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Alternative ploters
Hi Guys what is the form on matcing a plotter to the gerber edge
Are there any other plotters that do the job besides gerbers own make
and still hjave all the necesary functions
comments please -
21 Replies
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hhmm dont know if i follow mate. 🙄 sorry if im being dim 😳
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think you would have to use matcing a plotter as they use vinyls with sprocket holes
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Bob,
I take it you want to align the printer output with the cutter so that you can contour cut? I don’t know much about it but I think any plotter with OPOS will do the job.
Anyway, to avoid any doubt my strategy would be to ask the suppliers and if they say their product can do it get them to bring one round and demo it on my premises to prove it.
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Cheers jon excellent idea.
any body else got any info
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What’s OPOS John?
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Graphtec & Summa do allignment devices for their plotters. It is far trickier to get right than with a Gerber plotter becuase you have more than 1 axis to worry about. You need to set at least 2 reference points, I wouldn’t recommend it for the Edge unless you have no other choice.
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I have a Gerber Edge and Summa T-series plotter; I have made the plotter cut Edge material, Summa’s OPOS need’s several small square registration marks in order to use OPOS as opposed to Gerbers crosshair bombsight.
I do 99% of my contourcutting on our old Gerber Sprint though which leaves the Summa for all the daily shop work, that just clatters away in the background happily for hours on end.
I use Gerber Omega software but have Signlab E6 too although I have never got the hang of it. I believe in Signlab you can automatically set up different type of reg. marks, and you can drive a Summa plotter direct (weight settings etc) from Signlab, so if you include the Summa reg marks on your printjobs there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to contour cut all the time. Signlabs new Edge module might help this, now or in the near future.
Jon Aston from ND Graphics was mentioning that Gerber and Summa might be working on some sort of recognition solution between the 2 products.
I think at the moment its easy, and cheap to buy an old Sprint, or 4B and with a Gerber Link module you can run them from a PC and contour cut, they go on for ever, cut at the same speed the printer prints at (Edge 1) or thereabouts, and have your main plotter take care of everything else.
Of course this is just how I do it…..:) There are many ways to skin a cat.
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Ah right, think i know were you are coming from now.
Alignment for contour cutting.. Doh 😮Yes, it would have to be a tractor/sprocket fed plotter. There are probably alternatives, but again aligning it would be a fair bit tricky. Like Brian says!
I know how it works when kiss-cutting a contour but i don’t know how it all works with the edge etc as far as i am aware you lift from the printing machine and load onto the 4B type cutter and align it.
I saw a small eyepiece type device introduced later that you loaded into were the blade gets held. This is so you can align more accurately.
I thought it was a good idea but pretty (un-techy) if that makes sense.
Its bad enough when trying to align a friction fed plotter to run a good distance through manually never mind if it’s out a fraction you cut the tops off dozens of printed graphics.
Ok im babbling on again, i would try sticking with the Gerber sprocket fed plotters. That way if there is a problem you can point the finger at them rather than get the (sorry its down to this or that and that’s not our machine type thing) 😕 -
Leeroy…
I don’t know what OPOS stands for. I was just trying to sound clever. 😀
It’s something like Optical Postioning blah de blah I think. Talk to an expert for a sensible answer. 😀
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Doesn’t have to be sprocket fed, you can align registration marks/cut lines in coreldraw to contour cut to a cm24 or similar which has been produced on a 3rd party printer( epson type) software is the key.
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outline if you are correct i must be completely out the park with my answer mate.
if so, sorry. but surely software isnt going to tell you or guid your vinyl through a machine accurately just because of a registration mark alignment?
what may be spot on running verticaly may not be horizontaly…
sprocket fed keeps you right both ways.
its down to manualy getting it right unless done all in one go.. print and cut solution type machine… 🙄when you say epson do you mean like a friction fed printer or a tray fed sort?
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While I am sure that Gerber’s sprocketed Edge prints contourcut best in a Gerber sprocketed plotter, I mentioned in my post that Summa ‘s T-series friction fed, that we have here in the shop contour cuts perfectly….there wouldn’t be much point in fitting an Optical positioning system on a plotter if it wasn’t capable of doing the job 🙂
The problem is in what registration marks are built in Gerbers software, which is up to now what people have used to drive the Edge, if on the output side of the software you could select the cutting device/optical unit and it automatically placed the reg marks around the job, it would make it much easier, but as I also said above I believe that is being worked on.
The learning curve is one thing with printing, you don’t want to mess up a job because you have set up the wrong reg marks. The gerber system works from the bombsight in the knife holder, the Summa requires multiple small squares horizontally and vertically, but once it has that cuts very accurately and very fast.
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Hi Rob,
This was answering your post in the middle here which has disappeared while I wrote this!
Its as Outline says not so much the plotter, more about whats built into the software. Of course a complete Gerber system has been best when using the Edge.
