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Versacamm VS 540 Print Cut Issues
Hi all,
I know these issues have been posted loads of times and I have read through a lot of the posts that are about but just looking to clear things up a bit.
So we got our versacamm back in September and had a good Christmas run print and cutting some clear garment vinyls with it however we had out cut lines about an inch around the outside of our prints as it was clear vinyl we didn’t need an accurate cut.
Now we are starting to put the printer to its intended task of printing and cutting both wall stickers and vehicle graphics. Some of the designs we use have a few inticate edges.
Heres where we have hit some problems… our cut lines tend to be 1-2mm over horizontally and vertically on every print. We have tried print cut alignment and it seems to be set perfectly.
We haven’t checked the encoder strip but will do this tomorrow and haven’t tried environment match yet. I just wasn’t sure if this was just a normal thing and that all images are going to need to be set with a bleed (which is going to be a pain for a lot of our artwork) but then I thought even with a bleed if it is out to the left then it will be noticable.
Would love to hear some input.
Thanks,
Matt -
6 Replies
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Doing an environmental match should help. Also try printing crop marks (even if you’re doing a straightforward print and cut in one operation) as the machine will automatically check the position of each crop mark prior to going onto to carry out the cutting operation. This is what I now have to do with my machine (an old sp300) – without printing the crop marks the cutting drifts out (which it never did when it was new). My understanding is that the encoder strip controls the print head but not the cutting operation.
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We haven’t checked the encoder strip but will do this tomorrow and haven’t tried environment match yet. I just wasn’t sure if this was just a normal thing and that all images are going to need to be set with a bleed (which is going to be a pain for a lot of our artwork) but then I thought even with a bleed if it is out to the left then it will be noticable.
Would love to hear some input.
Thanks,
Matt[/quote]We use this machine also. We also leave a bleed. Sometimes we don’t go all out. For example if a text fade from jet black to a mid grey i would possibly just give it a black square behind. Much less noticeable than white line. Saves me time trying to match the gradient fade correctly across every mm.
As mentioned crop marks do help. But I’ve never been able to get it 100%. Blade depth, blade pressure and cutting speed can also make a difference.
Cut and align is fine. But I found when fine tuning its better to put down a strip of shapes at 50mm ish and adjust from there. Cut and align may then be out on the test, but doing that job and other jobs will be spot on or very close. We do a lot of small labels and this works for us.
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Thanks for the replies.
I have trialled a few things this morning. Tried out the 50mm shapes idea and managed to get the print and cut level down to being fairly accurate. Then I thought I would try using the crop marks and it seemed to be miles out… So i’ve been aligning the crop marks and they seem to start really well at the print head side then go out in the middle and tend to become accurate again at the end. So I am left wondering if the vinyl is bowing in the middle as the room is cold plus we only have 2 pinch rollers one either end (it was a second user machine). Is it worth getting a pinch roller for the centre would you say?
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Could be a heat issue. You could try playing around with the settings on the machine, but personally I would stick to the default media setting in versaworks for the print profile you are using.
Extra pinch rollers help with long prints really. Things like banners. Stops Media from slipping I believe. However when printing and cutting the rollers in the centre of the machine will go over your print and leave marks.
Some media’s are better than others. We use oracol 3164 for stickers and labels, which tends to be what we print the cut the most. It’s accurate and cheap with a good print quality and good backing paper. We’ve tried others in past not so good. I actually bought some 7 year polymeric vinyl off someone the other week cause they called with a good deal, am glad I’ve now burnt through all 50m as it is possibly the worst thing I have ever put in my machine.
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The vs should have come with extra pinch rollers you clip on as required.
A environmental check is done automatically on every set up that’s why the print head goes over with the cutting head on setup.
As said if the print cut alignment is fine in one area not in another then it’s normally down to the media swelling.
This time of year with cold and high humidity makes a poor media next to impossible. Stand the roll on end on the floor and I would imagine the first few turns are wider than the rest of the roll. This is moisture in the backing paper. When you start to print the heat plays havoc.
Also a slightly sticky blade holder and slightly blunt knife will bunch the media as it cuts moving the media slightly side to side back and forth giving you the impression the cuts off.
Well it is but not understood why
Some times I use the arrows keys to move the vinyl out over the heaters and back a few times. Time consuming but I should keep the materials in a better environment -
Thanks for all the information guys. To be honest I never thought about the quality of vinyl as we have been using our lowest quality mononeric vinyl for testing and we have managed to get it to quite accurate without the crop mark printing. I will try our normal LG mono vinyl we generally use which tends to react less to the changes in temperature hopefully this should be even more accurate.
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