Cutting with sp540 – Contour cut how to …

[Chris Wool]

thought there was a step by step guide in the roland user manual, for corel and ilifustrating,

so long since i did it can’t remember

[Gary Birch]

This will help you with Corel. Should imagine illustrator is pretty much the same.

http://www.rolanddg.co.za/bobnotes/HowT … ontour.pdf

Cheers

Gary

[Stephen Morriss]

Roland do a pdf book on their site some were that tells you howto do this.
Also look in their support area and you can do searches for how-to’s.

steve

[Martin Oxenham]

Flexisign will turn any vector line into a cut line no matter what colour by just selecting it and clicking on contour cut.
You really should learn to use one of the sign programs you have there.
You really only need Flexi and Photoshop or Signlab and Photoshop.

[Gareth Howells]

hi all, thanks for the good advice. i will take a look at the links provided and see if i can get it sorted. thanks again

[Gareth Howells]

can it be done in adobe illustrator ? im on a mac and no coreldaw at home. id have to bring my pc back which is a nuisance and a space problem…

[David Rogers]

To comment on Martin’s post – I thoroughly agree. Pick a piece of software or two & stick with them….

You’ve got (potentially) £3k-£5k worth of software there between the lot you’ve rattled off and any two will suffice.

If you contact your preferred software online / phone help – I’m sure they can help you with the individual applications and how to set up cut lines and get the RIP to recognise them. After all, that’s what what software support is for.

[Gareth Howells]

still getting nowhere fast! 🙁

[Peter Normington]

It sounds like you have spent several thousands of pounds on software that you dont have a clue about. software is a tool and like a carpenters plain, or a farmers plough, you need to learn how to use it, training and experience take time, if you are a complete novice why on earth did you buy a printer, and think you could turn it into a business?
I cant buy a dewalt multitool and become a cabinet maker overnight.

Peter

[Gareth Howells]

i can do everything else, this is very easy piece of kit to use to be honest. just setting up this as i have no idea how the contour cut works. im asking for a bit of advice. clicking print and rip is hardly rocket science, this is why i bought the machine. already i have made alot of money from it, this is just another feature i might aswell make use of. if you want to be cocky and not helpful please dont respond to my posts. you have been quite rude and obviously trying to be funny. why?

[Peter Normington]

Gareth.
I am not being rude or cocky, you have asked the question, and been given very good answers, I even posted a photoshop file showing how it is done.
you have multiple programs, all of which should contain or have web demos on how to do a contour cut, and with all due respect, if you cant grasp it, then perhaps you need to book a course with roland or cadlink, they are very good and you will find a 2 day course will be well worth the money, and give you a basic starting point to build on.

Peter

[Gary Birch]

I agree with Peter about some training. We paid for a guy to come in and give us some in house training, it was a mixture of colour management and Versaworks. Was shown more things that I could remember but well worth the money in my eyes.

Pm me if you want his details.

Cheers

Gary

[Alan Drury]

This is sort of highlighting one of the dilemmas we face here. We have knowledge from either years of experience or paid for training and yet we sometimes give it out free to anyone who asks, therefor in theory assisting a competitor, potential or real. Perhaps it is better just not to respond at all to some requests. The answer is always out there, my attitude is – if I got the knowledge free I’ll give it out free – if I paid for it, it stays with me.
Alan D

[Gareth Howells]

alan i do not think you are getting what forums are about, if you want to talk to people then goto a pub or a club or something, forums are for sharing info and giving advice. i give lots of advice in other forums of which the knowledge has cost me thousands of pounds and time in training, ie cisco ccna and MCSE win server 2003. i am more than happy to help as i remember being at the bottom aswell. i am more than happy to pay for training but dont know of anybody locally who does that sort of thing.

i think taking your own advice is perhaps best … "Perhaps it is better just not to respond at all to some requests"

it is sad that some people think like this as i joined here for expert help not petty silliness.

[David-Foster-]

Hi Gareth

Just reading between the lines you seem to have a lot of software, and both platforms, Mac and PC. Which do you have to use, the Mac with CS5 or PC with everything else?

If you have spent a few thousand pounds on SignLab though, I am sure that is the best software to use. I see people on here say it can do anything sign related, although a little complicated. Do you not get support from CADlink with SignLab? I am sure a support email to them and some training from them will have you sorted 😎

[DavidUrry]

Hi Gareth

I use a Grenadier print and cut using a wastach rip and all I have to do for cutting labels from Illustrator is make the cut path a spot colour called CutContour (all one Word) then save as a eps file. Hope this is some help. If like me you have had some training in the past, I still forget sometimes!!

[Jason Davies]

I would second that, I know Danny from CADLINK reads these boards. I’ll be speaking to him next week. I’ll ask him to clarify this for you on the boards, perhaps he can offer some further support in terms of the software.

[David Rogers]

quote Jason Davies:

I would second that, I know Danny from CADLINK reads these boards. I’ll be speaking to him next week. I’ll ask him to clarify this for you on the boards, perhaps he can offer some further support in terms of the software.

CADLINK are pretty good at giving advice. All you need to sign up to their online service is your email address & software / dongle number and they’ll email you answers to most things not covered in the FAQ.

[Stephen Morriss]

Have you a colour called CutPath or CutContour setup in Illustrator?
It also has to be a specific width to work, look for "Roland Mystery book" on google, this tells you howto setup the contour cut in Illustrator and Coreldraw.

You also have to have the queue setup to do the cut in Versaworks.

Steve

[Gareth Howells]

hi all, finally got this working. thanks for the posts. the contour cut is working but the lines are slightly out in some places. is there something else i need to do ?

thanks

[Lee Mansell]

quote Gareth Howells:

i can do everything else, this is very easy piece of kit to use to be honest. just setting up this as i have no idea how the contour cut works. im asking for a bit of advice. clicking print and rip is hardly rocket science, this is why i bought the machine. already i have made alot of money from it, this is just another feature i might aswell make use of. if you want to be cocky and not helpful please dont respond to my posts. you have been quite rude and obviously trying to be funny. why?

Go to coral, create a new color and call it "CutContour" save that. Now just for quick ness draw a box…. and fill it say… yellow. Now draw a circle without any fill, and select it and add a pen… namely "CutContor" and the pen width 0.025, now centre the circle and box.
Select both objects and export them as an .eps file.
Import the the .eps into your imagerip….. hopefully if all correct options are selected you should see your box image with marching ants in a circle in the middle. Send that job to your printer and hope for the best. If it dosent work Ensure "enable cut paths" is seleceted on. hope this helps 🙂

[Lee Mansell]

quote Gareth Howells:

hi all, finally got this working. thanks for the posts. the contour cut is working but the lines are slightly out in some places. is there something else i need to do ?

thanks

Out of place? by how much?? couple of mm?or massively??

I have this problem often if its a couple of mm out, I think that its your material strecthing sligthly because of the heat being fired into it…. unfortunatly you cant do much about the heat so what i tend to do is run smaller batches of labels, so i run a batch of say 4 accross the width and instead of running 3 sets of 4 labels i will only run 1….. but keep sending the job, for your desired quantity. that was my only work around. Any other ideas appriciated 🙂