[Alan Wharton]

i know signlab is proberly 1 of the most used software packages but i find Vinyl Master Pro so much easier and quicker to use, im proberly 1 of the minority that use VMP but it is good, you used to be able to download a demo which was fully working apart from you couldnt save your work etc i dont know if you can still d/load it from there site, and also its less than £200 retail and i have seen it as low as £99 with dongle so price wise its pennies compared to the likes of signlab/flexi etc.

[Alan Wharton]

iv got call waiting so when you are on the fone it beeps to let you know there is some1 holding/calling and i can put the current caller on hold while i see who the other caller is and call them back if i carnt sort it quick, cost an extra £2 a month i think it is.
Or are you thinking along the lines of 1 fone line into an internal exchange so you can pass the other call/s to other various fone extensions, surely carnt be that expensive but saying that BT are a nitemare.

[Alan Wharton]

only reason i asked was iv seen umpteen similar questions for car/van outlines that have been put on numerous threads and not in the file swapping section and have been put on so didnt see a problem, no worries anyway.

Thanks for the offer Nigel iv got you vehicles disc cars/vans etc, but its only the 1 outline of the **** i was after as **** in bits atm and was going to do a paint job on it over the next month or so was going to have a play with an outline ******** i wouldnt have use for a full disc with all the bikes on as i havent done bike gfx for years now but thanks again.
Alan

MOD-EDIT
Please take a moment to look over our Board Rules. 🙄

[Alan Wharton]

its the owners that are more at fault than the dogs, i live in the middle of nowhere on a farm no roads just dirt track for 2 mile to the nearest road and theres livestock here aswell, over the years we have had no end of problems with dogs chasing and killing animals round here, i go out and give the owners proper grief and they just laugh at you and tell you to F off i can do what i want and you carnt do sod all about it! had the police out many times, 1 of them 1 day told us to look up the legal requirements for dog owners and put it on a sign 50 odd yards down the track either side of the approach to the buildings, basicly all dogs MUST be on a lead and the wording goes if a dog WORRIES livestock it can legally be SHOT! mmmm unfortunately 4 dogs have met there end up here now all because the owners CANNOT be BOTHERED to take notice of signs.
As far as i was aware ALL dogs must be kept on a lead in any public place, you can even get done if you are bitten by a dog going down his front path to his door as dogs must be kept under control at all times even on private property as in at home.
I breed siberian huskies and have a german shepard as a guard dog so i know what its like to have dogs and its not difficult to keep them under control.
Bad owners are the problem.

[Alan Wharton]

a lot of faffing about but you could put it in your cutter and just cut the full lenght of the roll, do a 3mm stripe down the middle, remove it cut the backing paper job done, just means a lot of re-winding of the vinyl back onto the tube especially if its a 50mtr roll 😕 , at least you have nice straight edges on your 2 new rolls. 😕

[Alan Wharton]

Take the veh to another body shop ask them what they think ! and im sure they will say paint fault and get them to put it in writing its a paint fault, assessor has to go with an independant assessment then…
My brother has been painting cars for over 20 years and any fault like that he would just redo it without question as his work is his reputation and for the few hours it would take to put right its not worth any hassle AND the customer leaves with a smile on his face 😉

[Alan Wharton]

i remember my 1st job 🙄 the old fella said right its about time you started earning your keep sunshine (chat.) we lived on a farm so during the summer months up at 4.30 out in the fields by first light 5ish back home for brekky at 8 get ready for school 😥 back home at 4 changed and back in the fields till 9-10pm 😕 end of the 1st week old fella called me over and said heres your pocket money son! me normal 2 shillings (10p) i thought, OMG he gave me a crispy £5 note 😛 FIVE POUND pocket money at 14 and this was 1972 ish omg i was rich, well it didnt take me long to wise up as i asked the old fella if i could have some school m8s over to help and pay them he said yer but YOU pay them, i had x amount of rows of veg to cut for the shops or weed with a hoe (no flashy machines or weed killers then lol it was done by hand) so i paid me m8s 10p a day 😉 did 3 times as much as on my own so my pocket money went up to £10 a week 😛 spam fritter and chips was a tanner (6p) and 10 fags 10p i think it was and petrol was 12p A GALLON for 5 star rocket fuel lol.
It was hard work but I LOVED IT and miss those days even now….

