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Pre feed vinyl on GX300 cutter – help please?
Hi
Hope your all enjoying the summer sun and not inside working through it all.
I’ve just replaced my old Summa cutter with a Roland GX-300, having a few problems but that’s mainly Signlabs.
However I can not get the GX to automatically pre feed vinyl before cutting.
On my Summa it would pre feed a quantity of vinyl equal to the width, cut upto that point then pre feed again. This stopped the cutter trying to pull the vinyl off the roll at cutting speed and didn’t require any action from me.Can this or similar be done on the roland cutter?
I know there is an area function but that seems to be something that you have to do as part of the loading process and you also need to know the length of the cut.I’ve also found a pre feed box in signlabs Roland driver which pre feeds a set amount out but again that would need to be altered every time, unless you can set it to the job cut length + a bit.
So if you’ve got any ideas please let me know.
Steve
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9 Replies
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We’re having exactly the same problem. We’ve just taken out our 18 year old SummaPro D1300 and replaced it with a GX500 and it’s ruining a lot of vinyl because of this ‘problem’.
Roland said to lower the up-speed but that only solves the problem if it pulls on the roll as it ‘up-feeds’. If it’s cutting at normal speed it still pulls the vinyl and stalls the motors ruining the vinyl and wasting our time.
I’m keen to hear of the solution as we’re on the verge of re-instating the Summa again and handing the GX500 back to Roland
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It does seem ridiculous that a company with the quality and reputation of Roland would miss this basic function from what is a top end cutter.
A friend who is a sign maker had the old GX300, CX?, and he had to hand feed the vinyl before cutting but his new cheap cutter does the auto feed!I’ve got round this at the moment by setting a 1m pre feed in the signlabs cutter driver, I think it’s under the plotter options but I’ll check.
Are you cutting from sign labs?
Also the Roland windows driver has the option to prefeed, you go into the printer preferences and then the last tab and tick prefeed. This doesn’t do anything in signlabs though.I’m using signlabs vinyl pro 8.1
Steve
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Steve, I’m with you on this one as this is a top-end machine and the basic function to pre-feed the vinyl should be standard IMO. It may be possible on the Roland software but we use Easysign to output and don’t want to clutter the system with other output files, not to mention the time to export/import etc.
It seems the function has to be within the plotter firmware, as it is on the Summa but we can’t find any menu or mention of this in the handbook.
The plotter has only been in a couple of weeks and already it’s destroyed a colossal amount of materials.
We are regularly plotting in excess of 6m at a time so to hand feed that quantity and guess if we’ve got it right isn’t a preferred option.
Maybe we’ve been spoiled with the Summa machines. We only replaced the Summa as it’s getting old and we rely heavily on it.
I’m waiting on a reply from Roland so i’ll let you know what they say.
Donald
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Let me know if you get a reply, I asked the question in the Roland forum and not one single reply!
Steve
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We tried output as a printer and there’s an option in the software to feed a pre-determined amount of vinyl before the plot starts. This is in Easysign, unsure if your software will have the same. This means having to enter the right figure every time which isn’t ideal.
Problem we now have is the plotter sometimes cuts twice despite only showing 1 cut in the software. Only occasionally though!
Can’t see an easy answer to the problem unfortunately. Roland tell me the next plotter in the range has the pre-feed as standard but not the GX300 & GX500!
Why would they have such an essential feature only on the most expensive plotter? Come on Roland, you can do better than this…!
Had I known this beforehand I wouldn’t have bought a Roland plotter to be honest.
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That sounds the same as the prefeed in signlabs plotter driver, I have mine set to 1m which covers the little jobs.
I’ll not hold my breath for a firmware update on the GX300, bit strange that know one else has picked up on this though.
Steve
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Roland tell me the GX500 can’t be upgraded with the feature. Apparently the earlier models had this feature but it was removed from the smaller machines years ago.
Perhaps someone who has one of the older plotters can confirm?
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Steve,
Roland are fully aware of the problem now and I have also directed them to this thread. With us and yourself querying the issue I hope they decide to add the pre-feed feature on all their plotters. This may lead to a firmware upgrade being available in the future but that’s just my opinion.
It’s a pity that such a simple oversight puts their plotters so far down the list because their other products, certainly the ones we have bought in the past, are otherwise excellent machines.
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Good to hear, it should only be a firmware thing as the steppers and sensors are already there, they just do whatever they are told to do, if there is any issue it’d probably be with memory capacity.
Steve
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