versacamm print and cut problems

[Andrew Blackett]

Found another "think it works better" type method too Dan – I always do "Environment Match" before I start the cut procedure, seems to work well.

Andy

[John Dorling]

I manages to sort our alignment problems by ensuring that when I print, I bring the media clamps in from the edge of the vinyl at least 5mm, so there is plenty of room when it comes to reading the crop marks. Any closer and they always seem to cut a little bit out.

John

[Chris Wool]

quote :

the only difference i have made to the normal routine is, before taking the vinyl out of the machine after printing, i have drawn round the front and the side of the media clamps with a china graph, then laminated and when you put the laminated vinyl back in the machine, i aligned the media clamps with the china graph lines

do you use centre job on material if so don’t. thats the only reason i can think of that your new routine would help.

andy is on the case with environment checks plus media cut a few ins off before printing and use that edge to realign the media to the bed when replacing.

[Dan Osterbery]

Hi Chris,
no we dont, you and i have discussed this before. We also have a run the auto alignment before every cut with varying results.

cheers

Dan

@andy, will try that too! cheers

[Gavin MacMillan]

We struggled for years too, changed media away from Avery and had much better results. I mentioned this to an engineer who reckoned the backing paper on Avery is slightly waxy and this is enough to let the material wander a bit. This seemed a bit odd, but when I compared the two backing papers I could kind of see his point, that and the fact that our results are now much better!

[Scott.Evans]

quote Andy Blackett:

Found another “think it works better” type method too Dan – I always do “Environment Match” before I start the cut procedure, seems to work well.

Andy

What do you mean by "Environment Match" 😕

[Andrew Blackett]

Its a procedure the versacamm does to adapt for changes in temperature and conditions.

My understanding of it is the warmer or colder the room is will have an affect on the encoder strip as it expands and contracts. By running "environment match" the machine flies along reads the encoder and calibrates itself to its current size.

Just press menu, and then keep pressing up till you find "env match" hit the enter key and away it goes.

Andy

[Dan Osterbery]

Andy dont know if its coincidence or you are a genius and have solved roland print and cut problems! took your advice and have hit env match before every cut, and we have not had a problem since!! Todays we cut a wave shape with no bleed and it was mm perfect! never had the cutz so perfect! cheers fella!

thanks

Dan

[Andrew Blackett]

No Dan I am truly a genius!

I’m not certain myself whether its coincidence or not but until it stops working I’ll do it every time!

Have you tried doing the custom cut way yet? Set page space for printing at 60mm, laminate as normal. Put it back in the machine and square it up, change the page space to 80mm and it’ll automatically find each and every set! Dont forget environment match before you start though 😉

Andy

[Simon Worrall]

yesterday I cut 250 credit card sized stickers on 3m IJ35.
I did an env match before printing, and again before cutting,
In addition, cut and up move was slowed right down to 5cm/sec. I got this result.
The cuts remained perfect in the left right direction, (Due to the environment match? but began to track off in the feed direction – but only on the right hand side of the machine. After six rows of stickers, the bleed limits were starting to be reached – 2mm.
I paused and firmly pulled on the vinyl only on that side, until the material rested 2mm further on. It was surprisingly easy to make the vinyl slip through the pinch rollers.
Then I unpaused, and the cuts continued for another 6 rows, again veering off on the same side.
I repeated until the whole sheet was done.

[Andrew Blackett]

Have you tried automatic print and cut alignment?

I do this on a regular basis and it keeps things tidy. I used to get the same fault but not anymore. Can only think its the steps detailed above?!

Andy

[Andrew Blackett]

Was the run of 250 set as one job or broken into smaller amounts using custom cut??

[Simon Worrall]

Andy the 250 was a single job, I dont know anything about custom cuts. Neither do I know what you mean by Automatic print and cut alignment. Isnt that what it usually does? (Rather, tries to do)

Simon.

[Mark Nihotte]

HI Simon

Custom Cut is a feature of Versaworks where you can split the job into smaller batches…say two rows instead of 20 and the job then print two rows…cuts the two rows…prints two more and so on – sort of fixes Rolands natural inaccuracies.

[Martin Armitage]

Sounds like your pinch roller could be split. Not gripping the media tight enough, was what happened to us.

[Chris Wool]

funny I have just had to change a roller aswell musr be the time of the year

[Andrew Blackett]

quote Simon Worrall:

Andy the 250 was a single job, I dont know anything about custom cuts. Neither do I know what you mean by Automatic print and cut alignment. Isnt that what it usually does? (Rather, tries to do)

Simon.

Custom cut breaks the one large job into smaller runs, each small run has it’s own optical marks so it’s a but more accurate.

Automatic print and cut alignment prints a small square and uses the sensor to detect it to calibrate its cutting accuracy. You can also use the manual print/cut alignment to correct things. This prints two graph lines and plots a cut through both and you enter the values to calibrate.

Andy

[George Elsmore]

does custom cut when you have printed lammed and put back through with printed crop marks?

[Andrew Blackett]

Hi George,

Hope I’ve interpreted your question correctly.

But yes the machine prints optical marks for each custom cut job. So your run of 250 decals is broken down into batches of say 50 each with optical marks. I set versaworks to give a 60mm page space when printing then adjust to 80mm page space when cutting. The machine detects each set of crops automatically and cuts.

Andy

[George Elsmore]

Andy, where do you set the page space?

[Andrew Blackett]

Its under the "Printer Controls" tab, put a tick in "Use custom settings" then choose page space from the drop down box.

Andy

[George Elsmore]

ahhhhh got it , will have to give this a whirl cheers Andy

[George Elsmore]

just to clarify say i put in 250 do I print them with the crop mark take out lam, then put back in and choose custom cut? do i decide somewhere how many at a time i want to do a little confused still

[Andrew Blackett]

I feel a tutorial coming on George!

