[John Parfit]

That’s the irritant, in Onyx it seems the reg marks are generated within the rip when you click that it’s to be cut after printing, no way it seems of getting to them or adjusting so integral with the print info (you do generate the cut info with a spot colour in your design software, corel in our case).

With the CJv using rasterlink rip and finecut pluggin it’s so much cleaner and logical to me … generate your artwork on one or several layers, generate cut lines on another layer as simple hairlines, whatever colour, draw rectangles around parts or all of the artwork, select rectangle/s and click the reg mark icon in finecut pluggin, that generates reg marks set to how you want them on a ‘reg mark’ layer so artwork layer/s, cut layer, reg mark layer, just export to the hot folder of the rip and it’s all there to print then cut.

Via finecut the plotter doesn’t look for all the reg marks at first, just the origin and then when you tell it which file to cut it knows approx where to find the other marks to begin; with onyx (at moment) I load the print and the mimaki then wants to find all 2,3,or 4 reg marks first without knowing what is to be cut so then it scans until it finds some and then you tell it to cut a certain file via onyx/cut server.. bit strange to me but presently can’t find if I’m doing it wrong/ missing something.

John

[John Parfit]

Yes, all of these things you mention Chris 0:0 origin is correct but the cut path is stretched in both x and y axis away from origin in proportion to distance from origin.

I don’t understand what you are saying relative to your Roland Chris that the cut will be altered to fit the marks, what is the point in altering the cut relative to the marks if it results in an incorrect cut? Having said that it seems the most likely explanation of what is happening even if I don’t understand it.

In the Onyx rip and add on cut server their is nothing that you can get to to alter or view things as I can see. During setting up the print/cut I tell the rip that I shall be cutting with a mimaki (already installed) and it automatically creates registration marks around the print (can’t even find more complex mark set ups for long prints or stickers).
So either the reg marks are wrong or information sent to the mimaki or translated by the mimaki is wrong (is their a language difference hpgl > hp.. something else?).

Thought of a work around in the night 🙄 ; Use finecut (mimaki cutter software) to make mimaki/rasterlink reg marks, send these to print on the HP but do not engage print/cut; cut the print via rasterlink pro5 not onyx using the finecut reg. marks.

Can’t wait to try it but can’t wait also for HP tech to tell me the proper fix, bet they tell me it’s the mimakis fault :lol1:

Thanks again Chris

John

[John Parfit]

Not the same Martin I’m afraid, this is not bowing but the cutter is cutting further and further out of alignment as it gets further from the origin, both x and y axis.

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks all, not replied till now because been in unit but forgot my password to log in from new pc.

No, print is fine Chris, it’s the cutting that is out, seems by about 5mm over 1.2 metre either across or feed.

Tried again Mimaki print/cut, was perfect so it’s what is coming from Onyx/ Onyx cut server… can’t find any adjustment though.

Tried cutting from Onyx as generic cutter instead of mimaki – same bad result.

Tried marking with a pen a reg mark 5mm in but it cut the same bad result even though it recognised the false reg mark. (?)

Bloomin annoying since I’ve now built up about 15 metres of printed stuff to cut but dare not put it through until I get it sorted .

John

[John Parfit]

Mimaki, summa, Graphtec, Mutoh any of these in the ‘pro’ range; all are good and will cut right through if told; graphtec 8000fc has highest knife weight and will happily cut diamond reflective. Don’t know about Roland, did not want to research that company when looking for a new plotter for the boss.

John

[John Parfit]

Oracal 900 series has a lovely range of metallic silver and gold foils + other metallic colours/shades, you could get some nice effects out of those, pig to apply though I have found.

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks Dave & Rob

But is flex face right for a sign at such a low level? one person with a grudge against the World and a knife or ring pull off a can in their hand could surely put a gash in the flex material as they were passing through.

John

[John Parfit]

We are finding that many PDFs (perhaps 20%) coming from designers are created in a version of illustrator later than X4 and won’t open in X4, but X5 opens them fine (we use X4 since one of our output devices doesn’t like X5 but keep X5 on hand for importing stuff).
Perhaps it is time for an upgrade Jason.

