them together at once), I'm happy to ship a new decal out if it should happen to get lost or damaged using the smaller, cheaper tubes.
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BUT, if you can fit it into your budget, I would go with the Graphtec CE6000 and you won't have to think about upgrading to a better cutter for a long long time.Or, if money is no object, go with the Graphtec FC8000.
I just upgraded from a Titan 2 to a Graphtec CE6000, and like what I've seen so far.
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When I set up my Graphtec on my new laptop, I had almost the same exact problems. I had to drop my firewall before it would recognize the cutter. Not sure why, and I can't remember where I read the suggestion, but it worked for me so give it a shot, and hopefully it'll help.
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Major meltdown of my machine. It was great when it worked, but I had tried replacing the IO board and the motherboard with no improvements once it did start having issues. (It was stopping mid-cut and telling my PC it was completed, and this was multiple times a day, so I was wasting literally yards of vinyl on aborted decal cuts.)
USCutter worked with me to try to resolve it (Their customer service was awesome on all levels), but when it was clear I had to return it for a warranty replacement, I asked if I could just pony up the cash to pay the difference on a better machine plus a little bit more for the service/return hassle. While the Graphtec was definitely a challenge to set up, especially after coming from a plug-n-play machine like the Titan 2, I'm liking it so far.
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Followup post almost 6 months later. I've been shipping anything that doesn't fit inside a 9x12 inch flat mailer inside of those 2" tubes and haven't had any customers with issues so far. What works for one person might not work for another, but I thought I'd mention it for those who are looking to maybe save some time or money in shipping costs.
When I have 200 decals to ship out at once (Typically they're all either the same or similar design, with the same dimensions), the tubes make it relatively quick and easy. We do ship the decals with a set of instructions for the customer to go over the decal with a credit card, or a squeegee if they have one, prior to removing the backing paper for installation. I have seen some tunneling on my longer decals, but have not seen it affect the decals themselves.
I'm using tubes that are anywhere from 9" to 24" so there's a pretty good range to work with. Worth trying out if you haven't! Especially if you're hand building your shipping boxes each time you send a decal out. (That would definitely be a little cheaper, I'd assume, but I wouldn't have the time to build 200 boxes/ custom flat mailers prior to my shipping deadlines, even if they were all the same size... =/ )
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I realize this is a crazy old post, but I didn't see a need to create a new thread for this update.
Switched from a Titan 2 to a Graphtec since my original problem, and I had a very similar occurrence yesterday and today, so I did what someone else suggested and pulled the blade holder out. It looked good, with no visible problems, but I cleaned the surface that contacts the vinyl near the blade with rubbing alcohol really well. Popped it back in and the next few cuts have been nice and clean again.
Cheers!
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Mine works as well, Queen. I set up the workspace the way I want it, including mat size and what windows/tool bars I want opened, and then go up to the Window Menu> Workspace> Save Workspace and then I just click save, so it's still titled "My Workspace" That makes it the default setup when you open the program. If you rename it when you save, I think it will still default to the "my Workspace" option and you'll have to select the one you want each time.
I do save the custom mat size under a different name, but whatever mat size and orientation you have loaded will save when you click Save Workspace. I've done this successfully on SCALP 3 & 4 so far.
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I don't see the one on USCUTTER .. And on Ebay they have it priced at $559.00 which usually means out of stock.... But maybe just very low on stock, as they include them with several cutter bundles that they sell
Ah... and that's why I need to click links before I go postin'...
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North of my home town. =)
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I swore I saw it on USCutter before, but couldn't find it to link to it, so Seiki gets the traffic this time... =) I've never even heard of them until now.
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Here's the application tape dispenser I use...
The tape feeds down between the rollers, and then you pull it out and across your vinyl. There is a lip on the bottom that you can't see that keeps it on the edge of your bench top, but I have mine clamped down so I can pull harder/faster. It's on sale right now too. =)
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I use something very similar for holding my transfer tape, 500, but it has a little more clearance. I don't see why you couldn't use yours for app tape as well as for holding vinyl.
You could use this as a home-grown solution for transfer tape, and even for vinyl, although it'd be a bit cumbersome sliding rolls on and off of that bar repeatedly...
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I paid a little extra to get a 15 foot gold plated USB cable. Just switched from a Titan 2 to Graphtec because of serious cutter issues, and I'm trying to avoid any potential for issues again. Maybe the gold plating is just snake oil, but I haven't had any issues at all, so far, and prefer the extra slack to avoid any kinks or stress at the plugs.
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This is a side job for me, but it's a full-time endeavor most of the time. ( I put in 56 hours a week, averaged, at my other job, plus whatever it takes to get my orders done. Yesterday was a 24 hour shift, followed by 11-12 hours of vinyl cutting at my home office today).
Everything I ship is first class with delivery confirmation, and I ship in either 9x12 flat mailers or 2" tubes, ranging from 9" long to a full 24" long. I'm with Skeeter on the smaller decals. The bigger the better, as long as it's not too much of a crazy, complex welded design. (I'm still developing my skills). A lot of what I ship in the mailers is actually as long as 3-4 feet, but can be folded between breaks in the design so it fits well in the mailer.
