Get advice to help you create your t-shirt graphics. Discuss t-shirt design software, special effect techniques, or other topics related to creating a t-shirt design on your computer. If you'd rather hire a graphic designer to do the work for you, please post in our Referrals and Recommendations section here.
Hi everyone. Old salt at embroidery, new to heat press. Bought the printer and press, realized in a hurry we need a cutter. I need help before I buy a vinyl cutter namely about those darn registration marks - we will be doing contour cutting. My question: I was told by a local vinyl cutter that in addition to having the cutter program, I also need to make sure that whatever program I design in has the ability to put registration marks on the transfer paper. I was under the assumption that its the cutting program itself thatputs the registration marks on the paper, not the design program. Can someone please help clear the air on this? I cannot afford to buy something then realize I need something else. We're looking at the US Cutter MH 871, 34'' cutter. Any thoughts on this cutter and its program would be appreciated as well, as I've read ok reviews about this cuttter. I need an asprin!
i don't know what program comes with the uscutter but the one that came with my roland places the registration marks and can edit their position etc. on the other hand what are you going to be contour cutting? i only ask because most contour cut designs are multi-color stuff done within a design program such as illustrator or coreldraw etc. most people do vinyl for solid one color stuff (not trying to tell you something you probably already know). just interested.
you might also want to think about posting this question in the vinyl cutting section of the forum. -good luck.
Hi, thanks for your reply. We will be contour cutting heat press transfer paper (t shirts, etc) so it will be in full color. I was told earlier today that the roland software does come with the program that will place reg marks. My dilema is (as is most folks) price. We don't have the $ for the Roland now, but know we need software that can contour cut ie; do reg marks, and we know we need a program that is compatible with whatever cutter we end up with. The cutter we're looking at on ebay... the US Cutter 24'' comes with signblazer software, but I read this morning that unfortunately you need to upgrade to pro or it won't do reg marks. In a nutshell... we purchased a heat press, and an epson 1400 inkjet. We're TOLD that was everything we would need to get started, but it became VERY clear almost immediately that we also need a cutter to get good looking results. Having spent most of our $, we're now trying to understand the in's and out's of the cutter world and trying to make sure we get a cutter and a cutter program that can do what we need to do, short of having the $ for the Roland. Thank you for your help, greatly appreciated!
ok so you could upgrade and get signblazer pro or get a graphics program like coreldraw or illustrator. i don't know too much about the uscutter cutter, but if it reads registration marks i don't think it matters where they come from, it just matters how/where they are placed within your page setup. then you will also have a program from which to do designs. signblazer is very basic compared the programs mentioned above. you can get coreldraw on ebay for cheap compared to illustrator.
this old post suggests you can contour cut only with THIS cutter:
Registration Marks, Heat Pressing, Cutter Qns... 
). just interested.
