Difficulty getting Summa T160 to cut correctly – suggestions?

[JPR-5690]

Its...one of those days
I can't figure out why our T160 can't seem to stay in alignment for this small sticker job and hoping someone on here can tell me what I should be doing differently.
I ran 100ft worth of stickers last week without any issues so Im pulling my hair out trying to figure out what the issue is.

The order is for 200 each of 4 different stickers, contour cut on a 3x3" backer.
I imposed the file manually in InDesign so I could draw a grid of flex-cut lines to make them easier to tear out.
The final files are ~50in x 34in. (4 files total, 1 for each design)
Printed and cut using Caldera, HP560 on Mactac matte rebel with matte lam, OPOS XY2 enabled in Caldera, outer pinch rollers are on high pressure.


First I had OPOS panelling set to "4 marks" and none of the flex lines lined up between panels – they were at least 1/4" off. Cancelled cutting after 3 rows because the flex lines started going into the image.

Then I turned off OPOS panelling and turned on regular panelling. The kiss cut starts out ok but the flex lines are immediately way off. Cancelled the job by the 4th row.

Next I turned off panelling entirely and only do the kiss cut. It stays in alignment for the most part, although the last row has ~1mm shift in the borders.
When I run it through the second pass for the flex cut, the first few lines are good but it gradually gets worse - the last vertical line goes through the printed image.

I have one sheet left that was kiss cut the same time as the previous one, so again - the kiss cut starts off ok but is a little off by the end of the sheet.
Haven't flex cut it yet so I can use it to test out any suggestions I find on here.

So yeah, any tips on what I should be doing differently?
(my main guess is smaller imposed "sheet" sizes, but am I wrong for being surprised that this thing can't cut 200 stickers within a 54x30" area?)

 

[Saturn]

Get down at bellybutton level and look at how flat the material is staying on the surface of the cutter as it cuts. If the sheet is lifting/bowing/deforming/pushing around as the blade cuts, then that's going to have a very negative effect on things. Flex cuts and anything going all the way through the material is going to do this worse than just kiss cuts. A lot of us find that 2-3 passes of a regular cut gives better (and often faster and cleaner) results than the Flex Cut option.

I'd stop and do some testing with rebuilt files on just one row of stickers/cuts. If you can perfectly cut that one row, then I'd lean more towards a file issue or material movement issue than OPOS. I'd also try it with paneling completely off, if you haven't already.

 

[JPR-5690]

Get down at bellybutton level and look at how flat the material is staying on the surface of the cutter as it cuts. If the sheet is lifting/bowing/deforming/pushing around as the blade cuts, then that's going to have a very negative effect on things. Flex cuts and anything going all the way through the material is going to do this worse than just kiss cuts. A lot of us find that 2-3 passes of a regular cut gives better (and often faster and cleaner) results than the Flex Cut option.

I'd stop and do some testing with rebuilt files on just one row of stickers/cuts. If you can perfectly cut that one row, then I'd lean more towards a file issue or material movement issue than OPOS. I'd also try it with paneling completely off, if you haven't already.

Meaning you run a kiss cut over the same path multiple times?

Curious how you do this, if it means I can impose the job in the RIP instead of having to do it manually Im all about it.
(only time/reason I impose manually is so I can set up the flex cut as "butt cuts")

- do you run the material through multiple times manually or is there a way to do this automatically?
- do you increase blade depth/pressure each time?

 

[Saturn]

Meaning you run a kiss cut over the same path multiple times?

Yup!

I impose everything in Illustrator and then send my "sheet" to the RIP (ONYX) for the regmarks and barcode. This obviously makes it easy to choose 2 or 3 cuts (one right after the other) by stacking the cut line on the art before stepping and repeating across rows and columns. Doing all the sheet imposing manually takes an extra 30-60 seconds per job, but allows me the ability to always maximize space on a sheet.

Curious how you do this, if it means I can impose the job in the RIP instead of having to do it manually Im all about it.

Some RIP's have the ability to change the number of cuts right in the setup (like Flexi) and some do not (ONYX.) Ultimately I still found it useful to do it all the "hard" way in Illustrator.

For the hardware side, you just have the machine set so that one cut would be hard to pop out and not the cleanest of edges—two cuts is a perfect balance between staying in the sheet and popping out clean and easy—and three cuts popping out almost too well or for really complex/delicate shapes. I run 95% of stuff with two cuts.

Using "regular" kiss cuts over Flex Cut is way faster and cleaner looking, especially if you are in the habit of making cut lines that really flow well and have no sharp corners. Depending on the sharpness of the blade tip, I usually run 200-400 grams pressure for laminated ~3mil stuff. Speed is always at 400mm/s.