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  • Thinking of changing from Roland to Summa. Your thougts?

    Posted by Josephf on November 5, 2011 at 1:37 am

    Hi I have used the Roland GX 24 for my small sticker supplies Business. Its been brilliant and with cut studio it allows me to cut stickers very quickly. In saying this I also print colour stickers. I have not had much luck contour cutting accurately up to 1.2m even though I think I have mastered this cutter and I struggle to cut perfect round stickers around the round sticker design thats been printed. I have printed and contour cut about 50 metres of material so I think I do have a great understanding of this machine. Anyway I use about 640mm width vinyl and I only print stickers at about 540mm in width and want to maximize the use of materials by printing about 620mm. Throwing out that 3 or 4 inches in material and laminate starts to add up.

    So I am thinking of purchasing a Summa D75. My question is simple and if someone has used both and can reply that would be great. How difficult is it adding the contour cutting registration marks for a Summa. What would the work flow be like?

    I use Illustrator. With the GX 24 all I do is make the image add the registration marks hide the contour cutting lines and print away. When ready just show the contour lines in illustrator and via the cutstudio plugin i move into the cut studio software feed media, place the round reg marks identically over the white cutting strip and start cutting the contour lines.

    Any thoughts? It’s a new process I need to learn but I want to purchase a machine that can contour cut near perfect shapes as required.

    Thank You

    Joe

    Josephf replied 12 years, 4 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Warren Beard

    Member
    November 5, 2011 at 10:37 am

    Hi Joe

    I haven’t used a Roland but have Summa’s and used to cut everything on the cutter after printing so have used the reg mark system a lot. I used to place everything on to a pre prepared template so that the settings on the cutter never had to be changed otherwise for every job you would have to change all the setting for gaps between marks etc.

    I haven’t cut this way for 18 months since buying a print and cut machine but recently found out some Rips will automatically add in summa registration marks and then can cut to the summa from the same rip and will take control off the setting of the cutter so you don’t have to do it all manually.

    If I had to go this route again I would look in to a rip that would automate this and make it all easier and quicker.

    Hope that helps a bit.

    cheers

    Warren

  • Chris Wool

    Member
    November 5, 2011 at 3:04 pm
    quote :

    Any thoughts? It’s a new process I need to learn but I want to purchase a machine that can contour cut near perfect shapes as required.

    i think you have it already (apart from size) how far out is the cut, does the first one cut perfectly then progressively worse. or some where in the middle go off.
    does the printer actually print 1200 long or is it 1205mm? does the cutter actually cut 1200 when told to do so with laminated material in.
    is it a thick laminate that the cutter is struggling to cut. when the material is pulled over the cutting bed is the material flat, all makes a difference if you want it spot on.

  • Josephf

    Member
    November 6, 2011 at 4:36 am

    Hello thank you for your replies. I make the prints 1200mm long. Yep somewhere in the middle the cuts start to get worse as it cuts. The vinyl is Arlon polymeric and I use the suggested laminate. Rectangle square contour cuts are not really noticeable, it only gets noticeable when cutting circles. I have absolutely ZERO ambition in buying a print and cut machine because I think this process slows down the production. If anything in the future I will update my printer and get something faster or maybe purchase a HP L25500. So this is the process I will be using in the future. I think maybe I should invest in a Roland GX 30 which has 4 registration marks and not 3 compared to the GX 24. Any further help would be appreciated.

    Thanks

    Joe

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