[Alan Wharton]

you only need pasma to erect/move/dismantle the tower, you dont need 1 to work from the tower.

[Alan Wharton]

i did my pasma and cherry picker ticket a year or so ago, as far as i know health and safety state only a competent and trained person must erect/move/dismantle towers, been doing a lot of stuff for northumbrian water over the last few year and they wont let you touch any tower or other plant unless you have a ticket for it. and as far as i know you need a pasma ticket to go hire a tower.
Its not expensive to do and only half ish day course.
Iv just sent off for my cscs card aswell, commercial sites are now all going cscs card without it you wont even get on site, its £17.50 for the cscs health and safety exam and then £30 for the card.

[Alan Wharton]

apart from having the right driver in there im afraid im stuck as i dont know the software, in the setup window of the software you could always try setting it to hpgl instead of the graphtec see if that makes any difference, i would of thought some1 would of come in on this thread who does use artcut there are a few on here.
1 other thing have you tried cuttting from adobe or any other gfx software you have!

[Alan Wharton]

you installed the ops662 drivers ?
have you actually got the cutter to cut anything since you bought it!

[Alan Wharton]

not used artcut myself i use vmp i have same cutter tho, iv just had a quick read of the artcut 2005 manual online and in the initial setup window of artcut how have you got it setup ! have you used the graphtec or hpgl settings? also check the baud rate in the settings. are you using usb or serial. have you installed the drivers for the cutter ! you can d/load them from graphtec site..

[Alan Wharton]

when i send a cut file to my graphtec the cutter measures out the length of vinyl be fore it starts cutting then returns to start position to begin cutting, as far as i know its mainly set up as default apart from the vinyl length iv changed.

[Alan Wharton]

iv had the same problems of blue screen over and over again which like yours turned out to be dust in the cpu heat sink but a good blast with me air line sorted that and worked great, had same prob again a few months later but it turned out to be the power supply was fried and kept blue screening, new 800w ps all ok again, but pc’s certainly dont like getting hot, there is monitoring software you can put on your pc that gives an alarm if cpu gets above a set temp.

[Alan Wharton]

talking of bad hair do’s WHAT did they do to me sisters hair 😮 then again it looks like we only had 1 bowl in the house for hair cut days lmao mines not much better on this 1 😳 can you imagine getting this from a photographer these days you would sue him lol 😛

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[Alan Wharton]

soz carnt work out how to put these all on 1 post.
at least this 1 looks NORMAL 😛 well apart from me hair 😳

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[Alan Wharton]

lol 😳 please dont ask what they had me dressed in lmao 👿

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[Alan Wharton]

jeez these things dont see the light of day much 🙄

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[Alan Wharton]

have a look at vinyl master pro (vmp) you can order a fully working demo disc 😉 if you like it its £249 but iv seen it as low as £99 retail including dongle and warranty on ebay! make sure you get the proper version tho 2.50 is the older version with no usb support for cutters !(although you can get it to work with usb by faffing about) the new version is win7 compatable with usb etc, iv used it for 5-6 year and for the money you carnt go wrong, the only thing i wish it had is chissel effect fonts but you carnt have everything for that price i spose 🙁

[Alan Wharton]

now you have decided which cutter, what software are you going to run it with 🙄

[Alan Wharton]

theres 2 versions of vmp the old 2.50 which didnt have usb support and the new version which apparantly does, which version have you got ?
i had a mare setting up vmp to work my graphtec as i was using the usb, there is a walk thru setup that explains how to set up a Generic printer to use the usb port.
This is from the vmp manual:

Very few plotters communicate through other means
such as a USB or Infrared Port. For these plotters you
will need to set a “Generic Text Only Printer”

[Alan Wharton]

we had the contract (2yrs) for the malboro yamaha (Biaggi n co)500gp team few years ago to do all there paint work and gfx, now we could only apply x amount of in weight paint/gfx to each fairing/seat/tank, they always wanted the lightest/thinest vinyl as possible and also as they said dont worry about laminating etc its too heavy AND it wont last long anyways 🙄 And they were right Biaggi went thru more body work in a month than all there other riders did all year 😀 Thankyou Biaggi 😉 😛

