Contour cutting Magnetic

[CBilkes]

Hey everyone, hoping for some insight here. I'm running a Roland SG540 and attempting to print and cut some .030 magnetic on a 24" wide roll. I'm having a few issues after doing my own R&D to see what the best method is.

I'm using a 60 degree blade, cut speed 5cm/s. Issues I'm experiencing is the cut paths are being dragged off of their designated areas, either due to the weight of the magnetic sheet or the fact that the magnetic material itself is trying to grip itself to the metal print bed as it moved back and forth. To mediate the latter, I've cut a sheet of 6mil vinyl to run underneath it so it can slide more freely, as well as fashioned some shields from card stock that I've attached both in front of and behind the print/cut area.

Another issue I cant seem to get around is that the blade is dragging across the prints and scraping up the material, but if I raise the blade up in the holster it won't cut the material during the cut phase.

Any tips or advice would be super appreciated if any of you have attempted to do this. Thanks!

 

[Solventinkjet]

Those cutters are simply not designed to cut such material. You'd want a flatbed cutter for cutting magnet.

 

[rjssigns]

Those cutters are simply not designed to cut such material. You'd want a flatbed cutter for cutting magnet.

This ^^^^

 

[CBilkes]

I figured this might be the case. My local retailer for sign and print products told me it would be fine to do as long as I only score the material and then manually break away the magnets. It has actually been working pretty well up until yesterday. I'm going to try the process on some .020 magnetic and hopefully alleviate some of these issues.

 

[Joe House]

You'll only be able to do small batches this way. Cut your job up into 2 foot sections or so and don't try to pull this material off the roll - run it as separate sheets. If you're going to try to do any kind of quantities, either sub it out or get the flat bed plotter as recommended above.

 

[brdesign]

With .030 mag the weight of the material can cause it to slip under the rollers on the plotter. I have done small batches with two people, one standing on each side of the plotter to support the weight of the magnetic material and to hold it off any steel parts of the plotter. Even then just score the material and break it apart later.

 

[signheremd]

Lots of good advice already. I will add that you can put 2-3 layers of transfer tape on the back of the magnetic and then it does not magnetically stick to the machine while cutting. For certain, be careful as too much weight will cause issues. Also, someone here previously posted a tip to tape one of those cleaning sticks to the plotter near the blade so that it presses gently down on material smile - this tip did not work for me, but you may want to try it. Last thing is make sure you are using all your wheels over grit rollers to help the machine handle the weight.