advice needed for cutting mirror Chrome vinyl please?

[Robert Lambie]

take the balde out the holder and try cleaning with a pin. or somthing that will get in there and clean it… petrol maybe … anyway once you give it as good a clean as you cam. run some oil in there… then pop in the blade and turn it round a few times… try that! when blades dont turn fast enough its normaly they have dried up in the holder with dust etc…

somthing edward mathias “the blade people” found out. they realised that the spinning of the blade was such an issue they now make there blades come in a sealed bearing unit. spins like a dream 😉

im not saying thats your problem but its worth a shot mate 😉

[Lee Attewell]

Thanks Rob,
I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll give it a go and use my new blade, hopefully that’ll work.

By the way….

Don’t you ever sleep?

What time is it there?

[Steve Broughton]

Leeroy, when I was cutting some reflective the other day the machine was set to a slow speed, then the next job was chrome vinyl, I had left the machine set at the same speed and I experienced the same problems as you describe so i set the cutter back to its normal speed for ordinary vinyl and it cut just fine, maybe you should give this a try.

[Lee Attewell]

Thanks for the input Steve. I got a new blade ( about time) and did what Robert suggested. It worked a treat. Beautiful cuts and no tearing.

Lee

[Martin Pearson]

Having read the posts above I have a question that hopefully someone can answer, I know that when cutting different materials you have to adjust the pressure of the blade to ensure you cut through the material cleanly without cutting the backing paper but as most of the work we have done has been with callendered vinyl we dont have to use different settings very often.
When I have cut reflective vinyl I have changed the pressure but the speed has remained constant, same when I have cut holographic vinyl.
Is there a guide or chart somewhere that gives an indication of what speed to cut different materials at? When I have had trouble weeding materials in the past having tried all sorts of different cutting pressures I have just struggled and got on with it, I never once stopped to think about changing the cutting speed of the plotter.

[Robert Lambie]

good to hear you got it sorted lee! 😛

martin, its good to change the speed now and again for differnt reasons… when you have long long lines of text running we slow the cutter down so when its bounce back and forwards the vinyl is less likely to jam, or track off.
we also slow it slightly for mirror foils and the like…

with reflective we do increase the pressure.
a good thing to do if not alreay doing it is to set the origin point to finish lower left. basicaly where the job started. now when the cutter finishes cutting the reflective you can weed a single letter without taking out machine. just to make sure all is well. if its not! just click start again and the job will cut again but this time exactly over the first one. the second cut is sure to go through. once thats done you increase it a little on pressure.
we do this when running lots of reflective… it just makes sure its always cutting well…

on the subject of reflective, you should keep a spare blade for reflective only. reflective vinyl blunts the blade ten time quicker than normal vinyl.
the reason for this is that reflective contains tiny tiny balls of glass in the material. this is what catches the light and makes it reflect through the colour. hense the reason the blade goes blunt faster…. 🙄

i dont think having a pressure chart would work well…
differnt blades would vary on pressure etc… and even if you used the same blades all the time the vinyl is thicker and thinner with the brands.
personaly ide stick to the small machine test. 😉

[Martin Pearson]

Thanks Rob, yes we do keep a seperate blade for cutting reflective and the plotter does finish bottom left, though I think this is probably a default setting because I had never thought about re-cutting a job so have not set the plotter up for this reason. In fact I didnt even know you could recut over an existing job.
It wasnt so much a pressure chart I was asking about Rob, yes I know that different manufacturers vinyls cut differently so yes we use the test when setting up to cut different materials. It was more for the speed, so you knew if you were cutting say metalics you should slow the speed down a bit or speed it up etc.

[Lee Attewell]

I’ve been “bitten ” so many times by my plotter that if I change my vinyl I always perform a test cut to see how well it cuts. I also check to make sure that too much pressure is not applied.

Lee

[Signs by Shawn]

I’ve got a very simple rule…The more I paid for the material, the slower I cut it, and the closer I watch it…so if I’m cutting calendar, speed it up and walk away, if its SignGold, slow it all the way down and watch it like a hawk!!!

More for my peace of mind that any other reason!!!

Have a great day!

Shawn