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why does plotter keep pausing half way through print job?
Everything has been fine until today when Signblazer seems to pause and
"waiting" appears on my PCUT 630, if never seems to recover and i resort to closing the program down to start again.
Quite annoying as it creating quite a bit of waste but cant make out what wrong, any ideas?? -
41 Replies
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Again, the best advice would be to ask your supplier.
Not being funny, but if you have a problem with a product, why ask anyone else?Peter
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Paul sorry can’t help as I don’t know the plotter or the software, Peters suggestion is probably your best bet to be honest.
Is it the demo version of signblazer or the full product because I believe the demo will work for a period of time and then stop.
If it is coming up with a message saying waiting it sounds like a communications problem.
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quote Peter Normington:Again, the best advice would be to ask your supplier.
Not being funny, but if you have a problem with a product, why ask anyone else?Peter
Peter – Because Signblazer Pro (full geniune version with original invoice)was bought secondhand with dongle key but Signwizard refuses to offer support to anyone but the original purchaser. Also it’s 10 at night i doubt Technical support would be open anyhow. Just thought someone might know here.
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Deffo sounds like a comms problem, have you double checked the baud rate set on the cutter?
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Sorry Paul. thats precisely my point.
my software cost a lot. and I do get the support, ok maybe not 24 hours a day, but its only a phone call away in business hours.
Only pointing out the advantage in buying products that at first may seem expensive, but in the long run, more cost effective, Hardware or Software…back up costs money,dont take it personal,
but I do sometimes spit my dummy out when people want free advice on how to solve problems with cheaper products that dont offer any support.
Peter
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Not all of us can afford brand new software with the added benefit technical support when starting up, this may seem false economy however if i don’t have the money to buy new, i simply cant have it. I’m more than happy with my setup now but just having a few teething problems. Yes sometimes i can take it personal but the majority of your previous posts to me seem to be the same.
Anyhow back to the original topic, baud rate is matched on both plotter and port so that’s ok, funny really as its a intermittent problem, seems fine again now. -
Hey Paul,
Peter is sound, he has some really good advice 🙂
Could be a memory prob on the PCUT? Is it UK spec? I’ve heard some PCUT have a lessor memory than the UK ones. Could be a OS problem, what OS you using, what interface is on your PCUT?
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paul, Have you asked for advice from signblazer?
rather than the suppliers,Peter
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If the problem continues over the weekend i’ll give Signblazer a call direct, Peter i don’t mean to sound Sulky, i’m sure you are sound, must be the effects of a lonnnggg week.
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Sorry Paul,
My comments sometimes appear abrupt, but I say it as I see it.
I would rather give a thousand quid, than steal a penny.
as a uksb member, you are obviously serious about signs, and maybe I would have been better keeping my gob shut.But bear with me, I am usually more help than hinderance.
I was going to pm this, but thought it best to post it on the boards
Peter
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no problem Peter lets all have a group hug :lol1:
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Hi Paul I use sign blazor with no problems.
All I can think if your cutter does not have so much memory try breaking down your work as cutting these might help.Cut in smaller batches. -
One more thing when i got my sign blazor I had to get a license key for it .And then I needed to use it on my laptop and I had to buy jet one more license key to be able to use the same disk on laptop or it not work correct. May be you need to get new license key then sign wizard will give you support
hope this helps. -
Hi Kevin
I have the license key, its just running on my main pc anyhow. Seems to be fine still. 😀 -
Paul, if it is an intermittent problem then it can be harder to sort out than a problem that is there all the time but I still think it may be a communications problem, does your set up stay in the same place all the time or do you move it at all, i.e. Put it away when you are not using it? If this is the case then it might be a problem with the USB/serial lead, sorry not sure how it connects to the computer. If the lead is OK it might be that the computer is losing the connection when the plotter is not plugged and altering the settings.
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Hi
My PCUT has been fine, until I read this post this morning, then mine did the same thing……….how weird!
