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Problems with Contour cutting Stickers using my Summa D60 SE
I am having trouble contour cutting graphics on my Summa D60SE using Corel X3 or Adobe CS2 and COCUT Professional. I cannot for the life of me get the cutter to cut the graphic on the cut line. I can creat the EPS file in either software package and send it to COCUT. From there I have tried to use both the OPOS and the X-Axis procedures to get the cutter to cut my loaded graphic. The cutter does recognize the 3mm origin marker and it even jumps to the other X-Axis marker before going crazy cutting some place totally different. I am using a single sheet (A4) with the graphic on it and I am maintaing the correct spaces from the edges along with the 3 inches on top like the book says. I really do not understand the step in the manual that tells you to save the contours when you create the graphic. I thought thats why I purchased COCUT to produce the cut line?? Anyway, when I bring up the graphic in COCUT I add the 3mm markers and put the contour cutline around the design (I was told that I really dont need to include this step by someone). Then I press output and I can see the outline of my design in the preview box. I make sure that my graphic is aligned with the origin on the bottom right in my plotter and when the thing is working correctly it will ask me to set the OPOS sensor over the marker. Here is where things do not seem to work like the manual says because it says that the plotter will automatically seek out the remaining markers and finish the cut by itself. My plotter asks me to define another point and drives itself to the second point along the X Axis. It even lines up perfect on the marker but once I press enter it wacks out. I have tried the settings set to OPOS and I have manually added the X Y distances to no avail. I even tried to cut it in the X Axis mode but the same thing happens. Can anybody help me? Can someone explain the part in the procedure wher I am supposed to only send the contours to the plotter by themselves? I am ready to throw this machine out the window!
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10 Replies
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hi Lenny, I dont know the software or machine, but most print and cut need a colour assigned to the cut line, usually a coulor that will not be in the graphic , (cymk 1.1.1.1 for example)
sorry cant be more help, hang around though someone will come up with an answer,
Peter
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Thanks for the response. I did assign a color to the contour line (Magenta) so that’s not the problem. It’s very frustrating. I found a new substrate that lets to print directly onto a vinyl that can be heat transfered to T-Shirt and it looks really super. I am dying to use it but it needs to be cut out to make it look professional. I have wasted a few meters of the material trying to get it to work.
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If magenta appears in your design then that may be the reason it didn’t work properly, try a colour that is not in the design like Peter suggested. Just make the colour up yourself to be sure.
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I found CoCuts reg mark & contour cutting very hard to deal with.
It’s supposed to take the position reading from the cutter and then move onto the next mark etc and rotate/scale the cut to the marks.
Got it to work once and never figured out how, I was using manual marking though as my cutter didn’t have OPUS.Are you using 2 marks or 3?
Steve
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I have exactly the same impression as you. Yesterday evening I got it to work. Unfortunately I don’t know what I did to get it working? After getting it to work, I made screen shots of all the settings and I documented every step I took. This morning I plan to try it again. I took the advice of everyone recommending that I try to get the graphic to cut in Winplot. I kept getting an error message saying there was no data loaded or something. I don’t know what that was all about. Anyway, I will try it again and see where I stand. I paid a lot of money for COCUT Professional and I don’t want to give up on it without a fight. Once I figure out what I was doing wrong I will post a step by step on the boards. I really would like to thank you and everyone who helped me with my problem.
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Hi
for the summs cutters download WinPlot from the summa site its free & you’ll be up and cutting as soon as its loadedKev
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We’ve also had this problem Lenny. Have you tried flatteneing the image before putting on the contour? That was a problem we had.
Also did you change colour setups during art? I.e from CMYK to RGB?
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I think I have found the solution but I have not had a chance to actually test the theory. What I did was to take the graphic and export it to COCUT. Then I produced a contour cut line around the image in COCUT. I then proceeded to delete the graphic so only the cutline remained. I then copied this and went back to Corel and pasted it into the image. It lined up perfectly. Then I deleted the graphic again and I was left with a cutline outline and the markers. I saved this file and sent it back to COCUT for cutting. I tested this idea by producing a rectangle in Corel and did exactlly what I just told you. When I sent this to the plotter it worked. I just have not had time to try the idea with a real piece of artwork. I know that smebody is going to come up with a way to put the perfect cutline around the graphic with minimal work but I have not been able to figure that out yet so my plan may seem rather stupid to someone with more knowledge of Corel then I have. The bottom line is it works for me. In addition to all this you have to make sure you load in the exact X-Axis and Y-Axis dimensions when working with the Summa D60 SE otherwise the cut will be off. Once again, I know that someone with more experience working with the plotter will tell me that I can use the align mode without OPOS to make the cut without adding the dimensions but I have not figured out how to make that work correctly either. When I finally get this all worked out I plan to post something explaining how I made it work. I am very close. If this helps anyone or inspires someone to jump in and try to solve this issue then I will be happy because I think that everyone is experiencing some degree of the problem. I sent e-mails to Eurosystems (the company responsible for servicing COCUT) but they do not respond. I think the believe that I m not competent enough to warrent a true explanition because I have addressed the issue step by step from Corel to COCUT and every issue I encountered along the way. Who knows, maybe the questions I asked will require a complete volume of work.
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Hi Lenny
Do you have Corel X3?
If so then there is a really neat feature for creating a cutline around a graphic providing that it is a vector.It’s under Effects/Create Boundary.
I use it all the time for creating lines, we are using Versaworks ourself but I’m sure that the principle is the same.Tim
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OK I finally got it working but I still have a problem with the cut not lining up on the Y Axis. I have found that when you use A4 or letter size material the Summa D60SE is very touchy with the positioning of the markers. If you dont place the markers correctly on the page it will drive you crazy. It will even eject the material when you use autoload to set the markers. That was my first problem. My second problem was the fact that I was not sending the EPS file to COCUT. I outlined the graphic and deleted the image and just sent the cutlines to COCUT right from Corel. I guess because it was not a EPS file it got confused and started cutting whereever it wanted to. I got around this by manualkly opening COCUT and importing the Cut line file. This worked every time. Now I only have one problem left! My cut lines up perfect on the X-axis but is off by 1mm on the Y-axis. So far I have not been able to correct this. It is almost as if the Y-Axis setting is unresponsive to change. I measured and remeasured, I went into the Summa cutter control panel and tried changing the distances in the OPOS setup and nothing changes? I know that I measured correctly from the markers but it still is off bu 1 mm. I have read the manual and there is a calibration feature but it does not recommend using it unless all else fails. Does anybody have an idea? Thanks for all the help so far. The tiip about using the boundraies worked well as did the last reply about the sequence for sending the cut lines to the cutter. Now we just need to put our heads together one more time and figure out how to correct this Y-Axis alignment issue and I will be home free! Thaks again to everone for your help.
PS I think ths board is super! I just signed up to become a gold member.Lenny
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