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Help cutting reflective using mimaki cg160fx plotter
I am printing on oracal reflective material using a hp design jet L28500 printer and mimaki fx160cg plotter. My question is I’m not having trouble printing on reflective, but having trouble plotting it using illustrator fine cut. When I get it printed and run through the steps to read the registration marks to tell plotter how big a piece to cut. Will sometimes read the marks or most of the time just pass over it and error out. It never finishes reading the marks. Is their a way to get plotter to read the marks so it can contour cut the what I want. Am I missing something or is their an easier way to go about cutting reflective after I print on it. Any help would greatly be appreciated.
thanks in advance
what I have tried so far… put matte lam over registration marks and it didn’t seem to help any. also put premask over it too and made the registrations, even went as far as shutting of the lights.and non of this worked.
can anybody give me some advice on how to go about doing this.
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6 Replies
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Hi Josh, yes this can sometimes be a problem when trying to find the Reg. marks. The trouble is that the reflective tends to shine the light back up at the sensor and this makes the sensor miss the mark or not recognizing it.
Are you printing direct onto the reflective or clear. I print onto clear film them laminate then laminate onto reflective this way i’m not wasting extra reflective putting it through the printer.
Sometimes it registers first time other times i to turn off the room lights to stop bounce back of the light and i’ve even put 2” masking tape over the reg marks and then traced them on top, use a Black pen, again this sometimes helps.
will be doing a print and cut on reflective today so will let you know how i get on.
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Ok, just printed on clear film and laminated with clear film then applied to 3M reflective. Printer Mimaki JV3, Cutter Mimaki CG 75 FX software Ilustrator and Finecut. Had no problems with sensor picking up reg marks. Normally if i do its usually the First mark.
Some times because of the weight of reflective it tends to move slightly when i line it up then take my hand off to clamp it down or i dont align it properly. Now i tend to cut the front edge of the print about 2” parallel to the crop marks, this gives a good guide to lining the vinyl. Dont use the length of the vinyl as a guide as the crop marks may not be square with edge.
Hope this all makes sense.
Best of luck
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So, your saying to print on clear vinyl then lam to reflective. Then contour cut with
It all together. Will it work with gloss lam too. For I’m not sure if customer wants the matte finish.Thanks I will try this later this week and see
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You can print onto most reflectives and laminate, I only print onto clear first as it saves on using more reflective than i need to put through printer.
Your issue is getting your cutter to recognize the reg marks.
If it recognizes the first mark then it may be just an alignment problem you have.
Make sure the print is Inside the reg marks, sometimes i dont leave enough room and the sensor picks up a bit of print and causes an error.
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It sometimes picks up the first mark and second then errors out. Then not at all. Do you know how alien plotter. It see if that is the issue.
Thanks
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sounds like an alignment problem.
If all your Regmarks are clean and sharp and there is no other marks in line with any of the sensor marks then its alignment i’de say.
If, when checking regmarks it stops and returns before it reaches the next mark then it could be o bit of print its picking up and causing an error.
How long is the print?
Are the two righthand regmarks the same distance away from the righthand edge of the vinyl?
All your trying to do is make sure the vinyl runs through the cutter inline or straight.
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