Can you wait till tonight and I’ll type it up with screen grabs? PM with your email and I’ll send it over.

Andy

[George Elsmore]

cheers Andy pm on way

[Paul Hodges]

Been battling this problem virtually since we bough the machine back in early 2006.

Since then I’ve been through every conceivable possible solution and can confidently say that using environmental match or automatic alignment does not cure this problem, although it is possible that some machines do it for varying reasons, it’s so hard to say what causes it therefore it’s hard to say for sure what to do to cure it.

For anyone who gets this problem on a regular basis, if it’s any help, the only way to avoid it that we found was to print your document, take it straight off and laminate it, put it back on the printer and cut it – all in the one continuous session and it works brilliantly.

Where it seems to hit a problem is if you print a variety of documents in one session, laminate some time later and return for cutting some time later or following day, then results are hit and miss and you end up binning half your work.

[Andrew Blackett]

quote Paul Hodges:

For anyone who gets this problem on a regular basis, if it’s any help, the only way to avoid it that we found was to print your document, take it straight off and laminate it, put it back on the printer and cut it – all in the one continuous session and it works brilliantly.

Where it seems to hit a problem is if you print a variety of documents in one session, laminate some time later and return for cutting some time later or following day, then results are hit and miss and you end up binning half your work.

Only "issue" with that being that the ink will be very fresh. Think its popular belief to give at least 24 hours before laminating.

Perhaps environment match before and after printing – before cutting might assist.

I’ve just finished cutting (laminated prints) down about 20m of small decals, 94mm x 52mm and window stickers, 250mm x 50mm. All of which were printed on one roll with the prints broken into small batches. Not a single problem. Weird isnt it 😕

Andy

[Andrew Blackett]

quote Andy Blackett:

I feel a tutorial coming on George!

Can you wait till tonight and I’ll type it up with screen grabs? PM with your email and I’ll send it over.

Andy

In your inbox now George, sorry I never got it done yesterday

Andy

[Paul Hodges]

I think the problem Andy, is that it’s not one specific issue that causes every fault in this area, some people don’t ever get the problem, but some of us are getting the same persistent issue.

I’ve tried the environmental match so many times now and sometimes the cut works okay sometimes it doesn’t so i could never isolate it to that.

Regarding the out gassing, a lot of people including ourselves now don’t worry about leaving the prints over night, not for small labels or jobs with relatively low ink coverage. Naturally if you’re doing big flood coated stuff then you have to but we don’t tend to machine cut that type of work generally.

The procedure i mentioned before is the only way i found to avoid it happening. I was told that Roland Japan know about this but did not know what really causes the issue therefore there is no actual cure for it

[Andrew Blackett]

Obviously I can’t say that this fixes all machines. I too had major problems with print/cut alignment but either one or a combination of the above "fixes" seems to have resolved it.

Might be "pot luck" but until such time it stops working I’ll keep doing them 😀

Andy

Just a thought does your machine have issues with registration on print and cut in one process or only after lamination?

[Paul Hodges]

Mostly it’s cutting after laminating the following day or so, in one process it’s normally okay.

Seems that it doesn’t like the workflow method of doing a lot of varied prints in one session, laminating in one session then cutting in one session.

Have also had it where you can print the same file multiple times, laminate then cut a day later and some batches it will cut accurately, some will be nowhere near.

It just seems that the longer you leave it to cut the file, the more the variables change, but when you do the whole operation quickly it’s usually spot on so it’s not an accuracy set up problem.

Loads of people have had the same on the SP 540v – a sales rep told me it had been cured on the VP but then another guy who had one on here I think confirmed it was still a problem

[Andrew Blackett]

Could it be that the pinch rollers have been moved – giving a bigger width reading? Clutching at straws! Ours barely move.

Andy

[Simon Worrall]

I am completely confused as to how to use the "Page space"or what page – or space – it refers to. I have set up 20 stickers of 250mm by 105mm as a tryout, and want to divide them into four groups of five. . I don’t understand how to do this.

[Andrew Blackett]

Hi Simon,

I’ve just finished a tutorial on this which rob is putting on the site soon.

If you pm your email address I can always send you a copy if you like.

Andy

[Simon Worrall]

Thanks for the kind offer Andy. Now I have no idea how to PM…DOH! I suppose one is not allowed to post ones email on the boards.?

Anyway, in the interim I have been spending some time (Hours?) trying to figure this thing out, I have got as far as printing a bunch of stickers in groups with the cutting marks. I will laminate them after the weekend, and then try the contour cutting.

Simon.

[Andrew Blackett]

Best of luck Simon!

I’ve found your email address on your company website and have sent the instructions through.

Andy

[Simon Worrall]

Thanks Andy, I just got your email.
Very informative and well written, even I can understand it!
And as a bonus, the print and cut alignment – something I never knew I had!

Simon.

[Simon Worrall]

Well. I laminated these stickers and put them back in the machine to cut. The versacamm found the first group, and cut them well, and then moved on to the second lot but couldn’t find the marks. So I had to manually line it up for each group, until all were done. I must have missed something crucial. I will try it again this week.

Simon.

[Andrew Blackett]

Hi Simon,

I normally find that if you set the page space to 60mm before you print, then change it to 80mm before cutting It seems to find them automatically and carries on

How did you find the alignment when doing them in small batches?

Andy

[Simon Worrall]

😮
The cutting was very well aligned for the smaller batches Andy. Thats a good plan, if I can get it to work properly.
I suppose your workaround makes sense, as it was looking about 20mm short of the actual mark.