John

[John Parfit]

If only moving across the road and not tilting , bolt down head and cutter and leave carts in, move carefully should be fine.

If tilting and driving somewhere, bolt down or tape down if lost bolt -masking tape first then parcel tape over masking tape; flush ink out and leave flushing solution in (+flushing solution carts in) and refill at destination.

Above applied to our Mimaki, Roland similar I expect.

John

[John Parfit]

Yes Chris, noticed the recent thread on the ‘bowing’ problem. We don’t cut many small stickers and I think that would be where the bowing would mainly show up most. Generally we print larger images and put plenty of bleed in so 1-2mm per metre is acceptable. Pity we can’t have 1 machine that does everything exactly how we would want it at less than 50k say but we try find the right mix for how we work or try and think ahead of the game to find a little niche somewhere and capitalise on it before everyone else finds out, you can bet a toy gun sprayed gold at the moment fetches more than one sprayed black, especially if you give a free stick on goatey beard away with it.
Sorry, been one of those long days that make me ramble on in tiredness, do you think we still have genes in us that are telling us now is the time look for a cosy hole to hibernate in, loads of people I know are same tired as I am this week.

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks people, I’ll look further into it. To be honest the mimaki CJV has been brilliant for our main uses as small to medium business so I hope it is going to be a good reason to change Dave. We have been investigating the HP latex for a while now and have jumped to that as the very good offers available are set to end in October, presumably as the new model launches. Hope it’s a right decision we make, will keep you informed.

John

[John Parfit]

Nice concept, should make your customer lots of money, it’s so nice to have the enthusiastic feedback, makes the job worthwhile.
Small crit, kerning, mainly of the ‘1’s but I suppose only a signmaker would notice it. 😀

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks guys, white it is then (until it goes black of course):D .

John

[John Parfit]

The print/cut machines have their place for sure but they are essentially half-way houses between a printer and a cutter, mimakis tend to be better built and thought through and more ‘willing’ to perform tasks at the edge of their limits (in my own opinion and experience of both of course) but for cutting of this type of material I would imagine a dedicated high end plotter (Graphtec 8000 series or Summa) would be able to handle it easier.
In the end though, don’t know, never had reason to cut phototex.

John

[John Parfit]

Would suggest Paul that you get you customer to send you a picture of a close up of the reflective, the pattern (and shade) will narrow down which kind it is (no pattern and they’re just using engineering grade probably).

john

[John Parfit]

3M conspicuity diamond grade tape comes in 50mm wide in yellow, white red at only£70ish per 50m but has 3m ‘E’ markings on surface.

You may be aware but just to point out in case; a lot of emergency vehicles also use reflexite which comes in 3 different yellows and several different grades.

John

[John Parfit]

Guidelines are – no red on front, no white on rear, but these are only guidelines not law; there is a possibility that if an accident occurs then the party other than the ‘wrongly’ reflectived vehicle could use that as part of the evidence in their favour, i.e. vehicle ignored Government guidelines which contributed to the accident.

John

[John Parfit]

Exactly Phil 😛 Rather like controltac in 3m wrap vinyls where glass beads keep the adhesive away from the surface until you squeegee it down, so applying with water only on a window can effectlively be seen as applying it dry 😕 🙄

John

[John Parfit]

Respectfully disagree Gavin, it’s as Robert hints, depends on temperature of window inside and out , direct or not light, humidity, temp of room, lots of things, sometimes pure water I find to be best solution to fitting graphics to windows, since once the watrer is squeegeed out then the vinyl sticks very fast.
Sometimes I use a slip solution like you mention, sometimes I apply water and then wipe it off straight away testing at the time the tackiness of the vinyl to be laid down, this works on direct sunlit windows quite well for me anyway.
I think a good range of gizmos/ fluid bottles in your toolkit always helps.
Looked at rapidtac but never ordered, might order some to test but last application fluid we tried was pants.

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks Gary, was thinking of matt vinyl as best chance so good to hear you confirm it, thanks again.
Now where to get small quantity of matt digital since 5000 stickers only runs 8 meters into a roll .

John

[John Parfit]

Sorry to hear of your problems Steve, hope they resolve.