[Alan Wharton]

you wont go far wrong with a graphtec mine hasnt missed a beat in 6yr and thats why they go for good money 2nd hand aswell. 😉

[Alan Wharton]

well after leaving it in the sun to heat it up still no stick 🙄 so put it in the spray booth under the ir heat lamps for half hr finally got it done, weird as iv done loads of these and its the 1st 1 iv had hassle with. Can go watch the F1 qualifying now 😛

[Alan Wharton]

iv never used a intro letter as such, when its quiet i drop biz cards into empty shops/premisess i also drop them in all the take aways as they like updating there windows regular, and shops that have dodgy signs already up ! as in oh i was just passing and noticed your sign looks like it could do with updating and we have a deal on for the next 7 days if you are interested 🙄

[Alan Wharton]

my graphtec is colour blind so it carnt tell whats in it. 😛
seriously tho, dont you just set the plotter to measure the width/lenght/sheet of vinyl, dont know your cutter but has it some sort of optical eye ! if so can it be turned off as that may be confusing it.
so if you cut a vector in red and cut the same vector but in black it plays up ! got to be optical sensor as the roll grippers carnt see colour 🙄
what software you using.

[Alan Wharton]

metamark fluie is nice to work with, fast next day delivery etc, all the prices are on there web site but when you talk to them you can get cheaper 😛

[Alan Wharton]

is it April 1st here or what 🙄

[Alan Wharton]

why would you use 1 board to hide another! (bodge job) if you are thinking that way just scrap the old 1 and re-new the lot. job done properly then, seems you are looking to cut corners which very rarely work and will cost YOU more money.

[Alan Wharton]

oracal do mirror in oracal 381 ultra mirror cast in silver/gold.

[Alan Wharton]

i think you will like vmp when you get it as it does more or less everything that has been said above, all you need to do is set the vinyl width and it does the rest, squishes everything up for you in 2secs flat, it also auto seperates the colours if using more than 1, even tells you which colour to put in the cutter next, then once its all cut the cut file goes into the DONE folder and stays there so if you need repeat work months down the line its there ready to cut in seconds.

[Alan Wharton]

its going to look like a right bodge job flooding over that lot then redoing the lettering.
think you are stuck with either a hot air gun and 2 days work ish but thats ok just charge £200 a day labour (!) can you not do anything with the other side of the board or is both sides visable when mounted !
or renew the lot as the boards cheap enough and will be cheaper than £400 labour cleaning the board up or are you doing that for free !
btw if you use a print n cut why are you trying to do layers with vinyl on that other thread ! if i had a print n cut i think my days of layering vinyl would end straight away.
Heres hoping santa will be nice and try and get a versacam VP-540 or similar down the chimny at crimbo 😛 wife says chimny is too small tho 👿

[Alan Wharton]

yep vmp does all that import/design/cut, it imports/exports most file types, very good software for the money. what version have you got the demo for ! if its the early version it doesnt like windows7, win xp and earlier its fine, earlier version can be a faf about setting it up to work with the usb on the graphtec (i use graphtec cutter also) the later new version is usb compatable, if you have probs setting it up to your cutter give me a shout and il run thru the setup with you.

[Alan Wharton]

on vinyl master pro once you send all the gfx to the print spooler you just hit the squish button and it auto compresses all the gfx into the smallest area, you can also manualy position all the gfx, when its all done it shows to the mm how much vinyl it will use.
what software do you use !

[Alan Wharton]

you mean like gordon banks 😛

[Alan Wharton]

hahahaha a draw 😛 surely they only have to do another 1 of those and they will be on there way home 😛 Then the mrs owes me a tenner i said they will not make the second round, please please please loose the next game 😛 sorry again hehehe

[Alan Wharton]

detest football with a vengence, over paid over rated blokes running round kissing each other ! 🙄 not my cup of T at all, me and the mrs carnt wait for england to be knocked out 😛 hopefully in the 1st round 😛 sorry.

