Contour HELP!!

[Graphicdetailsinc]

Ok i have flexisign 7.6v2 sp2 and a FC7000mk2-130

i am printing my images on a mutoh falcon outdoor and i CANNOT get it to work together!!

When i rip and print i send them as seperate jobs, have tried graphtec type 1 and type 2 automatic marks, making sure the cutter had the same setting, and no matter what i do it wont get beyond finding the first reg mark.

I get a mark scan error. I am printing on oracal 3651 media and my marks are set to cyan.

i have called graphtec and they had me do an auto scan direct from the machine, this works fine! so thier passing the buck and say its not thier machines fault call flexi.

Flexi says 7.6v2 isnt supported any longer buy the new one!

Any help??

also i have tried hooking up the machine via parallel cable/usb and over my print server, none of wich make any diference.

Every time it scans and finds mark 1 then goes to mark 2 and i get the error

 

[Graphicdetailsinc]

I have about 5 jobs backed up as i have been setting up the new machines, and i really am in need of getting this to work...



Thanks Everyone for you time with my other problems this site it great!

 

[gvgraphics]

Just to see what happens, change the reg marks to black and see if it will read them.

 

[Jackpine]

Listen to gvgraphic, he knows what he is saying!

 

[Bogie]

How big is the registration mark that the thing is printing? How big is the registration mark that the Graphtec expects? That was the issue I had with my setup.

 

[msrobere]

Also make sure you have extra material on the back side of the print. Don't cut it off to close to the registration marks or it won't work either.
There are times when i think i have enough and have to add a piece on to make it longer.

 

[bob]

Assuming you have up to date firmware in you plotter and your Flexi is at least build 854, just how large is this print? Why the cyan marks? Use black. Is there any part of the print that extends into the path between marks 1 and 2, 1 and 3, and 3 and 4. Even a small piece of crud will screw things up.

After a massive bout of finger pointing between Scanvec and Graphtec both released an update which was supposed to expand the mark search area. This combination of fixes seems to make prints in the 36" or range detect the registration marks with acceptable accuracy. Before these two fixes anything over 24" was a crap shoot. I should think it has to do with the printer media feed not being dead on calibrated. If you print, say, a 36" line in the X direction, is it really 36"? It doesn't take much in the way of discrepancy between actual size and the size Flexi thinks it is to cause the registration to fail. Flexi goes to where it thinks the mark should be and if it isn't there, it scans a relatively small area looking for it. If it doesn't find the mark, you lose.

For anything larger than ~36" this I make the contour path just a regular path, white usually, and print my own type 2 marks at the four corners of a rectangle, also white, of known size. Load the print into the plotter and invoke the Auto Reg button. This will read my marks 99.9% of the time. Then send the known rectangle and the contour path to the plotter as a vanilla cut job. For the .1% of the time this also fails, I use the Manual option of the Auto Reg feature of the plotter and position the blade at each of the four marks in turn. This has never failed.

Before going to the technique I tossed a lot of prints on the burn pile. If Flexi would merely publish the size of the rectangle described by the registration marks you could salvage a print that didn't read correctly. But it doesn't and you can't.

 

[Graphicdetailsinc]

you can re-send a print / cut job you all know this right????

Just under cutter options you change it from send as seperate jobs to contour only and you can try try try again and again till it finds the marks...without having to reprint the job...


anyhow the only thing i am finding is that i set my mark size to .40 its as close to .375 as i have the option to make it. I set this on the graphtec. Now if i do a auto scan it will find all 4 marks.
When i send the job from flexi, it will change the mark size value to .2 and the auto scan WONT WORK!
Is there a way to change the value in flexi??
any other ideas?? where can i get the patches your talking about???

 

[bob]

you can re-send a print / cut job you all know this right????

Just under cutter options you change it from send as seperate jobs to contour only and you can try try try again and again till it finds the marks...without having to reprint the job...


anyhow the only thing i am finding is that i set my mark size to .40 its as close to .375 as i have the option to make it. I set this on the graphtec. Now if i do a auto scan it will find all 4 marks.
When i send the job from flexi, it will change the mark size value to .2 and the auto scan WONT WORK!
Is there a way to change the value in flexi??
any other ideas?? where can i get the patches your talking about???

It shouldn't matter if the actual mark is larger than the specified mark size, only if it's smaller. Think of it a 'At least this size.'

The Flexi update should be incorporated into build 854.

The Graphtec patch I downloaded from their web site eons ago. It wasn't touted by Graphtec as a specific fix for the, heaven forfend they should admit to anything, but it did fix it. Sorry but I can't for the life of me remember just which update it was.

 

[Graphicdetailsinc]

If it were an "at least size" then it should be working at .2

if i do an auto scan on the graphtec at .2 it doesnt work
if i do it at .4 it does work.

is there anyway that i can change the settings in flexi si it sends a .4 to the graphtec instead of a .2?

 

[Graphicdetailsinc]

I figured it out. My prints were comig out the wrong size

My y axis was distorted. If i printed a 12x12 square it was coming out 12x11.5

Production manager has a setting called output size compensation where you print out an large L. and measure the vertice and horizontal size and enter it. It auto corrects ant output size distortions.

this corrected my sizes and now my countour searches and finds the marks and works GREAT!!