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Hasn’t arrived yet, but the problems seem to center more on the SG models than the VGs. Particularly the early builds.

Outside the sign industry, Adobe software is considerably more popular for professional use. It’s what design students are taught, and the format outside files are usually sent to you in. Way back in art school, I was taught Illustrator alongside manually doing artwork layouts for print. It’s...

I definitely wouldn’t waste time laminating them.

Just exactly how small is a “small amount of work” in your eyes? A used Roland can get expensive if anything fails, and a new one is plain expensive to buy. Either way, you need to figure out how long those small jobs will take to recoup the $7,500+ it will cost you to get a printer that’s still...

I use acetone. It’s safe on glass, but keep it away from paint. Old trick I learned from my days as a professional photographer. Nothing will clean high end optics better. It gets rid of stuff like RainX on automotive glass quickly and easily.

I’ve had some luck oversaturating some colors to make the finished product more vibrant with an older Roland printer. It’s not ideal, but sometimes it gives you the desired effect. It can backfire and cause goofy looking prints, though. The only real solution is a newer printer with a wider...

After speaking with my Roland rep, he put me in touch with the handful of customers he’s sold the newer model to, including one who has a VG and a VG2 sitting side by side. Apparently, Roland has made some improvements in the VG2’s reliability over the VG. We’ll soon see how it goes, I guess...

Update: I decided to take the gamble. I ordered a VG2-540 this week with the new orange ink setup. I’ll keep everyone posted here of both the good and the bad.

I was a DoD employee for 17 years. I’ve personally been tasked with spending $2million in 7 days. It’s not easy to do and still fall within regulation. I always thought it was the most backward way of doing business.

That’s a rather roundabout way to get a contour cut line from photoshop into illustrator. I just create a work path from a selection. Export path to illustrator, then cut and paste the raster artwork over to the illustrator file. About 10 seconds worth of work. The worst thing that happens is...

We used to make a killing at the shop where I had my first job in the sign industry by being the only shop in town that would do installs on boats that were in the water. We even had a small aluminum john boat that belonged to the company for working on the sides of boats. I used to enjoy...

Our county landfill has a hazardous waste program that takes them free of charge a couple of times a year. Worth checking into.

Then, I’m sure they’re super excited about me still using CS5.

I’m in the process of cutting ties with my current business partners and realizing a longtime dream of opening a shop on my own closer to my hometown. In doing so, I’m not keeping any of the equipment in the current shop and buying new. My first instinct was to invest in the latest and greatest...

I have a 24x18 board hanging in the shop with 30 font examples on it. If someone comes in and wants simple lettering, I tell them to pick one of those. If they decide they don’t like those, there’s one of my old PCs in the corner with around 2,800 fonts and a freeware font manager program...

If I suspect a customer is planning to play me against a local competitor using my artwork, I’ll do exactly that. I’ll give them a photo of the screen taken at a slight angle to make it a royal PITA to copy the design. It’s usually easy to tell when that’s what is going on. I do at least make an...

Stick with Ceramark for stainless. There’s a ton of information online regarding settings for various machines. I’ve tried some knockoffs and always end up going back to their product.

There are so many variables in the path a file must take between Illustrator itself and the final output, that it’s hard to nail down an exact cause. It could be anything from the way Illustrator communicates with the print driver, the RIP software, the printer firmware, or even something...

Try using the ‘Outline Stroke’ command to convert the stroke to a filled object, then use the eyedropper tool to give them the same properties as the letters. It’s not an elegant workaround, but it might accomplish the results you’re after.

As much as it pains me to admit it, I Farm out big sublimation jobs to China.