[Alan Wharton]

yes peter its other industries aswell, i work from my brothers premises a big car body repair shop, he’s been in busness since early 80’s and he has said its getting so bad now for folk paying, he’s got to the stage over the last year ish where he is repossesing there vehicles for work he has done 6 odd months ago, as he says the problem is a lot of them are folk he has delt with for years and years race/rally schools other local garages etc so as he says its really bad as he knows once he reposses a motor chances of more work from them goes down the pan, thing is he is talking money owed in 10s of thousands not just a few hundred quid, but like he says at the end of the day they are making money from his repairs just not paying him for the repairs/jig work etc, same as us we do the signs etc that they benifit in sales etc from and yet they dont want to pay for it ! its easy to see how many busineses have gone bust due to bad debt.

[Alan Wharton]

i had similar problem last month, fitted vinyl only to his existing 15mtr x 600mm car sales board and his show room windows, i got £150 deposit then after fitting he says i charged him too much so he wasnt paying ! 6 weeks of going there every other day and no money, so i told him he either paid by friday or i was removing the lot ! friday no money 🙄 Sunday evening removed EVERY single piece ! monday police turned up as he told them i removed the signs, showed them all the photos and layouts of job i done for him and the invoices etc police just said he also asked for his deposit back hahaha yer right the job was £550 all in vinyl only and he asked for the cheapest vinyl i could get so it cost me £20 odd in materials and best part of a day applying and a few hrs to remove for £150 deposit i got off him so his loss my hassle.
No way would i leave it ! if you do before you know it hes telling his mates how to get free signs done from YOU !
Small claims court if you have to as david says its easy you do it online costs you a few quid to do it.
i would also give him a day by which you are going to remove the lot, you may just find when you turn up to take them down his wallet will come out !
best of luck.

[Alan Wharton]

VMP-vinyl master pro is very good and for the price £250 and iv seen it advertised for as little as £150 ! much cheaper than sign lab/flexi, i think you can still go to there web site and order a fully working demo disc, dont think the demo allows you to cut or save tho, depends what you want from your software tho ! most of mine is vehicles so it does everything i want it to do. 😛

[Alan Wharton]

iv used impact outlines since 2006 very good never had problems with them and for the price you carnt go wrong especially if you do a lot of vehicles.

[Alan Wharton]

you can network the 2 operating systems together ok, heres a link with step by step pics to show you how its all done.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/share-files-and-printers-between-windows-7-and-xp/

[Alan Wharton]

on win7 theres a feature that allows you to run apps in older modes 95/98/2000/vista etc.
my vinyl master pro wont run on win7 unless i run it in win xp mode then works fine although a lot slower than on my other pc that runs on xp, useable but slower.

[Alan Wharton]

how small is small ! you have to take a bit more care when weeding really small stuff, iv just done a rake of 10mm text took ages to weed but still weeds ok, i also use a graphtec, i do all my cutting at the same speed small and big text, what vinyl are you using and what sort of temp is it where your weeding !

[Alan Wharton]

saying that tho, round hear teesside way theres loads of beak down trucks and small security vans all running around dressed in blue/white checks and from a distance they look like 999 motors until you get close up and its joe blogs security/breakdown firm.

[Alan Wharton]

£1500 will get you a basic set-up iv got a graphtec ce-3000-60 mk2, cost just under £1000 5 years ago has not missed a beat in 5 yrs, the other £500 will get you some vinyl/aplication tape, main colours and you will proberly need software ! flexisign £400 basic to £1800 vinyl pro and signlab £600 basic vinyl £1300 vinyl pro ! or the 1 i use is vinyl master pro (vmp) cheapest iv seen it is £99 but usually £249 you can also download the demo or get the demo disc sent to you, iv used it for 5yrs and apart from chisel effects it does everything i want or need at a good price.
as has been said just find a local sign shop to get any digital printing you need at trade price if you can, they will also laminate the print for you so forget about buying a laminator for now, i pay £20 sq/mtr for prints from a local sign shop, mainly all my work is cut vinyl, trucks/vans/cars/shop windows/signs etc so there is plenty of work for cut vinyl, yes it would be nice to have a 10k print n cut machine but i dont do enough print work to justify it sat getting dusty for the sake of 10-15mtr a week !
printers on ebay ! all i would say is put that £800 towards a decent plotter/cutter rather than GAMBLE on a most likely on its last legs 2nd hand ebay printer !
cheap chinese cuters ! forget it and get a proper cutter that will last you years and are built to last.
Have fun in reading all you need to just try not to cut too many corners ! it will bite your a*** when it really counts
😕

