Signlab 7.1 and Camm1 Pro problems

[Rod Young]

You’ve provided good details. I’ve queried Frank to see if he can come in and provide you with some advice. He would be the expert you want to help resolve this.

Regards,

Rod at CADlink

[Gavin MacMillan]

Cheers Rod, I was begining to think that I had confused everyone. My next move was Cadlink so I’ll wait and see if Frank posts here.

Ta

Gavin

[Rod Young]

quote Gavin MacMillan:

Just installed signlab 7.1 and am delighted with the new features. Unfortunately I can’t get it configured properly to our plotter Camm1 pro (cx300). It will cutting but there are 2 issues:

1: I’ve selected lpt1 (from both the cut menu and the options in the cut preview), but when you try and cut the next part this has reverted to ‘external dll’ (I have no idea what this means) and you need to choose lpt1 again each time you want to send something through. Arghhh!

2: If that wasn’t bad enough, even when it is cutting, there is a pause from the time you click the scissors to when it starts feeding and when it does start (its only a couple of second pause) it is very slow you feed. In our old version of this software this was almost instant, allowing you to set up your next cut run.

To try and fix this I’ve downloaded what I think is the latest driver and installed it. Apart from that I am all out of ideas – any suggestion very much welcomed!

Gavin

Hold up. I thought to check the Knowledge Base of articles on the CADlink site. I did a search for "camm" and found the following article. Does this sound like your issue?

http://www.cadlink.com/support_train/te … hp?tn=1474

With respect to setting the port, let me confirm that I am understanding you.

1. From the Cut menu, you go Plotting Defaults to open the Plot dialog.
2. Then you click Setup to open Plotter Setup.
3. On the Port tab, you have set Port Location to LPT1, but this keeps resetting to "external dll" for some reason.
4. And this is particularly frustrating because you click the scissors (Cut icon, same as going Cut menu >> Plot) and find that job is not being sent to the correct port?

Correct?

Rod at CADlink

[Gavin MacMillan]

Yes and no.

After setting the port and clicking the scissors you end up in the cut preview window. From here to can go into the settings (top left) and this will show thats its already reverted to ‘external dll’

The issue on the website is not quite what were getting. The cutter is actually cutting at full speed, but the ‘bytes sent’ window is staying for way longer than it used to. The details used to go to the plotter in a matter of seconds (I’ve just checked with the guy who runs the plotter and he reckons even on a big run it would only appear for 2/3 seconds) I have tried the dos tick box as I’m sure we had the problem detailed a few years back and this solved it.

Funnily, this is actually how it used to work but since a couple of years ago when we upgraded to SL7 and the Camm1 Pro the job has always just sent in the blink of an eye. I know this may seem to be picking hairs, but the time it takes for the ‘bytes sent’ window to dissapear is a total pain and slows everything up.

Hope this is clear – I’m confusing myself typing it!

Gavin

[Frank Droog]

Gavin.
If your Signlab 71 has a production date after july 12 2006, you should be able to change the port to parrallel or serial or usb001 or external dll with the CX driver.

OR.
You can install the Roland CM 300 driver as it has no USB.
You can use allmost any of Rolands drivers to cut to any Roland machine.
The only differance between the machines and the drivers are default Page sizes and Velocitys.

The CX driver is differ ant in that it has a DLL to try to retrieve Page Size via USB from the CX cutter. Additionally, our DLL has to load another DLL supplied by Roland to actually talk to the machine. That is why the port location is called Externall DLL as our driver needs to talk to a another DLL that actually talks to the device. Yes , we need a better name for it.

I would install and use the CM 300 driver for LPT1.
The machines are basically the same.
This is probably better than spending time and effort trying do download and intall a version of Signlab after July 12 2006

Frank at Cadlink.

[Gavin MacMillan]

Hi Frank,

Production date is Aug 2nd 2006. The issue is after I set it to the correct port it revert back to externel dll straight away.

I’m just starting everything again. For some weird reason the ploter is showing in the printers window – I’m fairly sure this never happened before?

