are cutting settings saved with the V/Camm after laminating?

[Mark Candlin]

Hi Tim,

Ive looked into this a bit myself and the answer is No.

You have to adjust the pressure yourself, both on the machine and within the software.

A way to do it is have one profile cutting at say 150 and call it “Laminate Cut” and another at 100 and call it “Standard Cut”. But this will vary somewhat depending in how blunt your blade is etc.

What I havent got around to looking at is which knife setting overrides the other. ie: if you set knife pressure to 150 within the software but not on the machine (which say is set at 90) will the machine cut at 90 or 150?

Ive got a feeling the machine setting overides the software setting.
If anybody knows please let me know!!

[Tim Shaw]

Thanks Mark.

I think I am going to buy Flexisign, I am sick to death of Signlab.

The v camm failed to find all alinment marks after sending the file to cut, now I am stuck in a loop.

I cant get the spooled file to cut only, when I select cut with the left mouse button, it either starts reprinting the job over the top of the lamiante or it moves the file back to the spool list.

When i move it back to the active list and I am then stuck in a loop.

The manual isn’t really helping as it suggest options in menus that don’t actaully excist !!!!

The only choices I have to re-cut are

Remove
Release starts to rerint
Print starts to reprint
Cut random – it either re-prints or moves file to spool list

View raw data
Properties

[Rodney Gold]

You have 2 options , either enable parameters in software or hardware. The software ALWAYS overwrites hardware , IE if you set offset , speed and pressure in the RIP , thats whats used , if you do te same on the machine and disable such in the RIP , it defaults to machine settings.
I cannot possibly understand why you would want to use a sucky signlab/flexi/afterthought rip when one of the top of the range (WASATCH) is provided free with the versacam , ver 2.2 is absolutely marvellous (can DL form the http://www.rolanddg.com site) with its new precision stoastic screen which cut rip times in 1/2 and print a WHOLE lot better and save you inks

[Tim Shaw]

Hi Rodney.

I will be looking at the Rip supplied , but right now I am stuck between a rock and hard place. The great guy who installed everything was very good, but was not upto speed on the roland rip, so he only demonstrated Sign lab,

The v-camm is refusingg to find all the crop marks, I have 500 labels I need cutting out, the Roland manual suggests manual alignment, not sure how to get my bald pate under the lid, or my eyes on stalks to be able to see round all the warning labels to aling the tiny knife blade up with the marks.

Could it be too bright or dark?? It is finding the two marks at the front of the sheet OK

Right now my only option is to reprint and cut at the same time, and send the stickers without overlaminate. Not an ideal solution.

[Mark Shipley]

Hi,

As Rodnay said the Versacamm takes it settings from the software, but at anytime whilst it is cutting you can over-ride the settings by using the front panel ‘cut config’ button to change any of the following parameters;

force
speed
offset
up-speed

This is particularly useful if it’s cutting a large sheet like labels you can pause and try weeding a small area and adjust the settings according.

Earlier today I was cutting about 600mm of 50 micron exterior cast mirror chrome (evil stuff :nag4: ) and had to stop, check and adjust about 4 times becuase it was snagging some parts of the design.

Oh, and you can also over-ride the temperature settings !!

Mark

[Chris Wool]

hi some ware in the set up cant find it just now but you can set the machine to ignore software settings only use machine settings or only use software settings as i remember mine is machine settings only cos altering software has no influence

when you know you are going to laminate then cut always feed a few ins out and cut it off before you print that way you have a edge that is 100% inline with the bed cos if the laminated print can be put back in alignment with the bed making it easyer and faster to realign.

chris

[Mark Candlin]

Another trick is to try and avoid using the full width of the material when you know you are going to have to reload to cut a lot of stickers after laminating.

I find sometimes if the full width of the vinyl has been used when printing
you havent got much room for lateral movment when the VC is trying to find the crop marks. If you dont align the re-loaded sheet up “dead square” you havent got much room to twist the sheet around a little.

(does that make sense?)

I agree with Rodney forget signlab for the cutting and use the RIP you got with the machine, its far better and its not that hard to use…RTFM!!….lol

[Frank Droog]

The posts above are correct about pressure and speed.
Most plotters these days can be set to accept or ignore Incoming velocity and pressure commands from softare. This needs to be toggled On on the plotter itself.

I cant see an immediate problem with the versacamm output.
The only thing i can see that may cause a problem is that the cutter driver has 3 tools. Knife,Pen and Knife with Regmarks under PrintNCut Setup. Is the driver set to Knife with RegMarks? This tells the versacamm to look for Regmarks befor it starts cutting.

I assume that it printed the job correctly with reg marks.
I assume you took it out and laminated it.
Then you put the vinyl back in the cutter.
I assume that you did a Set Base Point on the cutter at a reasonable point to let the machine start at a reasonable point for searching for crop marks.

