problems running plotter through lap top with usb conveter

[Marcella Ross]

Hi,

I have just connected my plotter with a serial/usb converter. Firstly check that the serial cable is suitable for use on a plotter. A standard serial may have reversed pins and therefore will not run a plotter. There’s no way of knowing by looking at it, you would just have to buy a serial from a plotter supplier to ensure it’s correct. Secondly, did you run and install a driver for your usb converter?

Marcella 😀

[nick cope]

thanks marcella
,ive tried downloading the drivers for the usb ,but it still wont work through my laptop , do you thing its possible to get a different plotter cable so it will fit into my laptop ,
greetings from spain
nick

[Marcella Ross]

I don’t know anything about your specific plotter but did you buy it from a supplier? If it’s been a private purchase then perhaps finding a supplier of these plotters is your answer. You get 25 pin and 9 pin serial connections, they will be able to sort you out with the correct type for your plotter and laptop.

[Martin Pearson]

Are you sure your laptop has a serial port? A lot of laptops especially newer ones don’t have a serial port at all and what you think is a serial port on the back of your laptop is quite possibly an external monitor port.

as for setting up via USB there have been a few post just lateley about people having trouble with PCUT machines via USB, try doing a search on the boards as you may find someone has already answered this question

[nick cope]

thanks martin,
for your help iam now running it through my desk top , i can see you have great knowlege ,in all field so i have a couple more questions if you or anybody can help me out
1,iam buying image perfect and avery vinyl is this a good vinyl to use?
2,how long does a cutting blade last?
3,ive started cutting a few letters and it catches sometimes on one of the letters ,is there something i can do to rectify this,
4,when its cut the letters afterwards i can see a faint line going over the letters from where the cutting blade has gone across them, is this normal or is it me not knowing how to use the cutter properly,

it will be a great help , as iam eager to learn as much as i can
grettings from sunny spain
nick :lol1:

[Martin Pearson]

Nick, sorry you are wrong, I don’t have a great knowledge in all Fields, I’m one of those dangerous sorts that knows a little about everything and nothing about everything.

As for your questions.

1/ Avery are a major manufacturer of vinyl so yes their vinyls are good but a lot of it is down to what you find best to work with. Get some samples from other suppliers and try other makes of vinyl and then try and stick with what you find to be best for you.

2/ How long is a piece of string? There are so many factors that govern how long a blade will last. Its down to things like what materials are you plotting, reflectives and metalics will blunt blades quicker than normal cast or callendered vinyl. Keeping your vinyl clean will help to prolong blade life as dirt and dust on the surface will shorten the blade life.

3/ If this happens mainly with small text then try slowing down the speed that you are cutting and if your plotter has a tangiential mode use this as it will cut small text and graphics better.

4/Make sure the vinyl is sitting flat against the cutting strip and the cutting strip is in good order and that you have got the vinyl to track properly. It sounds like the vinyl is bowing slightly between the rollers lifting it slightly and allowing the blade to mark the vinyl as it moves between cuts.

[nick cope]

thanks for responding so fast, all your answers made sence, and its cleared
all of my questions, iam using avery and image perfect vinyl through a company spandex , because they have a outlet in spain ,and iam really finding it hard to find other suppliers in spain , and my spainish isnt great,
so ive been looking on the forum and the abose 2 vinyl makes were mentioned, but if you could give me a few names of good vinyl makes, i would be gratefull ,iam doing mainly work on bars >E.g windows , outside bar
banners, A-board menus,
thanks and greetins from spain

[Warren Beard]

Hi Nick (and welcome to the boards)

I don’t want to hi-jack this thread but this questions might help both of us.

What is the difference between a USB or serial connection, I mean in performance wise and not what they look like. I have a Summa and it came with both leads, I simply wanted to use the USB lead so I connected it and have never had any problems.

So what are the benefits / negatives to both ?