[Alan Wharton]

silly question but watching national geographic they reckon something like the top 8 out of 10 most deadly spiders/snakes etc live in australia ! 😕 how do you folks over there deal with knowing that little nat bite might be the last bite you ever get ! 😕 worst thing i ever come across was a adder on the moors 😮

[Alan Wharton]

if you make a mess of it and want somewhere to hide the car iv a nice warm garage will just about fit a aston martin in 😛
Good luck with the job 🙂

[Alan Wharton]

got your msg Dave but for some reason it says "Sorry, but the administrator has prevented you from sending private messages." i must be in the bad books lmao as me pm’s have always worked before !!
I dont play much these days couple of hrs a week thats about it if that.
I used to be a member of R.I.P. Q3 clan years ago playing for ££££
😛 im a member of [VS-UK] atm have been 5yr or so now but been retired for a couple of yr still go on there servers etc lots of m8s there.
il have to get that new bfbc2 and get serving out some proper hurt to you guys 😛

[Alan Wharton]

very very nice 😛 iv been online gameing since the 33k dial up modem ! origanal quake,q2,q3,counterstrike,moha,flashpoint and the latest flashpoint dragon rising-big disapointment,call of duty,all the battlefield games apart from bad company, i need to get that.still on cod4 atm.
years ago i had a cyber/gaming cafe just before NTL brought out the free internet access disc, 10 pc lan gaming 24hr matches absolutely awsome. (:) (:)

[Alan Wharton]

if your cpu is overheating that will cause blue screen/shutdown, i had a month or so of blue screens and it was doing my head in, noticed loads of dust/crap in the heat sink fan etc, put me compressor to it and jeez iv never seen so much dust blown out 😮 also blew the power supply out and again just loads of dust, been running mint since 😛

[Alan Wharton]

when you install vmp and go into setup there is a list of cutters if the pcuts not in there you can set vmp to a default hpgl cutter settings, theres a video on the disc that shows you exactly how to set your cutter up in the help section.

[Alan Wharton]

the lwb tailgate r/windows 2000-07 is RENA0043
the lwb swing dorrs r/windows 2000-07 is RENA0045
there are a few more models aswell tho.

[Alan Wharton]

i bought a new laptop in nov with win7 on it, at first i thought mmm but after using it over a few weeks i loved it, much better and faster than xp pro iv used for years, so iv now updated the desktop to windows ultimate 7 and soooo much better than xp pro and you can buy win7 for more or less the same price as xp pro ! on installing win7 it auto downloads and installs all the latest drivers for everything on your pc harware wise, including your mother board/sound/gfx card/printers the lot so when win7 starts for the 1st time everything is up and running no faffing around installing drivers after you install the operating system 🙂 the only thing to bear in mind with win7 is its resource hungry ! very hungry infact ! mine uses 850mb of ram with nothing running lol, so a upgrade may be the best way to get it running right, but is way way better than xp and vista.
P4 3ghz twin core
4gig ram
HD 4600 1 gig ati gfx
asrock mobo

[Alan Wharton]

Slap me if im off track here (:) but if you have so many empty/used carts how come you dont go onto bulk ink systems ! no more empties 🙂 simples 🙄

[Alan Wharton]

No video just sound but this phone prank is just a classic 😉

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5z4Vs26-TI

[Alan Wharton]

check your msgs hugh. 😉

[Alan Wharton]

in vmp you have to be carefull which printer you have set in windows as your default printer ie your deskjet because when you send your file to print from vmp it will send to the default printer ie your deskjet! its a pain in the a, everytime i send a file to cut i have to click on the printer/cutter properties(in vmp) then advanced tab and from the dropdown window i then have to select my cutter, then the file will cut np, its a pain but it works.

