Update:

I'll put together a tote of the shirt making bits.
The shirt designs to date are all two color, and therefore have two masks each.
There are masks for two Zombie variations, 3 masks in total and the Life Preserver design has it's two masks.

What I've learned;

• Gloss spray paint does not like to stick to 100% polyester shirts. It's appears to be actively repelled, frustrating as heck, but fascinating none the less.
• You need to mask off more and better than you think.
• Red Bull contest posters make excellent over masks.
• Plastic shower surround materials makes a pretty good mask, but you need to make sure the spray mount is well adhered and holding it down.

Pete

Cool, I will try to get the vinyl cutter set up before Wednesday and cut the logo and text to see if we can make more masks.

If I can figure the cutting depth shelf paper works great as a one time mast, and is cheap, and pulls cleanly off.
But I tend to cut through it, so it is a trial and error type of thing.

Nice design work, and you guys did a great job getting these done in time for the SMM event.

I'd like to keep going, and make some of the other design(s) as well. If you can rattle a can and enjoy noxious fumes, this may be the Maker project for you!

I have yet to do a white shirt in any style. I owe Cam a Zombie shirt, so perhaps that will be the next shirt and first white one. I got a few different types of shirts, the other night, if we want to get serious we should probably get an order together, as they are about $3-4 each online for heavy shirts in whatever color.

All of the parts to make shirts, minus the spray mount,( I'm not sure where it went) ,are now in a laundry basket up high on the shelves opposite the take apart parts shelf.



You are more than welcome to make your self a shirt. I loosely based my process on this.

The masks for the SOS Life Preserver design are cut from this, the palette assumed a white shirt, but you may do as you will. If you want to give it a try and have questions, give a shout.



Pete

Booka,

I neglected to ask if you were able to get masks cut, I was planning to be in much earlier last night, but had a work thing run long, any progress?

-- Silk Screen Printer Update --
The printer became quite popular and is up over $300, needless to say I stopped pursuing it.

Pete

Wow, it must have been a last minute battle, the press went for $700.

I had the text printed, but of course left it at home. I am still working the Zombies out, I have to trace them to create the cut paths.

I hope to swing by the HF Sunday, so I will bring them down and toss them in the bin.

Booka, we should talk, maybe I'm not understanding your process / workflow, but these were created in Inkscape, which I think you are using, and are created as paths. I'd like to see what the plugin or whatever it is, wants because it should be a very simple transition from what we have.

I also have the native *.svg files for these masks, if you want to try them let me know? Is the software you use downloadable, or is the software itself licensed? If I can play with it, maybe I can see why it's not as simple as I'm thinking it should be.

Pete

I use to set up files for the vinyl plotter years ago. the outline needs to be one continuous shape. Often had to re-outline art even if it looked kosher, due to starts and stops or reversals.

Swink has what I run into identified, but it very well could be my lack of understanding of the software that is the problem.

Right now I import the graphic into Canvas 4 ( Adobe was a bit expensive for me, and Inkscape on Windows did not export to the Cutter software directly)

I then convert text paths, which is a simple process and export it to the cutter software.

But the convert paths on graphics end up with mess of segments that do not connnect, which I have to either touch each one manually, or what I prefer to do is trace over the graphic with the pen tool. Not exact, but I do not miss things.

Hmmm,

What might automate this is a plugin Luno and I have been using to generate g-code from Inkscape. It makes a path to profile (cut out the outer edge) of a given path based shape as the first step, and it then generates a g-code tool path to cut along, in your case we could stop before the g-code generation, take the path it creates to do the profile, and see if the software likes that better, the plugin does a pretty good job on single path cut-out stuff, it needs help with internal pocketing, (removing a bunch of stock within boundaries) but you'd never need that kind of path, so I think it's worth a shot, I'll try it and send you the zombie outline path(s).

Pete