Cheers

Warren

[nick cope]

,
HOLA WARREN ,thanks for the welcome

they are just differant interfaces/connections to your system.
I carn’t give you the specs off the top of my head but in short: Serial/and parrallel are old hat now, slow, and should be avoided if you have a choice.
USB is the most common, very user friendly and the most widely supported, also much faster than serial/parallel
Firewire is the new boy! ultra fast! leaves USB for dust but is not as widely available and it’s benefits are only felt when large files and data are needed to be transfered fast!ie: video editing
Whatch out for an improved USB connection, much quicker than the original and very creatively called USB2
IT JUST DEPENDS WHAT YOU NEED IT FOR

Just remember the quicker Firewire won’t be any faster if the connected hardware doesn’t use it’s potential.
At the moment buying firewire periferals will probably cost you more. Great if you need the speed! nick
greetings from spain (IS THIS THE ANSWER YOU NEEDED???)

[Martin Pearson]

Warren a lot of people will tell you now that the only advantage of serial is if you have a spare serial port you want to use up.

Serial was better over distance than USB at one point and less likely to lose information. I think one of the reasons people have had problems with using USB with laptops may be down to them using an older laptop which only supported USB 1.1.

USB is faster than serial and with USB 2 which most computers have serial is being phased out pretty much altogether, a lot of laptops haven’t had a serial connection for some time now and a lot of new desktop machines have phased out serial as well. It is the same with connection devices where a lot of them now are USB only with no support for serial.

USB is hot plugable which means you don’t need to shut the computer down to connect a device as you would have had to with serial.

There’s something to get you started, if your plotter is working OK on USB then there would be no advantage to switching.

[Warren Beard]

Hi Guys

Thanks for that, and yes it answers the question. I know aabout USB but never really knew much about serial and thought I might be missing out on something.

I’ll stick to my USB as it all works 100%

Thanks

Warren

[nick cope]

hi ,
ive just looked at my rollers on my plotter and one of them isnt sitting aswell
as the other 2 and is causeing the vinyl to slip , but if i put a little pressure ,on the roller it stops , has anyone got any ideas ,on how to repair it
.its raining in spain,
nick

[Justin Williams]

quote nick cope:

hi ,
ive just looked at my rollers on my plotter and one of them isnt sitting aswell
as the other 2 and is causeing the vinyl to slip , but if i put a little pressure ,on the roller it stops , has anyone got any ideas ,on how to repair it
.its raining in spain,
nick

Hi nick, i two have a redsail plotter (Welcome to the club), a couple of things you will find on your rollers some small brass screws at the back of the black handles that you use to move your rollers if you twist these it will alter the pressure that holds the vinyl, that should solve you problem.

Also never be able to use my plotter with my laptop either just doesn’t seem to like usb.

We use flexisign to do all our design them export them as AI files or HPGL files,

if you need any more help please find my contact details in the profiles section, only too happy to help you, as i no how much hair i lost when we got ours (Am bald now)

cheers

justin

mod-edit-2 admin@uksignboards.com

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[Martin Pearson]

Justin I would appriciate it if you could edit your last post. Encouraging people to buy and use illegal software is not what this forum is all about and although I am no longer really in the sign industry find posts like that offensive.

[Justin Williams]

quote martin:

Justin I would appriciate it if you could edit your last post. Encouraging people to buy and use illegal software is not what this forum is all about and although I am no longer really in the sign industry find posts like that offensive.

Sorry if you feel that way martin, but are we not here to help fellow sign makers the best we can, and its not illegal ebay would ban it if this was the case.

[Martin Pearson]

Justin as far as helping each other goes I am all for helping people to avoid some of the mistakes I made. As for the software I think we both know that any copy of a program worth thousands of pounds being sold for a tenner is not a legal copy. Ebay do take software off the auctions from time to time but they know a lot of software sold is not legal and choose to ignore a lot of it.

[Ashley Filmer]

My experiences with serial and USB

My plotter is a serial plotter, the cable which came with it is 2 way on the PC end with both (I think) 9 and 25 pin connectors, however, to get it to work with the PC, it came with an extra patch lead for the 9 pin connector which changed some of the wires around before it goes into the computer.