But I think even Gerber are realising that in order to attract new customers for their products, ( and some of those new customers will already have invested in other software, and cutters which they are happy with.) they have to make them more accessible, without having to change your whole set up. Signlabs thermal module means that lots of Signlab shops can run an Edge without learning Omega. With a little collaboration in the future it would be nice to easily assign reg marks to jobs according to which cutting device they are going too.
Rob some friction machines are much better than others Summa’s tracking is known for its reliability. Even using a Gerber plotter and Edge together can cause registration problems if the sprockets are not kept clean and free of glue residue on both. If you use non Gerber vinyls they can be sprocketed at different speeds making small differences when making multilayered jobs so nothing is perfect 🙂
I still think at the moment if you are using an Edge 1 and want a cheap contour cutting plotter, a used Sprint or such is a great solution, and kinder on your bankbalance.
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😆 😆 😆
sorry henry your right mate. i deleted it.
after posting i re-read your post and realised you answered my question already so i deleted it to rewrite another. the phone went and when i came back you had replied already lol…
sorry ill repost a little later.
cheers mate 😆 -
(john, sorry mate i know i have piggy backed your initial post mate.)
hi henry, got a min now to reply mate.
i agree with you 100% on the edge and sprockets set-up.
like i said to outline, i couldnt see how the software over rides the plotter.
(obviously) i must be wrong in the way i am thinking about how this is done.i have always prefered a friction fed machine for a few reasons. even though tracking for metres on end is not great and with some machines not possible.
some machines track great but it comes down to how well they have been loaded.
i assume that the summa machine has an excellent device to line the vinyl up with?
the best one i have found has to be with my graphtec, simply feed the vinyl under, and back on itself and it lines up very easily. but still not for many many metres. this is not a problem for me as i cut graphics at about 200 inches long max. but sometimes when printing hundreds of small stickers on an edge i would have thought by the time it kiss cuts using a friction fed machine it may run off over the length and the border starts cutting into the graphic a bit. this is kind of what i mean. a sprocket fed machine just keeps plodding on, whilst friction fed runs off after so many metres.
im very interested in how the summa works now, how does the tracking stay consistant? are there sensors for keeping it straight?
what kind of length are you talking it will run through and gauranteed to keep straight?sorry to bombard you with my questions mate. 😀
oops, last one.. does the cross hair eye peice device work on various cutters or only the gerber?
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I have been succesful in aligning my summa D500 up to cut media printed on my laser printer (stickers & transfers) Its not ideal, but the accuracy is as good as that on the gerber edge that the last company i worked for had.
There does ideally need to be an OPOS (no idea either as to what it stands for) but, there is softwear out there that will allow you to align to reg marks and then record the data from the plotter as to possitioning normally there are 3 reg marks for this to work
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Hi Lorraine !
sorry to push in here 😉Re: Rob, dunno mate, I’ve been looking in to sublimation and they reckon
an epson 1290 can print and your basic roland plotter (or any other I assume) can contour cut to the finished print.
I did read up on it a few months ago but can’t remember the full details on how its done, print with bomb, insert media,and align point to bomb may work, dunno?
I got my info last night from xpress catalogue who sell roland gear under their own name.
I’d love to see a full demo!Cheers
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Rob the Bombsight is made to take the place of a Gerber knifeholder so its shaped like that or a pen/pounce tool its plastic with a maginfting glass in it and you line up the start point of the knife in seconds, it might sound abit WW2 but it works well. I don’t know if anybody else uses that type of holder….I doubt it. The plot side of the program knows where that one place is in relation to the rest of the job.
My Summa T series has extra bits you can use for plotting very long media, it has to wheels that lock into the cores of rolls, and then can be set to run at whatever width in a track on the back, I rarely use this as it tracks so well without.
As I mentioned in my first post we contourcut with the Gerber plotter as we had that before the Summa, so I have never used the summa on a really long series, but I don’t think it would be a problem if it was set up right.
I think Gerbers big Odyssey friction plotter has some sort of alignment/tracking system, but I am not sure, thought it was abit overpriced.
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Outline,
You will find that the machines from xpress are Roland Camm ones 24″ rebaged (well with an xpress sticker stuck over the roland one)
These have however been modified with a sensor to read the registration marks printed by corel draw.
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quote lorraine:Outline,
You will find that the machines from xpress are Roland Camm ones 24″ rebaged (well with an xpress sticker stuck over the roland one)
These have however been modified with a sensor to read the registration marks printed by corel draw.
Ahh ! 😳
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I just bought a 60″ Graphtec Plotter with an Optical Sight Elignment sensor. I bought is because it will cut graphics that have been printed on various printers. We use a Mutoh Toucan to print then we laminate the print & cut it. The Graphtec Plotter is not quite as accurate as the 15″ sproketed plotter but it does compensate for growth or shrinkage that can occour during the stepping process of a printer. It also takes into account for skew due to the material not being exactly straight in the printer.
Hope this helps.
Brian
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