is there a better way of making plotter cut smoother?

[Warren Beard]

Hi James

I’m not sure why they do that but I think it might have something to do with the tracking, I think (and it is just a theory of mine) that by doing it this way is will have better tracking over a longer distance.

otherwise I have no idea or answers for you, sorry :lol1:

[Hugh Potter]

it’s all to do with the cut path, it is with corel>winplot>summa anyways,

if i draw a line from left to right, it will cut that line from left to right, and vice versa, i do incorporate some thought into the drawing, but mainly at the end when adding weeding cut lines through swathes of text etc, when i do weeding lines through half a dozen lines of text, i imagine the plotter running thru them, simply start at one end of the text, draw your line to the end, then do the same, but starting at the end where you now are, this way the cuter will go along the line, and move only a short distance to the next cutline, rather than spewing 10ft of vinyl back out, to go back to the start, same goes with lines i put around clustered artwork, start at the start of the vinyl, and work towards where the job finishes, the cutter follows, and it means you don’t have to feed out loads to get to the end position.

the other time i does it, for eg, is if you duplicate a cut path (be it a logo or whatever) within the design, imagine, if you will, you draw a star, you then move on to doing other parts of the design, then at the end, you duplicate and place stars all over the design, it will always cut the starts in order, and i think i’m correct in saying, that it will cut all of them, before going back to the other artwork,

i’ve given it some thought previously, can ya tell 😮

[Peter Dee]

James, in Signlab you get the choice of cutting items across the roll vertically, horizontally, nearest or database.
You can preview each choice to see which is best for the application.
One of the benefits of a dedicated sign program I guess.

[James Martin]

cheers guys

Ye, there may be a good reason for it, like if it was checking you had enough media for the job, or for tracking purposes.

In my limited experience I think its just doing it in the order its been laid out.

I dont have time right now to study which parts are getting done first, (just trying to get this finished) but its a shocking sometimes the extra running about those blades and rollers have to go through. you feel like telling it to have a think before it starts, (not that I’m Mr Organized myself).

I just thought there might have been a refresh function in illustrator or the cutting software that would scan and re-assign the order in a left to right way.

😀

Probably hit the nail there Peter!

[Martin Pearson]

James you could always try re-writing the source code for the cutting program so it cuts as you would like it to :lol1: :lol1:

[Peter Mindham]

In signblazer you can choose to have least blade movements or least vinyl movements. Never bothered to change it, just left it on least vinyl movements, keeps tracking better I would think on that setting

Peter

[Martin Pearson]

Peter, just out of interest I wonder what the difference between the two is and the reasons for it.
I would have thought that it would be difficult to notice any difference because surely the two are related, the vinyl has to move for the blade to cut as the blade only moves left and right.