I have attempted to get it to work of USB converters and USB hubs with serial outputs and every now and then, it throws a wobbly and will attempt to run off a few hundred metres of my finest vinyl half way around an output 😮 🙁

I had to give up on the USB conversion in the end and press another PC into service to do the outputting off its RS232 port.

IMO If your laptop doesn’t support a serial bus, then you need to either go and buy one which does, or get a plotter with USB support.

Ta Ash

[nick cope]

thanks for everyones help!

iam trying to maxamise the use of 60cm wide vinyl, but when i import a large design onto a 60cm template my redsail plotter devides it into several cutting panels ,where i would like it to be cut as one panel ,does anyone know how to remove these panels :lol1:

[Martin Pearson]

Nick, what software are you using to actually cut your vinyl? You should be able to either change the paper size in your design software or in the software you use to plot change the width of the vinyl.

[Ashley Filmer]

quote nick cope:

thanks for everyones help!

iam trying to maxamise the use of 60cm wide vinyl, but when i import a large design onto a 60cm template my redsail plotter devides it into several cutting panels ,where i would like it to be cut as one panel ,does anyone know how to remove these panels :lol1:

If the maximum plotting area of your plotter is 570mm wide, then you are stuffed.

I use a small format plotter which takes 305mm wide vinyl, but the max plotting width is 265mm before its into overtravel

I just make my drawing area no bigger than this, and its not a problem (fine for what I do anyway and it keeps me away from the general signwriting side of things :lol1: )

My plotter parameters can be set when I go into the plotter configuration. this doesn’t have anything to do with drawing area btw

[Justin Williams]

quote nick cope:

thanks for everyones help!

iam trying to maxamise the use of 60cm wide vinyl, but when i import a large design onto a 60cm template my redsail plotter devides it into several cutting panels ,where i would like it to be cut as one panel ,does anyone know how to remove these panels :lol1:

Once in the plotter software that your useing you should see a option on the top bar that reads system, go into this and you can resize your sheet to make it the correct size for what your cutting
cheers
jus

[nick cope]

iam using winPCsign and my redsail plotter is 1100mm wide,
iam still having problems ajusting the size of the template so that i dont get cutting panels on them, iam positive iam doing something wrong
nick

[Ashley Filmer]

quote nick cope:

iam using winPCsign and my redsail plotter is 1100mm wide,
iam still having problems ajusting the size of the template so that i dont get cutting panels on them, iam positive iam doing something wrong
nick

There must be a parameter in the plotter setup where you can state the width of the media if this is the case.

[Justin Williams]

quote nick cope:

iam using winPCsign and my redsail plotter is 1100mm wide,
iam still having problems ajusting the size of the template so that i dont get cutting panels on them, iam positive iam doing something wrong
nick

have you found the system button at the top of the screen on winpc??

[nick cope]

hi print666
no mate i cant find the button ,are you posotive its on winpcsign

and can you tell me if this is a good package to use or do you recomend any
cheers
sunny spain greeting

[Justin Williams]

quote nick cope:

hi print666
no mate i cant find the button ,are you posotive its on winpcsign

and can you tell me if this is a good package to use or do you recomend any
cheers
sunny spain greeting

Soz nick, its artcut we’ve got not winpc we got winpc with ours but never used it, so we picked up a copy of flexisign, we design everything in that then simply export out as a AI or HPGL file into artcut, a hell of a lot easier.

mod-edit-4 admin@uksignboards.com

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[Martin Pearson]

Nick have you tried changing the settings in the drop down setting menu? At the top of the screen try selecting "settings" on the screen that apears try the second tab along which says units

[nick cope]

hi martin
found it and it says sign page WIDTH 59.99988 HEIGHT59.99988
do i ajust these , and by doing so will this eliminate the
cutting panels
once again , you help is well thought of
regards nick

[Martin Pearson]

Nick sorry I have no idea, I dont use that software myself, I use something called inspire pro, might be worth you trying to change those settings to see if it still wants to cut more than one panel

[nick cope]

so i select my page settings 20inches length and 50inches high, and on my screen i have a template which i presume is my vinyl size , then i import my logo and its on the screen , then i stretch the logo to fill the template ,i go on cutting panel and my template has been cut up into 4 sections,
what i think but iam not sure about is ,that i dont have to fill all the tewmplate or am i completely wrong
nick

[Robert Lambie]

quote print666:

quote martin:

Justin I would appriciate it if you could edit your last post. Encouraging people to buy and use illegal software is not what this forum is all about and although I am no longer really in the sign industry find posts like that offensive.

