Help : How to print & cut using separate machines?

[Pane Talev]

I do my print on Mutoh 1624
I Laminate
I cut then on Summa D140.
I do everything in Corel or Illustrator.
Layout all stickers to optimize material.
I have cut line on another invisible layer.
Add OPOS marks.
I then save the print file (Make sure cut line is not visibe)
Then go back. Delete print artwork, select cut line and save as cut file.
In one folder I end-up have: Design file, Proof, Print File, Cut file)
After job is printed, I laminate the next day.
Load the Summa.
Open the cut file.
Send to OPOS
Job done.
I never did it trough Onyx or similar software so cannot comment if my way is the right way.
But for me works for many years.

[Hugh Potter]

With onyx you should be able to skip some of the steps mentioned above,

I design in corel, then add a 100% cutcontour (100% magenta roland colour profile, spot colour outline), when designing you’ll need to ensure your page size will fit into your opus cutter (your D120) so I’d guess around 1100mm page size max. save as PDF x1a with fonts converted to outlines.

import pdf into onyx job editor (I’m using onyx rip centre 11), under the first tab (printer and media, ensure your printer is selected, and also select the cutter to be used, a summacut series in your case I think,
set the media size. go to print tab >print set-up > edit printer settings > de-select the cutter on the printer if it has one, and adjust anything there that you need to.

exit the editing boxes and submit to rip queue.
ensure chose printer is selected, the media matches the media oaded, and that you can’t see the magenta cutline, if you see it there’s a chance you#ve added two or not selected the cutter!

onyx will automatically print the reg marks for the summa and send the cut file to the cut server when you send it to print.

always ensure to feed a little media before cutting as the summa requires this when searching / cutting. when loading the cutter, the second set of numbers must start with a ‘6’ fed towards the front, if you set with a ‘9’, the other end, it will cut upside down!

hope that makes sense?

Hugh

[Stafford Cox]

Exactly as Pane says. The Summa comes with its own software call Summa Cutter Control. This can be used as I plugin or a standalone (I think) and enables you to embed the correct registration marks into the file.

[Adrian Neill]

Hi everyone.

Thank you very much for all that information, that’s really helpful.
I’ll go off and give it a try.

[Peter Johnson]

I think that regardless of what combination of printer/cutter you are using, the principals are the same. I use Coreldraw for artwork and a Graphtec cutter.
You need to keep in mind that your graphics package needs to be able to produce the registration marks your cutter can read. My version of Corel has a plug-in that can create registration marks around a drawing.

Whatever software/cutter combination you are using, the first thing you need to know is what your cutting range is (width/length etc). No point in printing a job and then finding out it’s too big for the cutter to handle.

My whole process now goes like this;

1. In a new Corel file, I rename my first layer to ‘print’. This is where I create my design.
2. I now create an outline (the cut line) for my drawing, but save this on a second layer called ‘cut’.
3. Around the whole design (print AND cut layer) I now add my registration marks and then make them editable (I think this is just some idiosyncrasy of the cutting software). When Corel does this, it creates a third layer just for the registration marks.
4. I now hide the cut layer and then export both the registration and print layer to my print file.

Once printed, I then feed this into the cutter, which then reads the registration marks and contour cuts my prints based on the path lines contained on the cut layer.

Hope this helps, but if a little cloudy, I could explain in more detail if you want.