I have noticed though that if I tell it to cut 2 of an item it is fine, if I tell it to cut 4, it got half way through and sat there "waiting", I would guess lack of memory?
Its not much more effort to cut 2 twice rather than 4.
Keith
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Keith, i was thinking that, always happens on larger images, i.e 3 * 40 inch long images.
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Wouldn’t have thought it was a memory problem as vector files are never really very bit, I have an old pentium 3 laptop that I use with inspire pro for graphics. Running windows 98 because inspire won’t run with anything more up to date. It’s a pentium 3 1300mhz machine with 512mb pc133 memory and I don’t have any problems at all when I am doing vinyl work and I regularly nest graphics for say a van and cut well over 4 metres at a time.
Upgrading your memory may help and as memory isn’t very expensive it would be worth doing anyway. If nothing else it will help your machine run a bit faster.
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I meant the memory in the PCUT, my laptop has 2GIG ram so i know its not the memory in this
I doubt the plotter memory can be upgraded however
Keith
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You should be able to upgrade the memory in the PCUT if it does need doing but you would need to know what memory it was using and the maximum the board would support, of course if you have any sort of warranty on the PCUT you will probably invalidate it. There are quite a lot of people using these machines so I don’t see why you should have a problem and not others though if it were down to the PCUT memory.
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I agree martin, its only happened to me the once that was today, I was doing a club logo for a mate, its about 20cm by 4.5cm. I cut 2 out which was fine, tried to cut 4 at once and thats when I had the problem. Went back to 2 and all was fine.
Its weird as I have cut much larger items and not had the problem, maybe its not the size that counts but the quantity lol
Keith
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…lol :lol1:
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Might be a cable issue? I had all sorts of problems using a cheap cable. Swapped over to a expensive one & all is fine now.
Worth a shot?
Cheers,
Gwaredd.
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this used to be a problem on older serial driven ploters and was normally cured by changing the handshaking to hardware but i dont know how the serial to usb things setup.
when there is a lot of plot info like around a curve the plotter has to take the info in chunks thats when they forget how to talk to the computer.
chris
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Chris, do you mean flow control? currently is set as xon/xoff another thing to try maybe. thanks.
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thats it change it to hardware control – a very long time since i had to see that command
chris
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PAUL
Are you using signblazer 5.5pro -
no 6.0.01, seems ok now i changed the hardware contol 😀
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quote :seems ok now i changed the hardware contol
so thats a thank you very much chris is it
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Yes Chris, thank you so very much, i owe you a pint. 😀
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Paul I know its about 15 days late, But I had the same problem and it was the internal memory of the cutter. Signwizard said that after each job if you press the reset button that clears the internal memory to zero. The machine itself will store all previous jobs internally then come to a stop when it is full. If you are doing small jobs then turning the machine off that will clear the memory so you might not have come across this before. When you have lots of jobs on, Which I hope you are starting to have, Then you must remember to press reset all the time just to be on the safe side.
Regards
Steve -
steve i think that you have been spun a yarn.
the plotter memory is being flushed as you use it when the plotter memory is full up as you do a large job with lots of curves it has to tell the computer to stop sending data, until there is room for more, then allows the computer to send more and so it goes on.
if its not talking to the computer properly it just stops.
chris
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Hi Chris, My design guru….. Thats a good point there, Since I have been doing the reset thing, I have not had the problem when I posted the reply last night. Guess what today I did an 8′ x 610mm design through the cutter and it stopped. I was on the phone at the time so left it as it was, Then jumped out of my skin when a few minutes later it started up again. So you are right in your reply thanks mate. Glad I logged on to check updates now.
Regards
Steve -
quote Steve Sandy:Paul I know its about 15 days late, But I had the same problem and it was the internal memory of the cutter. Signwizard said that after each job if you press the reset button that clears the internal memory to zero. The machine itself will store all previous jobs internally then come to a stop when it is full. If you are doing small jobs then turning the machine off that will clear the memory so you might not have come across this before. When you have lots of jobs on, Which I hope you are starting to have, Then you must remember to press reset all the time just to be on the safe side.
