I am getting incomplete cuts…not random though

[Adam McGuire]

This could be a number of things….I’ll go through the things I found out when my Roland did something similar….

1. If the blade offset is set incorrectly on the plotter, it will think it’s in one position when in fact it’s in a slightly different position.
2. The bearings in your blade holder may be worn, all depends on age of machine and it’s usage. Although, I bought a new blade holder for about £90+ vat and the old one was fine as I found out later!
3. The steel drive cables on my Roland were loose. (The tension wasn’t right). I found this out after a trip to Bristol to Roland’s service centre.

Hope this helps?

Adam

[Andy Taylor]

My guess is its offset related as it was cutting with the old blade…….. badly. But not predictably like it is now.

However I am using Roland blades which say they are 45 degree and need a 0.250 offset. The thing is last blade I purchased was for fine work and I am sure I had to alter the offset from the 45 degree blade I had in there.

But yes I guess its now trial and error.

cheers for reply

[Martin Pearson]

If it was cutting with an old blade and you have changed the blade then it may well be that you have set the blade up incorrectly, have you checked the blade isn’t damaged at all? I know it shouldn’t be but it wouldn’t hurt to have a look at it under a magnifying glass.

There are other things that could be checked but you have a few things to be going on with.

[Andy Taylor]

quote Martin:

If it was cutting with an old blade and you have changed the blade then it may well be that you have set the blade up incorrectly, have you checked the blade isn’t damaged at all? I know it shouldn’t be but it wouldn’t hurt to have a look at it under a magnifying glass.

There are other things that could be checked but you have a few things to be going on with.

I have replaced and tried 3 blades and tried a few offsets.

I have checked out the Roland Blades I am using and they are also sold for the GCC range so I have the right blades.

I am supposed to be using 45 degree blades with .25 offset as far as I can make out.

I have discounted sticking blades etc as its consistant.

It looks software related but its corel draw so cant see what is causing it.

I usually use Corel for printing and its still printing fine.

[Chris Wool]

idea

if the letter edges are on the border of the plot area it may miss bits of a letter.
watch the knife holder when it misses a bit does it raise a lower again as its doing one loop.

chris

[Martin Pearson]

Andy, as far as I know the offset will only affect how the plotter cuts corners and won’t have any effect on how a whole line is cut.
If the machine is not cutting a whole line on a letter or not cutting it properly then I would have thought that was hardware related rather than software related. Thats why I said to make sure you had set the blade up correctly in the holder, to much of the tip showing can be just as bad as not enough but would give different results. What sort of condition is the cutting strip in ?

Maybe someone else could help if you posted a picture of the problem you are having, I know this has helped people with cutting problems in the past.

[Earl Smith]

I´m surprised nobody has said to ring Harry at Edward Mathias. If he cant sort your problem out then you will need to buy a new cutter…..
Earl

[Karl Williams]

quote Earl Smith:

I´m surprised nobody has said to ring Harry at Edward Mathias. If he cant sort your problem out then you will need to buy a new cutter…..
Earl

By the time Harry’s finished talking your cutter will be out of date anyway………Yes, he can talk for quite a while. 😀

[Lee Attewell]

You’ve got the same problem I had with my GCC plotter Andy.

It’s something to do with the hardware and the down force your plotter applies to parts of your ripped cut.

I had to set my blade depth to "really deep" basically so the lightest part of the cut still got through the vinyl.

Needless to say, now I have a Roland cutter, and I’ve never had the same problem.

I was using Signwizard, but I was still having exactly the same problem when I used Illustrator to cut the same file.

Have you tried updating your firmware? That might help mate.

[Colin Crow]

If you have eliminated the blade then it is worth looking at the cutting strip. Any nicks or wear in parts of the strip will result in unequal pressure in parts of the cut and if these coincide with a line on the x axis then this will not cut through. You can usually reverse a cutting strip to check to see if this is the problem.

Colin