Can a SummaCut D120 make contour cuts on chrome vinyl?

[RG]

I got in my Summa D120R plotter a couple of weeks ago. It contour cuts regular printed vinyl perfectly. When I printed a small contour cut job on some chrome vinyl, it is not able to read the registration marks. Is there a fix for this? Thanks.

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

You have to trick the media. My guess is whatever reads the marks is getting too much reflection from the chrome. Your going to need to help the machine to read the marks. Matte lam or regular transparent tape sometimes works. Or transfer tape over the marks and redraw the marks on top of the transfer tape. Either way your going to want to have a large enough piece that it doesn't accidentally read the edge of the tape as the mark. There are different ways you can trick it. Its basically the same issue you have when trying to print and cut reflective decals.

 

[Tizz]

I got in my Summa D120R plotter a couple of weeks ago. It contour cuts regular printed vinyl perfectly. When I printed a small contour cut job on some chrome vinyl, it is not able to read the registration marks. Is there a fix for this? Thanks.

I'v experienced the same with reflective vinyl. The light when reading the crop marks bounces off the material.
You will need to recalibrate the crop mark reader.
In the user manual there is a section to recalibrate by printing a square in black on the substrate and working through the menu options to read this and save the settings.

 

[RG]

Thanks, Tizz and Big Easy. When I first set up the plotter, I printer the black square on the vinyl that I normally use for printing. If I do that again with a black square on the chrome vinyl, will that throw off the way I have already registered it for reading my usual vinyl? Or, can I have 2 settings, one for the chrome, and one for my usual printed vinyl? Thanks for your help.

 

[Tizz]

Hey RG,
I'm not so sure we can have two settings. I believe once it has been recalibrated thats the setting in place.
So far since re-doing mine with the reflective vinyl I haven't changed the settings back. Still reads the standard substrate I normally use for contour cutting.

 

[jerry369]

can I have 2 settings, one for the chrome, and one for my usual printed vinyl?

With SummaCut you can set up to 4 different users (8 with S Class), each with its own configuration and switch from one user to another as needed.

 

[RG]

Thanks, Jerry. Can you give me some directions as to how to set up for different users? The owners manual isn't very clear as to this. Especially, I don't see how to switch users.

 

[jerry369]

Press Menu, use the up or down arrow until "User" is shown at the display, press Enter, press Left or Right arrow to change user, press Enter to select it. The asterisk before the user indicates the current user.

You can set different configurations (everyone with its own pressure, velocity, OPOS sensibility etc etc) for every user and switch from one to another by changing the current user.

 

[FrankW]

When calibrating media, you can choose to measure or set a calibration value. If choosing to set a value, you can check too what value is currently applied and note it. Then calibrate the chrome media, and after doing the cuts you can set the calibration back to the noted value. Good idea would be to make a notice about the chrome media value too, so the next time you don‘t need to measure again.

But, of course, using another user is a good idea too.

 

[RG]

Thanks to everyone for your input. I found and switched users easy enough. When I tried to calibrate the chrome media, 2 out of 3 times I got this message: "This media cannot be sensed with OPUS." After the one time that it did "sense" the chrome media, I sent a file and it was still not able to find the 1st registration mark. My 12 year old Graphtec FC-7000 has a feature that lets you manually direct a red laser to the 4 registration marks. I've been doing that for years. Does Summa have that feature?

 

[jerry369]

Does Summa have that feature?

There are three more alignment methods besides OPOS X and OPOS XY. They are manual alignment methods (they do not use the OPOS sensor), the user must manually indicate the marks:

X-Alignment and XY-Alignment: compensate errors in media alignment, (rotation of the media or of the graphic)
XY-Adjustment: compensate graphic rotation, skew, and scale (your software must indicate to the plotter the distance between marks)

see: SummaCutter User Guide, chapter 4.3.4.11 Media Sensor.

 

[DrunknMonk]

we use App tape (transfer paper) over the marks