[Alan Wharton]

Martin, had the exact same error as you did and no fonts, another signshop i know told me to install the s/l demo then reinstall the full signlab, worked a treat all ok now, why it does this font error thing i dont know but it seems a common thing.

[Alan Wharton]

Graphtec CE5000/120 – 1200mm Cutter £2300+vat 😉 http://www.graphicdiscount.co.uk/acatalog/Graphtec_CE5000_Series_Vinyl_Cutter.html

[Alan Wharton]

I never charge milage as a seperate part of the job i just include it in the price/quote for the job. further i travel more expensive the job would be

[Alan Wharton]

Is that to buy the foamx or is that a made up sign with text on it chris?

[Alan Wharton]

5mm 8×4 foamx/foamalite i think they call it is only £25ish from Pyramid so if you are using 1/2 on a job thats £10ish 751c price on paperco price forum although if they want cheap cheap i use jac’s vinyl £1 mtr, i had the same problem a month ago a guy wanted i 30’x3′ for nothing i blanked the job but he did come back a week later and ok’d my price though so stick to your pricing if you do a cheapy for some1 you may get later on down the line ‘but you did joe bloggs sign for £x much cheaper than you are quoting me ,Why’ 🙄

[Alan Wharton]

a sheet of foamx 3mtr x 320mm is what ? £5 ish, 6mtrs text (2 colour 3mtrs each) £8-12 ish so £17ish + markup £130-150 nice hrs work 😉

[Alan Wharton]

I think the prob with the bikes is as been said so many maodel changes every year and just silly little 1’s aswell, to get the gfx for the gp bikes we had to get yamaha to send a set over and we just copied them and had them on file from then but so many little changes and everybody wants the latest gfx set.

[Alan Wharton]

lol duncan, what i meant about no bubbles is iv used oracal 751c and metamark 4/7 series and had a few bubbles here and there 😕 jacs vinyl just flew on and no bubbles 😉

[Alan Wharton]

i carnt fault my graphtec at all excellent machine, 😉

[Alan Wharton]

the logo’s are 1/2 the height of the characters so np with them, the file he emailed me was a jpeg and just normal text and not at the dimensions he wants, what he doesnt want is the o being flattened at the sides which it does when its stretched up, im afraid he will have to change his font or live with what it looks like when its raised up, starting to get fed up with the guy atm anyways 🙄 customers jeez. 👿 [/img]

[Alan Wharton]

Thx peter, im stuck with the arial font he wants because its on his web site etc, the reason he only wants 17inch wide is he says a landrover back window is 18inch at the bottom, and he wants it high enough so any1 else in the club can see other members from a good distance away and wave! he said this not me 🙄 he also reckons he can do it in paintshop np, well i tried in ps and i carnt get it to look right, looks like il have to get him to change the font as you say, either that or a 1/2inch high sticker. 😕

[Alan Wharton]

If ever i need a actual photo of a car i go to ebay theres every car you can think of on there just save the pic and open it in your software.

[Alan Wharton]

you can get a FREE add on yell.com but it only has your company name and phone number, if you pay for a add on yell it gives you a link to your web site and a few other odds n sods you dont get with the free 1.

[Alan Wharton]

Old wooden cable drum you will find laid about ind est’s iv got 2 just for wheel covers and you can tuck excess under the drum to hold in place, i also use registration marks at north south e and w to line it up, as long as you get the cover smack in the middle of your template the vinyl should go on np’s

[Alan Wharton]

Because i only ordered 10mtrs to try i didnt get the app tape so carnt comment on the tape you have to buy a full 50mtr roll to get the free app tape, even if it is cheapy app tape im sure it could be used ok on budget sign jobs.

[Alan Wharton]

The rep told me 1 has just been installed at a print shop in middlesbrough so i might go have a look there, 1 did ask him about the inks and he was on about some New solvent ink thats a few steps up from cadet/versacamm inks but these printers he said a pure solvent printers they cannot be converted to any other ink system.