We were/are thinking seriously of getting the HP latex, this is the first time we’ve heard negative about it apart from some believing that print costs are higher than mild solvent machines.

The known ‘bowing’ problems that are mentioned, could someone please enlarge on this, is it that prints come out distorted and so contour cutting can be affected, how can bowing occur, surely material is simply fed through and printed straight .

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks for your replies fellas, have given reflexite an email with piccy Simon (did not scan too good, the green ok but the yellow reflected so well that it came out black and white!).

Most of the ambulances we do come with 3M Rob but a few arrive with reflexite (another livery provider I suppose) and we’ve had a couple with nikalite too. We used to just order in the reflexite ones pre-cut to the pattern but our previous source has disappeared, wish I had identified with him the type and colour when he was supplying us but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

John

[John Parfit]

Oracal 951 have a range of metallic greens, 4 I see might be suitable Steve.

Also Ritrama, 600 series I think, have them.

John

[John Parfit]

3m 100-385 is closebut closer still to pantone 381 I’m afraid.

John

[John Parfit]

Thank you for the quick reply Martin; of course you are right, Ashby is a very good starting point.
I think we are in a semi state of panic, trying to quickly get the information on signs we don’t normally deal with and that is numbing our thoughts a bit.

Sourcing the signs is one thing, erecting them another, seems like a civil engineering thing what with considering possible underground services etc

Thanks again

John

[John Parfit]

Just basic lettering on a flat surface Hugh, nothing complicated.

John

[John Parfit]

The strength of the rolands print and cut in media feed has long been known to be weak, Roland themselves stated at some point that banner material was not what these machines were designed to cope with.
The original poster has however problems with a JV5 which under normal circumstances would easily handle banner material without the need to nurse the machine; so I still think there has to be something unusual going on; question being what.

John

[John Parfit]

Hi Mark

If it didn’t happen before and now it does with same material then something is wrong (but you know that anyway)

Heat settings (you’ve tried, but try a test with heaters off maybe).

Vacuum, don’t know how to check that on jv5.

One or more rollers collapsed/ stuck, bit of vinyl or similar on part of grit roller?

Perhaps try taping long bits of masking tape down from banner to take up roller so it gives it tension.

Try using just outside rollers as experiment and lift inner rollers (if jv5 does that.

All i can think to try at moment.

Hope you get it sorted soon.

John

[John Parfit]

Hi Andrew

Don’t know what rip you use for the jv3 but if you’re updated to latest Rasterlink there is a facility to extend the end date of cartridges, sorry can’t remember how it is done but used it last year.

Mimaki is same as roland in this respect, I had 15% showing on one colour so went for a long banner and it dropped to zero 2 meters into a 10 meter run so was a little annoyed at the time.

John

[John Parfit]

Macal do a 600 series etch Robert and one of them is called ‘rice paper’ so that might be it and since Amari deal in Mactac then maybe that’s a firm to ask.

John

[John Parfit]

hi Gavin, welcome

John

[John Parfit]

Hi Simon, welcome from another County Durhamer.

Sorry to hear you’ve had a difficult year but keep at it and things will get better if you move in the right direction mate, it’s not easy for a lot of us at the moment.

John

mod-edit

[John Parfit]

I can think of two possible things Daniel, poor or no vacuum or knife blade holder and solenoid.

Happened to me with a Roland, suspected fluff up the blade holder but couldn’t remove it if it was indeed fluff; temporary fix lift blade holder and secure further up its shaft but a new aluminium holder (£6- china-fleabay) cured it.

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks to you both, looks like 7000/8000 is way forward.

Chris, does the 7000 have 1/2 cut – die cut facility i.e. what is the main differences between 7000 and 8000, note you would like to have 4th roller, does having only three cause problems occasionally.

Secondhand 130-7000 approx £2750 and new 130-8000 approx £5000, bit of a difference but we would be part-x-ing our current within warranty print and cut for a printer-plotter bundle so savings made here somewhere I guess.

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks Tim, will certainly request a quote.

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks for all your replies folks, 6 it is then, or I particularly like Glenn’s idea of one or two ‘invisible’ locators in the middle somewhere.