Sorry if you feel that way martin, but are we not here to help fellow sign makers the best we can, and its not illegal ebay would ban it if this was the case.

It is NOT legal to sell or run a business using pirate software.
In my opinion Ebay only encourages piracy and junk to be sold to unsuspecting customers.

This kind of advice/help only helps more cowboys get into our industry.

Please refrain from encouraging people to purchase any illegal Software via uksignboards.com

Persistant posts made in this fashion will be edited and may lead to your registration being deactivated without prior notice.

.

[nick cope]

quote Robert Lambie:

quote print666:

quote martin:

Justin I would appriciate it if you could edit your last post. Encouraging people to buy and use illegal software is not what this forum is all about and although I am no longer really in the sign industry find posts like that offensive.

Sorry if you feel that way martin, but are we not here to help fellow sign makers the best we can, and its not illegal ebay would ban it if this was the case.

It is NOT legal to sell or run a business using pirate software.
In my opinion Ebay only encourages piracy and junk to be sold to unsuspecting customers.

This kind of advice/help only helps more cowboys get into our industry.

Please refrain from encouraging people to purchase any illegal Software via uksignboards.com

Persistant posts made in this fashion will be edited and may lead to your registration being deactivated without prior notice.

.

as a ebay seller for 3 years ,and i have made a good business out of it , i wouldnt say ebay encourages piracy , but is unable to deal with
the mass amount of items listed everyday , only since december has ebay
started cleaning its auction up , and they have done a really good job, being involved in the ebay community , there is now a massive change
items are now listed a day later so the ebay tradeing standards can check each advert ,also there is a limit to the number of items you can sell if these articles are in the counterfitting list,
so in general there is alot of good people on ebay ,who want to make an honest living , and its hard work like everything

i dont think print666 meant to cause a stir , he was just trying to be helpfull, honesty counts for nothing sometimes
but i fully understand your policys and where your coming from and hope
you dont retract his membership
regards to all from spain
nick

[Martin Pearson]

Nick, I am sorry but I can’t see how suggesting someone buys and uses pirate software which is illegal and could cost you an extremely large fine and possible imprisonment if you are using it to run a business can be helpful at all.

[nick cope]

quote martin:

Nick, I am sorry but I can’t see how suggesting someone buys and uses pirate software which is illegal and could cost you an extremely large fine and possible imprisonment if you are using it to run a business can be helpful at all.

Well , lets end this topic here , iam more intrested in setting myself up and
need the help of everyone on this forum , pirateing has been around as long as blackbeard , some people accept it , some dont .
BUENAS DIAS .nick

[Colin Russon]

winpcsign has a parameter in the cutting panel that sets the material size. This material size needs to be set to approx 10% higher than the sign height. This will then remove the ’tiles’.

For USB and serial questions, they are both simply communication methods, USB is the latest method and is the better to use if possible but Serial or RS232 is ok aswell. As long as the serial port is set up correctly then you will not have problems.

For those who are using USB to serial converters on cutting plotters you will run into trouble unless you use a good quality FTDI compliant converter. The lower cost converters are not ‘true’ serial signal converters so they can get data mixed up and that is why the serial cutters sometimes go haywire.

Hope this helps….

[Colin Russon]

quote nick cope:

hi ,my names nick
and ive just bought a redsail plotter but when it arrived the lead didnt have the right serial connection for my lap top so i bought a usb converter
and it still dosnt work ,iam using winpcsign
and its driving me mad , can anybody give me any advise on where iam going wrong or how i can rectify the problem , i live in spain and its so hard to get any advise
thanks

Nick,

Are you still having problems?