Regards
SteveI think there has been a misunderstanding to what I have been quoted as saying…the RESET button on a PCut would normally be used to return the machine to an online state after changing settings from the menu option. The machine will not store previous jobs as stated.
If you are unsuccessful sending a file to the cutter then I would normally recommend a reboot of the computer to flush the memory buffer and maybe the cutter also, especially if you’re using expensive vinyl to prevent it all going horribly wrong a second time.
Most of the issues that arise when cutting larger jobs are flow control problems, HARDWARE set in the cutting software setup and the same in the port settings of Device Manager should fix most of them, occasionally some users report XON XOFF ( SOFTWARE flow control) works when hardware doesn’t.
Paul
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quote Paul Leicester:quote Steve Sandy:Paul I know its about 15 days late, But I had the same problem and it was the internal memory of the cutter. Signwizard said that after each job if you press the reset button that clears the internal memory to zero. The machine itself will store all previous jobs internally then come to a stop when it is full. If you are doing small jobs then turning the machine off that will clear the memory so you might not have come across this before. When you have lots of jobs on, Which I hope you are starting to have, Then you must remember to press reset all the time just to be on the safe side.
Regards
SteveI think there has been a misunderstanding to what I have been quoted as saying…the RESET button on a PCut would normally be used to return the machine to an online state after changing settings from the menu option. The machine will not store previous jobs as stated.
If you are unsuccessful sending a file to the cutter then I would normally recommend a reboot of the computer to flush the memory buffer and maybe the cutter also, especially if you’re using expensive vinyl to prevent it all going horribly wrong a second time.
Most of the issues that arise when cutting larger jobs are flow control problems, HARDWARE set in the cutting software setup and the same in the port settings of Device Manager should fix most of them, occasionally some users report XON XOFF ( SOFTWARE flow control) works when hardware doesn’t.
Paul
PS – Whatever flow control option you choose they should BOTH match, for Windows and your cutting software.
/P
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HELLO THERE, hopefully you have sorted this by now ,BUT when i set my p cut up I had the same problem, I cured it by slowing down the rate that the info is sent from computer to cutter , this was a long while ago but I think it was done through device manager , and ports. the cutter does need to be connected up and turned on if I remember rightly….
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i had this problem, and it turned out to be the USB connection to the cutter, it had come loose, so after a while i think the weight of the cable pulled it off the connection if that makes sense and the cutter would come up with "waiting" i had a new one soldered on and its been fine ever since.
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I had a similar problem with my old CT 630 recieving a partial data over USB and it turned out to be my anti virus software causing some strange problems…
I know its a bit out there but try turning off any antivirus software your running and reset your com port settings then try again..
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I know this is an old thread, but though to share my findings with you anyway 🙂
I’ve had my share of dropping connections with my CT1200 and usually it’s been due to the connection. The USB is hopeless, and the best solution has always been hardware COM port. This worked fine until the PC I used, died.
I replaced the PC with my other old laptop, which has no MC or PCMCIA slots, so I ended up playing with the USB again. 😕 I got it working, sort of, and got my work flow running quite okay, without major issues.
Until one day, I had to cut 3M 50 series matt black vinyl, and the cutter couldn’t finish even it’s first row of roughly 4" by 4" logos without writeport error. I wrestled with this issue for quite a while until I cracked it – static electricity… To prove my theory I turned on the loud speakers on the PC, to hear when the connection drops, and ran the vinyl back and forth from the panel on the cutter. It’s hilarious! Once it starts dropping the connection, it does it all the time.
So, if you have mysterious "Waiting" / "Write port error" messages with your PCut, you can easily check if it’s because of this static issue.
Hope this helps someone 🙂
Regards, Marko
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ok i know its an old posting but i’ve had this happen a few times and i finally found how to stop this happening, its very simple realy just drop the speed down a bit BINGO !!!! SORTED 😆 :smiles:
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No matter how old the post Brian, and solution at the end is always better than none! 🙂
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