Now all we’ve got to do is find a supplier of the acrylic rectangle, I suppose it’s too much faff to cut and drill them ourselves without a CNC or laser; all the flat cut letter companies are treating them as 110cm high letters so the price is coming out at between £50 -£70 pounds each, seems a bit excessive although I know 10mm acrylic isn’t cheap.

John

[John Parfit]

It’s an image on google images Derek, type in a search on ‘coffee mornig and it comes straight up. It’s big enough to do a trace on coreldraw and the result is fine.

err, you might have to ask the women’s institutes permission but I expect since it’s a charity type thingy there would be no problem 😉

John

[John Parfit]

Horizontal racks for us, broom handle type thingies through the cores, never unrolls although I suppose you can put a bit of app tape on them if you want and the type of media is written on the wooden frame so no need to keep writing it on bits of sticky or buy bicycle clips :lol1:

John

[John Parfit]

You could also try 119 -15-255, it’s pretty close on our swatches of printed colours but we run mimakis and rasterlink and the colour shifts will probably be different on your set up, but worth a try maybe.

John

[John Parfit]

If it helps my pantone swatch says it can not be matched in cmyk but can be in RGB but unfortunately I don’t have pantone bridge to give you the numbers.
No idea why but if I export to our rip (rasterlink) as rgb I often get a good approximation of RGB even though the printer is obviously CMYK output 😕

John

[John Parfit]

Sorry if I’m not reading this right but a thought that might help, might not also is to make one ‘positioning’ template for your customer that would position the 645 prints onto their boards.

To help me and others understand why you can’t simply cut a rectangle around each print that matches the customers boards could you tell us whether the customers boards are a simple rectangle shape and how big is each contour cut print Dean?

John

[John Parfit]

I think it is a 50/50 call between polyprop and toughened glass

Downside of polyprop for sure it only lasts a year or so each side but the tram lines have never got deep enough to affect cutting for me, upside is blades last a lot longer and I don’t like snap off blades, even weed with a stanley knife, just feels right.

Downside of glass, you’ve got to change blades often but upside no cut lines on the table and plus you can run up a light box direct on your cutting table

Still prefer polyprop just on the knife blunting annoyance of cutting on glass.

John

[John Parfit]

18mm 😮 That could explain it mo 😀

Our workbench in question has a table of 18mm ply that the thin polyprop covers (except if we’re using it for trad painting stuff and then we remove the polyprop so it doesn’t get paint on it).

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks I’ll have a go at that Colin, don’t know about the 3M 180 Andrew, isn’t 180 series a white or clear printable not coloured metallic vinyl?

No I didn’t mean air channel Rob, sorry to confuse, a better word for what I meant would be re-positionable I suppose, something like controltack with glue filled glass beads used for wraps that doesn’t adhere till you squeegee it down rather than standard almost immediate permanent adhesives used on other vinyls inc. casts.

John

[John Parfit]

Polyprop for us too, don’t know where you guys are getting prices from but amari supplied ours two years ago for £21.

Granted it’s only 3mm thick but you can’t cut through it with the heaviest attempt with a stanley and it would never snap because it’s flat down on the bench mainly.

John

[John Parfit]

Just come across this again and need to say thank you for all your help, much appreciated.

However I was initially referring to trying to find an actual metallic material with ‘wrap’ adhesive e.g. controltac in 3M or grafiwrap adhesive rather than normal ‘quick grab’ permanent adhesive as found in cast metallics.

By metallic I meant colours with a metallic finish e.g. red, green, blue, purple etc with sparkley bits. not black, white, gold and silver.

Seems no manufacturer does these after all, but thanks again for the help folks.

John

[John Parfit]

Send them an invoice for your artwork and time spent in compiling the copy text.

As we all know there’s a lot of cowboys out there, don’t give them a period of time to remove it, they’ll just use somebody elses work next.

If they don’t pay take them to small claims court, even if you don’t get anywhere it will cost very little and will provide some enjoyment and probably scare the sh…te out of the wasters.

John

[John Parfit]

If i might add my own thoughts here.