[Alan Wharton]

same as marcella here too, iv used the 4/7 series good vinyl as long as you use it for what its intended for and thats flat surfaces and its fine. 😉

[Alan Wharton]

I think this vinyl i got was 3-5year and at £1 mtr + a free roll of App tape(must buy a full 50mtr roll though) its not bad value while the free Tape comes with it.

[Alan Wharton]

I know alot of folk talk about there prints MUST be Laminated to go on vehicles etc but i get my digi print done on a grenadier and the guy ONLY laminates the bonnet for obvious reasons but never the sides or the back and in the 4 years he has been doing digi print he says he has NEVER had a return, his van is fully wrapped 4 years old and looks great, so if you are thinking you need a cutter and printer to lam all your vehicles Do you really need to lam everything!

[Alan Wharton]

I have had 1 crashed pc since using xp pro when it came out years ago, i find it near 100% stable compared to win 98se its a dream, but like all pc’s and im sure macs (no nothing about a mac btw) the thing has to be setup correctly in the 1st place, iv 3 pc’s atm 1 at work and 2 at home, the work 1 and 1 of the home pc’s are more or less identical and set up identical so i can take work home and do it on the home pc, the other pc i mainly use for gaming totally set up different than the other 2. Wont you have to buy all replacement software if you go mac or will pc software run on a mac, i think i seen bill gates saying that something like 90% of all pc’s run windows 🙄 he may have the market by the (!) but ms software in general is good, Vista im now looking at its cheaper than xp atm lol 😕

[Alan Wharton]

Im a oracal 751c man aswell as rob says does just about everything and anything, ive used a bit of metamark which is ok but compared to 751c its like cardboard 🙄 , ive had victory phoning me over the last week wanting me to try JAC vinyl, iv heard a few people mentioning it but not much, iv got them to send me 10mtrs of it to try but they have a special on atm buy a full 50mtr roll for £50 610mm yep £1 mtr and you will get a free roll of app tape with it, might be of interest to you this 1 adam as its cheapish vinyl and worth a try.

[Alan Wharton]

had same prob myself with a cd this week, the cd drive light just stays on as if reading the disc, freezes pc untill you open the cd draw, i threw my cd in the bin lost some data but disc was goosed 😕 😕

[Alan Wharton]

Brian check out ebay american motors iv just been looking at a mint black shelby 500gt zr 😉 same car used on the new war of the worlds film very very nice and didnt they use 1 in gone in 60 seconds awsome machine still looks the part today 😎

[Alan Wharton]

Thx george exactly what i was looking for Thx again 😛

[Alan Wharton]

here you go try this, we will get there in the end hehehe 😛

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Attachments:

FIAT0016.ai

[Alan Wharton]

If you want some proper sign/vinyl cutting software download vinyl master pro its a demo version but fully working, i use it and find it a lot better than signlab/flexi and you can import any type file into it. 😀

[Alan Wharton]

what software are you trying to open this in? its just iv got this file in eaither .AI/.CDL/.EPS or PLT should be able to open/import them in corel draw/illustrator or your vinyl cutter software signlab/flexi etc 😉

[Alan Wharton]

try this the other 1 was a corel draw file i think ! 🙄

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Attachments:

FIAT0016.eps

[Alan Wharton]

this 1 the new shape you mean? iv got this years impact veh outlines so if its not this 1 il send the others too. 😉

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Attachments:

FIAT0016.CDL

[Alan Wharton]

i use 751c on everything and find it really good but i have found similar probs to what you talk about but ive learned how to cure it now, when i 1st started using 751c i found it very thin compared to metamark i was using and do still use so had to reset the force/pressure on the cutter but have found that on say 751c white i may have to use force set at say 17 but when i switch to say silver same 751c that pressure of 17 does not cut it properly so i was getting same prob as you, what i do now is test cut every single time b4 cutting vinyl especially when changing from 1 colour to another and i do need to adjust the pressure on the blade from time to time even though im using the same vinyl, i have found if i always use the graphtec controller it seems to be ok at the same setting all the time but when i forget to use the controller and just send a job to the cutter this is when its at its worst, even today did a simple job 5 letters didnt use the graphtec controler and it would not weed just ripped, fired the controller up which has the force setting as the same as the cutter and it cut and weeded fine, i like things with a bit of character and that keep you on your toes 😉