Some of the sites I use pay through Paypal, but I get paid after the fact through Dwolla (I work as a independent contractor for a friend, I guess? I could make more on my own, but I'm happy to let them handle their portion of the business and just take care of the cutting/shipping.)
I've called Paypal customer support fairly recently (before we switched to Shipstation, and if they used to create APO labels, they no longer do so, and I had to go to USPS to create those labels, which was an entirely different kind of pain in the butt. I wish I could have seen some of those intergration aspects you're talking about Skeeter, but I always had to download all my orders from the website I received my orders from as a csv. file, upload it to paypal as a bulk shipment, create the labels and then I had to get creative on ways to get the tracking out of Paypal, as I never found a csv. download for tracking numbers. I ended up opening the recent orders window (can't remember what exactly it was called) copy the information, then paste it into a spreadsheet that I had to format so I could re-upload to the deal site to get tracking entered for my orders so I could get paid.
It might be worthwhile for someone like myself or other relatively new cutters, if someone put together a tutorial for how to navigate some of those aspects in Paypal that I, for one, couldn't find or figure out. Their forums only ever turned up garbage for me personally, and customer service was generally less than helpful... =/ I might try to do something similar for Shipstation once I get a little more comfortable with it. They have pretty good customer service, so I've always been able to talk to someone and trouble shoot through whatever I was trying to accomplish, but it'd still be nice to have some condensed information for those looking into it, or trying to troubleshoot on their own.
I looked into it a bit, and I'm not sure, but I think we're using the Platinum plan through Shipstation which allows 5 users and 5 different managed websites, as well as manual channels for websites that aren't supported yet. It's Just under $100/month, which is $20/ month for me personally, to use it. I know it's $20 more than Paypal users, but It's worth my money for what I do & how I use it. =)
(BTW, I'm never trying to piss anyone off, least of all Mz Skeeter, since she's saved my bacon more than once, either directly or from her previous contributions/insights on this forum. Just giving my dissenting opinion on this subject.
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I pay $1.93 for up to 3 oz First Class Package.with tracking. on Paypal. I'm sure others will say the same who use Paypal.And your right, those discounts add up for me also, Plus the up to $100 insurance For Priority shipping. And I don't have to manually upload any tracking info...it automatically uploads it. And sends my customers emails that their items have been shipped and the tracking info.
No thanks, I'll keep my $35.00 plus all the extra discounts I am getting for using Paypal. Yep, it sure adds up fast for all the packages I ship..
If you're only selling on Ebay, and only sending package sized deliveries then sure, paying $35 a month for a program that already does what Paypal does on Ebay would be silly, but we're talking apples and oranges. Paypal doesn't intergrate with other websites outside of Ebay (at least not that I was ever able to figure out), and their interface is extremely limited, and unable to handle APO or FPO addresses.
Saying you would never pay for a service without doing business in an environment that uses those services is like me saying I would never pay for Amazon Prime because I never purchase things from Amazon. It obviously makes sense, but for someone who uses Amazon all the time, Prime would be a great time/money saver over the course of the subscription. (FWIW, I do use Prime, and it gets paid for in free 2-day shipping, in no time at all.)
If DC is shipping via smaller envelopes and needs traditional postage, that's something that Paypal doesn't offer, and it makes sense for him to go to something like Stamps.com. If he's shipping in sufficient quantities and/or selling on compatible websites, then it might make sense to upgrade for the Shipworks/Shipstation software to accompany the postage service that Stamps.com offers. So, yeah, keep the $35 a month because you don't have a need for those services currently, but realize that there's a reason some of us are willing to pay for it. I wouldn't go back to a free service like Paypal while I still sold on websites other than Ebay. =)
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A process that previously would have taken me an hour or two now takes 5 minutes. It will then mark all the items shipped on their respective sites, upload tracking information and send the confirmation emails.Check out Shipstation, Mac. I think the prices are comparable to Shipworks, and it uploads tracking and sends emails automatically for a lot of different sites. Saves me even more time! =) There are 4 of us all using the same shipstation account, and we can keep our orders separate but still streamline billing for postage.
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Just switched from Paypal to Shipstation, which uses Stamps.com. Worth the cost to have order information download automatically from the sites we sell on, and then upload tracking automatically once I'm done.
Having used Paypal & Shipstation/Stamps.com, that "$35 a month shipping employee" Mac mentioned is well worth it IMO, and saves me a lot of time and headache. Also ships to Military addresses with absolutely no hassle. Same discounted postage rates as Paypal.
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No critical need here, but I was thinking of making a decal for myself of some type of optical illusion, and wondered if anyone has seen any cool svgs that might fit the bill. I've turned the cube into an svg, but think I might see if I can sharpen the file up a bit. I haven't been able to get the path to translate into a clean svg yet. All ideas/ images welcome. I'm just having fun with this one...
SCALP 4 Projects becoming Corrupt
in Sure Cuts A Lot Pro
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Still having trouble with saved projects on SCALP 4. It's been almost 3 weeks, and no help from Craft Edge's forums or support. I submitted another support request and hope I hear something soon. It's killing my productivity...
Tried uploading another file I was having trouble with, but got a message that I can't upload a .scut file...