Contour cuts at 40 inches

[autoexebat]

Any time I dare to try to do a contour cut at 40 inches in length it's always off , Usually I never dare to even go to 40 as I know it will fail , but doing UTV graphics for the Can-Am X3 some of these parts are very big .

Is there a trick that I haven't learned since 2013 when I bought the printer ? maybe stiffer springs to lock down the material so it doesn't move ? The crop marks don't even have lamination on them so I can't blame the lamination .

Any idea's of what I may be able to do to prevent this ? I have the Roland VS300i ( 30 INCH )

 

[IsItFasst]

I had a hard time with prints being off even on shorter runs if there were lots of cuts. I swapped out my pinch rollers and it made it exponentially more accurate. I feel it's more accurate now down the length of the roll compared to the width. Coincidentally I own an X3.

 

[autoexebat]

Can you tell me what rollers you got and where you got them ? Since mine are 6 years old maybe they are worn and need replacing ?

 

[woolly]

they look fun.
what type of material are you using on them. what pressure does it take to cut.
do you use extra rollers when cutting, on the vs540 you can get 7 rollers in.
as a note if you change the rollers the outer ones are conical and need to be the right way round there is a red dot on the side.

 

[autoexebat]

I'm cutting around 12mil right now , It's a 30 inch printer so adding 3 more rollers may be tricky , but honestly from day 1 when the printer was brand new it was doing the same thing ... so now I can answer my own question LOL ... I totally forgot that its been a problem for years . From looking at my printer right now I can see that I could add 1 more .

 

[woolly]

with the 540 came new with 5 extra rollers to plug in as required, presumed the 300 would come with 2 extra.
i have two 540s and would expect the cut to be no more out than 1 mm at 40 odd ins length.
over the years you have probably learnt these but just in case.. slow it down and slow the up speed very important. its quite a weight to be swishing about.
double check quality of knife and holder. very acute angles can drag it off line, if the pressure is above 150 expect problems unless all else perfect., not too much knife sticking out that causes the vinyl to drag a bit.
clean the bed bit of polish dont go amiss so the vinyl slides easily over the cutting strip whilst under the cutting pressure.

we cut most types of vinyls inc mx stuff just watch whats going on, as a test rather than cut put a pen in as there is no cutting pressures involved will help you find your problem, if the pen marks the vinyl in all the right places then not the reading of the marks at fault.

 

[autoexebat]

Yeah it's not the blade , I pay the $30.00 each for the ZEC sand blast blade . As far as speed I have it on 1 , as slow as it can go . I didn't get extra rollers with my printer .

No problems with anything until I get about 35 to 40 inches .

 

[woolly]

other possibility is feed rates set in the printer or vw, in theory the way roland work the cut path after its read the marks should equal it out.

 

[autoexebat]

If I had extra material to waste I would try to setup 2 cut passes since the pressure would be reduced , but I don't think you can just take the pressure of 150 and divide it into half as use that as 1 cut pass.

You'd think the crop marks would keep it straight , I may try to 2 cut pass and see what it does ... Substance material is very expensive .

 

[woolly]

ok substance superb material but likes to be kept flat not bending over the bed as you would standard materials, when we used to cut that on a graphtec i built on to it tops (shelf's) so the material stayed flat as it fed in and out, we now use a flat bed for the mx so we can cut then second pass perfcut with very very few mishaps.
notice if there is any bunching of the material near the rollers a sure sign its going off. try and do all your testing with cheap materials

 

[autoexebat]

I wanted to do a flat top but the cheapest one I could find was 17 grand !!!! I'd buy one if I could find a decent price . I have at least 900 full ATV and MX files and hundreds of templates if you need anything .

 

[woolly]

meant to say if you cant get it correct on $2 worth of material dont put in $20 worth

 

[woolly]

thanks for the offer see how it goes. keeping the material flat was the big jump forward for us tape a couple of bits of sign board on the machine to test vinyl boxes for legs. then build something better if good., was trying to find pic to show

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

meant to say if you cant get it correct on $2 worth of material dont put in $20 worth

This doesn't always work... we could NEVER get print & cut to be accurate on our VS-540 with 3M IJ1220-10G vinyl. Nothing we did could get it to cut accurately.
However, every single other vinyl worked fine. Sure they all cost more, but at least they worked.

 

[54warrior]

When I nest everything for print on substance, I never go beyond 36". Like you said though, it's tough. Sometimes the pieces for an X3 and other SXS's are very large and it's unavoidable.

 

[autoexebat]

Very true , I could always try to make a table ! It sounds as if the weight of the material is making it shift to a side causing it to go off . Being said stiffer springs in the rollers , or over sized wheels could help as it would grab more . It's not an everyday deal since I dont sell them too much , but eventually I'd like to figure it out.