Will try the cm driver instead as we don’t need the page size info and we are not connecting with usb – is this correct?

Thanks for your time on this

Gavin

[Gavin MacMillan]

I’m home now and de-stressed!

I think I had it at the end but will do a couple of tests tomorrow. There is a 3-4 second pause before it start sending the info, but then it goes seems to go at the previous speed. Also the port is now staying at lpt1 thanks to the new driver.

Cheers for the advice, hopefully I wont be adding to this thread tomorrow!

Gavin

[Scott.Evans]

i have a roland gx 24 and have installed sign lab 7.1 about 2 weeks ago.

problem polling the plotting defaults (width height of media loaded)

when i set my port to com1 it keeps jumping back to extenll .dll

i can cut of the program fine but when trying to get media size from cutter wont work.

i can find the media size of roland cut studio to.

any help or advice would be great

[Gavin MacMillan]

Hi Scott, the info Fred gives about solved all our problems with this setup. We don’t use the poll function though and just check the display on the machine for available width. If you need to use that function this info wont work as from re-reading the thread we changed drivers to one that doesn’t support this function at all. Not much help I’m afraid!

G

[Peter Normington]

I have an issue also, with the poll function from the cut preview window.
although on my mimaki, it locks up signlab when trying to poll
But I find it will return the size ok if I go via the plotting default/setup tab

Peter

[Frank Droog]

Peter.
What is your production date as found in Help/About?

Second.
When are you getting this lockup.
Are you polling the plotter in the Cut/Preview state immediatly befor cutting a job, or immediatly after cutting a job?

I found and fixed an issue with polling the plotter immediatly after cutting but still in the cut preview state.

The driver has a DLL. From Signlab 2.2 to Signlab 6, Signlab unloaded the driver DLL after cutting. In Signlab 7 , with the new cut preview state, it was still unloading the DLL after cutting. So polling the plotter after cutting caused an error as the DLL was unloaded.
I made a fix so that it would ReLoad the DLL if interrogating after cutting.

I believe this was fixed around sept/oct 2006 but would have to llok it up.

We have an CG-FX here, so it should be easy to fix your problem with exact details of how you reproduce the problem.
frank at cadlink.

[Peter Normington]

Frank
April 3rd
was the production date.
I had Bernhard round to fix the a fault recently ( it think you know about it)
Anyway the polling problem is when I go Cut-Plot and poll from the preview, I get a lock up. poll before cutting (dont know why I would poll after? (plotter set to remote first)

not always but mostly,
So I poll from the plotting default tabs take a few seconds to respond but works ok.

Peter

[Scott.Evans]

same here peter.

apr 3 2007 my sign labs production date.

its annoying to because iam so use to polling the sizes of cut studio and i pay £1500 for this sign lab 7.1 and its not working properly.

another thing if you could help is:
how do you turn from (inch) (mm)

thanks need to solve this problem asp

[Peter Normington]

left click on the ruler, or do it in preferences

Peter

[Alan Drury]

Peter, there is a build 10 for SL now, might be worth trying that to see if it solves your problem.
Alan

[Chris Wool]

come on SL i can remember dos programs polling plotters in the blink of a eye, very bad advert for you.

chris

[Scott.Evans]

all that iam getting of cad link and sign master is that there a fault with my ports!!!

but it works fine with cut studio and win pc sign witch cost little more than £100

bad service maybe i should of opted for flexi sign

[Scott.Evans]

solved it!
it was that the cutter was set to usb instead of serial
😀

[Rod Young]

quote scott evans_21:

when i set my port to com1 it keeps jumping back to extenll .dll

it was that the cutter was set to usb instead of serial

I wouldn’t have though that the computer ports were damaged in any way. Did you determine why the port setting was switching from COM1 to extern .dll ?

Regards,

Rod at CADlink

[Peter Normington]

quote Alan Drury:

Peter, there is a build 10 for SL now, might be worth trying that to see if it solves your problem.
Alan

Thanks alan just updated, seems to have solved the problem, nhavnt tried the half-cut yet though

Peter

[Peter Normington]

sorry double post

Peter