What you are trying to doing with all these different inks and media is drying the print.

Inks dry by the evaporation of the carrying solvent (be it water, alcohol or any other carrier).

Evaporation occurs faster in all circumstances when you add energy to the system allowing the molecules to become more vigorous thus increasing the rate at which they bump into each other, some bumping into each other near the surface and gaining sufficient energy to break free of the surface tension and escape out of the medium i.e. evaporate.

John

[John Parfit]

Tis CrilleeTEE I believe Paul

Just know because we did an add on the one of their franchises last week and had to identify it.
Was told by boss to park the van away from shop as we did the job (window graphics) in case someone might have thought it was us that had screwed the acres of pvc foamboard directly (and badly) to the walls 😕

John

[John Parfit]

oops, seems nobody has used them or tried them back to back.

Well the mesh material is ordered now so I shall report on the outcome, could be an expensive test however, might not have a job soon if it all goes horribly wrong.

John

[John Parfit]

grafityp

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks very much Jamie, you have been a great assist, thanks again.
John

[John Parfit]

You Mention that it was clear vinyl but not which type i.e. monomeric, polymeric or cast; if the arch was ‘arched’ then monomeric would not work, polymeric would struggle depending on the ‘archiness’, only cast would take to compound contours when applied as a sheet and certainly using application tape would not allow the material to contour.

Good luck with your next attempt Anthony.

John

[John Parfit]

Yes, lesson learned here Tim, shall copy my customised workspace.

Really was a wierd one Alan, all palettes showed OK, even the one I lossed. I wondered if I had somehow managed to pick up the palette docker and place it somewhere else inside Corel and not outside, for example somewhere in the title bar/toolbar/menu bar ; I had a look around but couldn’t find it though.

John

[John Parfit]

Well, well; tried both of your suggestions but no luck I’m afraid but as a last gasp effort before re-installing Corel I tried using a restore point for Windows (not Corel) to an earlier time before I mistakenly sent my palette into the ether; and it worked! no idea why but it just came back again like it had never been away.

Phew 😮

John

[John Parfit]

Thanks very much for that Tim, weird but seems to make sense somehow; will try the resolution trick in a little while…. could not believe that I’d lost it ‘out of corel ‘ myself but at first there was a part of the palette hanging down but when I tried to retrieve it I sort of nudged it out of view and no amount of trying could get it back 🙄

Thanks again, X4 by the way, although we also have X5.

John

[John Parfit]

Perhaps this?

http://www.oberonplace.com/vba/drawmacr … marksh.htm

John

[John Parfit]

Hi Lee, welcome.

Lovely part of the World, you’re not related to the Fairgrieves by any chance?

John.

[John Parfit]

Understand fully Martin, we normally don’t do mail order sales but we do a lot of work for a photographer and an interior designer who both move around in high circles so often don’t think of the practicalities when they are earning so much; we earn well from them I am told but in this instance the job is over 200 miles away and the customer said they would fit themselves.

Apart from fitting instructions I shall mention that it might be a good idea to source a local sign company to fit it.

John

[John Parfit]

Points taken again, I suppose the squeegy person can help the other to get the sticky length into position at base of the door.
Thanks again folks

John

[John Parfit]

Thank you both for the replies; yes bubble free dry apply it is then, not printing and laminating again with ordinary, it was wonderful feeling a few days ago as the prints were flying through the laminator perfectly, gloss laminations coming out the other end until I got that awful realisation feeling come over me, yep looked at job sheet and in big letters for this job, ‘MATT LAMINATION ‘. If I stay quiet and good for a while boss might not take it off my wages or force me to eat the useless gloss one (even tried to matt laminate the glossed one but in my hurry to hide the mistake the laminator decided to crease it!

Where was I? oh yes, your point taken Martin, but difficult time is after removal of baking paper and flipping over, remember it’s over four foot wide, surely two people taking time here if no experience?

Or perhaps better to apply vertically with a hinge at about 6 ins (or even right at top) and a helper holding the unpeeled part flat to the door so it doesn’t bow?