[Alan Wharton]

im also with andy and marcella on this 1, the cloud 9 much better than the hold up, wife wears hold ups but thats another story 😛

[Alan Wharton]

the reason i mentioned this martin was i did the exact same thing last month, put a larger hd in and used it as my main hd, i just copied the old hd all to the new bigger drive and most my apps didnt work when i changed the ribbon cable over on the 2 hd’s and used my original smaller hd as the main boot up hd everything worked again 😕 i havent used those apps you mention martin but i will deffo take your word for it as the way i did it just copied the full drive to the other didnt work 🙄

[Alan Wharton]

cloning another disc then trying to run apps from the new disc can cause probs because when its installed originally it updates your registry to the app on that disc, when you try to run the same app from another disc the pc cannot find the registry info for the app on the disc so wont work! put the old hd in remove junk so its not full and it should work ok. 😉

[Alan Wharton]

Thx lynn/george, iv been looking through thousands of fonts the last 3 days carnt find anything remotely near, iv now told the customer its either a jpeg digi print of his original which will look awfull blownup to 1mtr long or change the font, but thx anyways, 😉

[Alan Wharton]

it worked till the pc was FIXED ! what was wrong with pc and what was done to Fix it ?

[Alan Wharton]

I think you will find you also have to upgrade your gfx card aswell as the system ram to run vista so its gunna cost you over £100 to upgrade your pc + the cost of vista ontop of that. Good thing about a new os coming out is win xp price will drop like a stone 😉

[Alan Wharton]

aha found the problem of the disapearing fonts and only DEVICE FONT in the drop down font list, because i had my vinyl cutter set as the DEFAULT PRINTER and there are no fonts to use in it thats why all my apps were showing device font only pfftttt, formatted my pc aswell because of this, and after a fresh install of everything i still had the same problem, note to self dont set vinyl cutter as default printer as it naffs up all your normal apps that use fonts, word/corel office/publisher etc etc.

[Alan Wharton]

i use the bt voyager wifi and when you 1st set it up you have to put 2 pin numbers into your wifi pc card(key number and serial number) which are the 2 numbers on the bottom of the router so no1 will be able to connect to your connection)your router) without those 2 numbers 😉

[Alan Wharton]

i disable all the jumk in xp george ie system logs/events etc as its never ever used, i think i only have 9 things actually running on windows xp i switch everything off, although i did do i search for fonts and there is nothing coming up in windows no folder font manager or anything iv just checked this pc at home and there is a font folder in windows so maybe ill copy it on disc and put it on my work pc monday. or il do what i normally do and thats format it AGAIN (hot)

[Alan Wharton]

I would say most accountants are pretty helpfull and you are paying them to help you pay LESS TAX, where does he get this being self employed you will pay MORE! i wasnt happy with the amount of tax i was paying a couple of years ago so got rid of the accountant and went straight to the ir and got them to sort it out at no cost where the accountand was getting £400+ a year and i saved over 30% in tax payments! dont just use the 1st accountant you come across ask other people who use them and you will get some horror stories and some good ones. at the end of the day tax is a minefield 😕

[Alan Wharton]

Tax is a pain in the (!) and as you say gareth its also down to individual circumstances, when the ir dragged me in 18months ago they went through everything and the 1 thing i had done incorrectly was i claimed the monthly hp payments on the veh, you carnt do that unless its leased, because i had bought it it comes under capital gains so you claim depreation on the veh over the period you are paying hp for it, i think there was only about £20 difference a month in what i was claiming anyway so all was fine, but like the ir said if you use something soley for your buisness its tax deductable, i dont know where you are all getting this milage stuff from but iv never come across that before,apart from a milage claim do you claim for road tax/insurance/maintainance of your vehs or are you just claiming a % of all costs? If you only claim a % of costs its a bit like saying rent on your premises is £100 a week i only did 25hrs this week so i can only claim £50 of rent!!

[Alan Wharton]

i dont mention milage and have never been asked about it, i just put all my fuel reciepts in and they just ok it.