Discuss the various aspects of heat pressed vinyl transfers. Popular and new types of vinyl media, suppliers, vinyl cutters /plotters, press times, quality, how to instructions and more can be found in this heat press sub forum.
Depends on what youre looking to do. If youre looking a inexpensive vinyl to cut throw away decals with, ShineRite rocks the socks. It weeds nice, has a good gloss, takes thermal printing and has minimal shinkage for being a calendered vinyl. Now for something long lifed in the elements, Id say any of the cast vinyls from LG 3M or Oracal will do nice. They will indeed cost more but will suvive the outdoors better, weed much better than calendered, almost zero shrinkage, popping colors, the list goes on.
Travic, what cutting software are you using? There are some tricks to weeding and trust me, you wont learn them over nite. Look to Ebay for rolls of cheap/inexpensive vinyl for practice on. I ruined more than I made when I first started. I am by no means a sign guy, Im more of a decal guy and from my experience, the smaller jobs straight suck! But now on the other side of that, you will learn how to weed fast and easy. When or if you start doing banner or small sign work, you will excel in the setup part of the job. One of the things you can do to aid weeding on the simpler designs is to add a weed box. This way you can weed just one decal or part of the design at a time. Just make sure not to add the box over a part you plan to keep.
I use illustrator and yea its just on the designs with small letters and this one I'm doing that has a burst behind it, the vinyl just sticks and it takes forever to weed just one sticker. I have played around with the force of the needle but it seems I go just enough before it'll cut through the whole thing and its still hard to weed.
One of the things you can do Travis, is cut a weed line. With a good straight edge and a sharp razor, make a cut from a part of the design to the out area. Tdo this in a few places. This will seperate the excess from the rest of the design. My new software has this feature(main reason I bought it) but it can be done by hand on short runs.
Its really hard to say without seeing the design.. but.. if its a design that you can use your exacto knife to cut the area your are weeding into smaller sections (cutting thru just the vinyl not the backing paper) it can help..
also as you are peeling the extra vinyl off the outside.. use your finger to kinda hold down the letters, as you pull off the extra vinyl..
If its reaallyyyy small letters you can lay your transfer tape down and weed from the reverse side..sometimes this helps as the transfer tape is tackier than the backing paper and will hold the letter and such down a bit better.
vinyl rolls? best ones.. 