John

[John Parfit]

oops, SNAP Martin :lol1:

John

[John Parfit]

Can you not just make one Warren, just a simple box or cylinder, intake fan at top leading dust down with simple baffles to settle it out, then seperated baffles back to top with muslin or felty type filter at outlet. Could be sealed, can’t see dust ever filling it up. A diagram would be better but can’t see how to add one here.

John

[John Parfit]

It is, in a sense by spraying objects onto a line but much better is this macro George

http://www.oberonplace.com/products/fit … /index.htm

John

[John Parfit]

I too am happy that this thread has been revived for we have a 1400 heated top roller Easymount and the lamination of prints is always the part with greatest concern.

Once set up the Easymount runs very well considering that I was unsure on exactly how to set it up; when the laminate runs out well we can confidently laminate 20 meters or more at a single pass (we have devised our own way of feeding the print in which ensures it is straight and I reckon over 20 meters it might run off 20mm max).

It is in the initial setting up of laminate that we tend to have problems and this thread has encouraged me to try and rectify our approach, Warrens idea for starters seems a logical one (except how do you stop the bare laminate sticking to the rear platten once the board drops off?).

Pressure on the rollers – we need to get this right, always thought to wind roller down then give it a little more, seems I was wrong.

As to rear tension adjusters on the laminate roll, always wound these tight to try and prevent drapes/creases occuring, will now try and ‘lighten’ these up now.

John

[John Parfit]

As Derek rightly says, check the job over well and prepare, it can take longer than you imagine to string a few wires.

On my first task to put up 3 poster displays, had told the customer that they would be wall (top of windows actually) to floor fittings, got there customer changes mind, does not want wall to floor now wants ceiling to floor 😕

Fine I think just string through suspended ceiling into floor above, takes off first suspended tile- 😮 there was no visible ceiling; takes off another few, again, apart from an old door and a mattress up there, no ceiling to be found (probably about 8 ft above the false ceiling). Had to screw a big lump of wood to the wall above the suspended ceiling for the wires to attach.

A 1 hour supposed job (too little time budgeted for anyway) turned into an all day nightmare and a broken ceiling tile to be replaced.

John

[John Parfit]

When I saw this I nearly cried.

I was recently given the task of making up full colour swatches for pantone solid, CMYK and RGB in order to profile the outputs of our printers; took me best part of two weeks and we now have about a 100,000 (guess) colour samples to match with customer requirements.

Luckily (for me) I notice that the macros give only the basic range of colours available, for in the palettes if you left click and hold on any colour then in RGB and CMYK another 50 shades/variations appear and in pantone all the tints show.

I had to put all those extras onto swatches and by the end of this task I had gone completely cross eyed. 😮

John

[John Parfit]

Gerber only cost effective for short run and speciality colour stuff really, Mimaki, among others perhaps do die-cutting print and cut machines.

John

[John Parfit]

Yes, screen inks and roller it on, easy peasy, but do some tests first esp regarding amount of thinner to use, you could easy melt the plastic if on wrong settings.

Good luck

John

[John Parfit]

Me again, just came into my mind that you have used print and cut, don’t know what type of printer or ink you have used but cutting into printed material can be problematic, for instance dark colours or high ink density with most inks will soften the material more and require less cutting pressure as will cutting with the heaters on if you are using machines with heaters and also cutting straight after printing will have a different result to waiting a while.

Lot’s to think about for just a simple procedure, keep your eye and mind on what is happening is best thing I think.

John

[John Parfit]

For almost sure, cut too deep, if you get backing paper wet then you would tend to have bits sticking to the adhesive but damp over a period of time might produce this effect too (except the silicon layer has definitely been cut through.

That’s the thing Shaun, the backing if effectively two layers, the sprayed on silicon top layer and the paper layer beneath; do test cuts regularly to set depth or if changing vinyl types.

John

[John Parfit]

Hi Jim

Paint is out, dyes are possible.

The item used to mark baulk and ‘d’ and spots is simply fine line indelible black marker pen (one with an ink that doesn’t bleed into the material).

You could print when the cloth is off the table but trouble here is that the cloth is stretched when fitted to the table so any design would ‘warp’.
That leaves applying on the table; textile inks/dyes, templates and an airbrush seems to be the way.