Do you get an error when cutting starts and it begins the search for regmarks? I believe you must make sure the media is reinserted at no more that a 5 degree skew or the machine wont find the marks.
Also, the machine may have stretched the print. If the machine stretched the print too much during the print, the machine may not find the reg marks.
eg, software tell machine via HPGL PS command that it is sending a
100 inch long job. The machine measures say 102 inches. The machine will give an error as the differance exceeds its max. Not sure about Vesacamm but i believe the Soljets max is a 2cm differance.

I have a Versacamm here and can easily find out if its data or some setting on the machine.
The one thing i would need to know is, exactly how big is the job in Signlab, and exactly how big is the actual print. Need to find out how much it strecthed and what the max stretch tolerance of the machine is.

frankd@cadlink.com

[Rodney Gold]

The most likely reason it wont find the back crop marks is that you have sheet cut too near to them , the sheet advances , but there is an optical sensor thast senses the edge of the paper at the back of the machine. Put a piece of masking tape over the eye at the back and try again.
It could also be the optical sensor is dirty , do a physical clean (I think you press the cleaning buttom while powering up – might not be the same as mine) and you will have access to the cutter assembly , use a cotton q-tip and some meths or alcohol etc to clean the sensor.
Frank , there is no limit on stretch , I know that cos it cost me a job 😉
I had printed 2 sets of round labels , one with 50 rows , the other with 80 rows , I put the 80 row one back in and sent the 50 row cut file by mistake and got 50 rows of ovals on the 80 row sheet.
ALWAYS square off your new media roll before loading (applys to printing ).Easy to do , wind the roll tight , tape the end to the roll , draw a line across the top of the roll and cut on the line. Then when you next load the media line it up with the front edge of the machine and print , sheet cut. This way the media will ALWAYS be square.
Heres another tip. DONT step and repeat your decal in the design package , just do 1.
Export it and import into the RIP , use “rip only” and rip it
Then go to Print – queues
Tick manual print layout and set your guttering (input box called gap) this will set the distance between decals.
Click on your file in the print queue and set how many copies you want , then click on layout and you will see how the graphics fill the sheet (the rip gets feedback from the printer as to how wide the media is) , you can increase or decrease the copies so it fits perfectly. this is FAR better than sending a stepped and repeated file , the export is quick the rip is real quick and you can use your media to the best. It also solves a lot of print cut misregistration that you get from step and repeat.
If you are laminating and then cutting using queues , then set your maximum width to about 6cm less than actual media width , otherwise when printing you will get a message saying crop marks cant be printed (they require a bit of space either side of the graphic)
When cutting or doing a test cut , be very careful of one thing.
If your heaters are on , then the part you do the test cut on is hot and cuts a LOT easier. Problem is , the rest isnt. So your pressure isnt really that valid for the rest of the graphic as its most likely not as hot as where you tested. We generally use a 60 degree blade for all our stuff as it cuts thicker stuff way better then the 45 degree one. What we did is get another blade holder , one is silver , one is black , one holds 45 degree blade the other 60 , so you always know whats in.

[Tim Shaw]

Thanks for all your help guys.

All the suggestions I had pretty much done, plenty of space at each end, the VC finds the two front marks ok. What I didn’t realise is how critical the alingment was on the long edge, maybe I am aligning a litlte of straight which may be causing the error.

“RTFM” a classic phrase. one I have oft given, but have usually chosen not to follow !!!!!!!.

Just to recap;; The VC uses the current settings from the software at all times. it DOES NOT save the pressure and speed settings etc with the spool file ????

Let you know I things go………

[Chris Wool]

hi
i use the auto align most days and about 1 in 15 sheets proves difficult to align first time i have yet to find the reason so there is some thing we do to the sheet distort it some how whilst laminating will try puting a good sheet over a bad sheet to se how far things have moved but have not had one fail completly yet

chris

[Tim Shaw]

Thanks Chris,

Not had chance to re-try yet. Working in other office till later today.

From what you and others have said, I think it is an alignment issue, or running of slightly before it gets to the back two marks.

It is finding the front two marks ok. All seems to be square , maybe it is a operator ID 10 T error!!!!.

[Mike Antrum]

Hi Tim,

In the menu of the VersaCamm, there is a setting called ‘CUTTING PRIOR’

It has two available settings:

COMMAND – if set to command, the software can send the settings for force, speed etc and the VersaCAMM will obey these commands.

MENU – if set to menu, the VersaCAMM will ignore all commands relating to speed & pressure etc.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Mike Antrum.

[Chris Wool]

thanks mike could not remember the terminolagy now i can find it

chris

[Tim Shaw]

Got a few ideas from the roland guys to try