John

[John Parfit]

Just had a look at the catalogue and Brian at impact vehicle library has the megane outline in there, might not be centimetre perfect but I imagine will do for a wrap layout to show your prospective customer.

John

[John Parfit]

Hi Wayne

Getting out of my depth here (have been researching plotters over last month or so but not set-ups).

Asked the boss and boss says it’s likely not a bargain, but also not a rip-off, you’re paying about £400 on top of the plotter for a pc when a £50 pc on windows 95 can run a plotter easily, buying vinyl in colours you might not use and flexisign is most codecracked piece of signmaking software out there, you’re average eleven year old could get a copy plus flexisign is not new user friendly really.

So if it’s a cx24, fairly modern pc, flexisign disc with a dongle and the vinyl is not all pinks and beiges and not the cheapest horrible stuff then it might not be a bad price.

Difficult decision possibly, good luck.

John

[John Parfit]

oops, my fault, confused the CX and the much newer GX; CX still a good machine and should be obtainable £200 if lucky – £450.

John

[John Parfit]

CX 24, good starter machine… seen them go from as little as £250 (wish I’d kept an eye on that one) to around £800 second user.

John

[John Parfit]

I don’t think you should have turned it off completely Jack, but you should have removed the media, for one thing you wouldn’t probably have the problem you do now and for another, keeping the media in for a long time could damage the rubber feed rollers; i.e. they would get a flat spot.

John

[John Parfit]

There’s this site I found, solid aluminium it seems but no idea of the prices.

http://www.goodingalum.com/p10/c4/Alumi … nium-Sheet

John

[John Parfit]

Hi Jamie edit: oops, sorry Mathew)

We have many vinyl swatches collected over the years and I can’t find a match I’m afraid (not to say there isn’t one that we don’t have somewhere).

Seems an easy colour to match by printing though, our pantone to print via mimaki swatch gives pantone 2645 as near as dammit colour (271 a little dark) and it’s also matched perfect it seems on one of our r.g.b. via mimaki swatches. Of course each printer will print different colours dependant on profiles used and other factors (e.g. we use mactac profiles on 3M material, gives much better colours than 3M-3M or Mactac-Mactac) but at least it seems the colour is not one of those nasty ones to emulate.

Good luck

John

[John Parfit]

Thank you all for the information and advice, I will let you know how things progress.

I don’t do wrapping myself at the moment but help out the guy that does so I am learning slowly.

John

[John Parfit]

oops, spoke too soon, loosened evrything at lunchtime, front Ok but back side panels and rear seem to have something preventing from taking off, one point on each side around about at top where the roll cage thingy swoops above the window.

I pulled out the panel from the bottom and four clips came away each side but then it held tight at point I just mentioned, would take a lot of courage to try and pull harder if there is just another clip at this point.

Can anyone enlighten me please?

John

[John Parfit]

All sorted now thank you, panels off; hope they go on again.

John

[John Parfit]

Another thing to try Harry… go back to previous photopaint – global -associations and click on CDX as well as CDR (think it’s something like Corel Data Exchange) that might do it in x3… save as defaults, close and open again.

John

[John Parfit]

Will keep looking Harry, progress as you say.. this has helped us too I think, in looking around in options in coreldraw I noticed that our x4 had 25% of pc memory (3 gig) as maximum allocated to coreldraw, have altered that to 50% (6 Gig), maybe it will speed up working on big files.

Don’t know if you’ve tried but maybe insert your x3 disc and select ‘repair corelsuite or similar.

John

[John Parfit]

That’s a bummer…..

how about open photopaint, then tools-options-global-filters-associate… make sure cpt is ticked and no others are inc the one for windows paint.

John.

[John Parfit]

Did you only use f8 restore on coreldraw Harry, it’s likely lost the file association in photopaint so I would try starting photopaint with f8 pressed.

John

[John Parfit]

Fair point Kevin, I’m afraid I don’t know the difference between base roland printers and the pro series.

I do know the past difference though in the plotters, there was (15 years ago) a vast difference in the performance of base roland plotters and Mimakis in the same price range, the mimakis completely outclassed the roland camm 1’s , you had to move to roland pro cutters to get a similar performance ; but the roland pro cutters were significantly more expensive than base mimakis.

Perhaps it is still the same with printers, i.e. the versacamms are entry level but same price as the mimakis which have better qualities, similar to roland pro standard.

Difference is comparing like to like you also have to consider price to price and in this, in my own opinion, mimakis win out.

The difference in the rips is an added consideration but I find (albeit as a beginner with printer rips) that the rasterlink is user friendly; never used versaworks has to be said though.

john

[John Parfit]

Get a mimaki… no syringes, no babysitting, take up spool standard, no messing, no (or few) what ifs, no masking tape, no adjusting head heights, no need to turn heaters off which obviously would affect ink adhesion.
Just my opinion, (actually my boss’ opinion since we are sat here discussing this very topic when the post came up).

John

[John Parfit]

Oh, forgot to mention that the JMC ovens are available from Argos at £49 but I noticed that a similar oven at 12 litres (JMC 9.5 litres) is available from Argos too at same price so I have ordered that, should fit more mugs in I expect.

John

[John Parfit]

quote Earl Smith:

I bought one wrap for each size mug but then tried it without the wrap . When the transfer is tightly wrapped on the mug the result was the same or better as the heat comes directly to the mug . Must wrap the entire mug or the mug is discoloured near the handle.

Earl

Hello Earl

Good advice and also from the other members too.

I am unused to sub printing. Could you please tell me what you mean by wrapping the entire mug; is there a special wrapping material to use or do you mean wrapping the entire mug in the blue heat resistant tape; surely that would be a pretty expensive way to do it so I presume I am not understanding something here.

Thank you

John

[John Parfit]

Hello

It opens for us in X5 but not in X4.

I think the easiest way is to select the part that has the complete text string (there are lots of other parts that you don’t want) and contour this at a judged distance then adjust until it goes just around the outline. Break this apart so you have cut line, then select text string again and contour a little larger than last time, break apart again and fill new contour with outside colour and place to the rear, this will give you a bleed for cutting.

Hope that makes sense.

John

[John Parfit]

Select everything Mo, you will see at top of page lots of rectangles, click the one that has black and white rectangle (create boundary), this will draw round the edge of all selected bits, it might create a fill too which you just set to no fill and there is your cutting line.

John

[John Parfit]

Hi

I am just learning corel and have had this to do only today.

The way I did it (and it perhaps is not the right way) is;-

Convert a copy of your image in draw to black and white line art in photopaint, save and then simply trace this image in coreltrace using sliders to adjust accuracy etc.

Place the trace over the picture, copy the picture, enlarge slightly and place to back to provide a bleed.

Hope that helps

John.

[John Parfit]

Hi
Just saw this..

There are other similar to diamond grade, higher grade than engineering which can easily be cut on a ‘normal’ plotter, know that because I am cutting a never ending roll of it at the moment; 🙄 cut the right way up, slow and once with high downforce, then with application paper over it after normal weeding.

John

[John Parfit]

In the red cross I think you have hit on one of the few symbols that is heavily protected, more so than large brand names. The red cross (and a few other logos) is a symbol of protection for certain organisations working in disputed/war zones and is enshrined in articles of the Geneva convention.
Although I assume the area in which Phil operates is not a designated war zone, you can appreciate that the red cross and other recognised protection markings cannot be used randomly or legally to adorn things.

The ‘cross of St. George is not a red cross but two red bands across a flag, the red cross would be just that, a red cross in the middle of a flag.

Got that from a guy who happened to work in that field.

John

[John Parfit]

Hello again

Sorry about the delay in responding but I don’t get the chance to log on too often.

Thanks again for your ‘welcomes’.

We are 6 or 7 miles from Durham Derek, close enough to the A1 to be able to cover all of the North East really.

John

[John Parfit]

Thank you for the warm welcome folks, it’s great to scroll through the vast amount of information on here, picked up some good tips on weeding especially, it was one of the posts that I could have helped with but everyone else was so fast in helping that I missed my first chance to contribute with the little I’ve learned so far.
Next time perhaps.

John