Edge2 noise while printing

[peewee the pinstriper]

This is a run of about 7' about 3/4's way into it the Edge stops but continues to make spooling noises and then continues to print.. What could it be? I'm running Windows7 and all the right cables..Never did this before.. machine has aprox 6,000 minutes.. I ran another set of these and it did it in about the same spots..

I clipped the video to just show what was going on.. This happened on another job also.. http://vimeo.com/21142059

 

[Fred Weiss]

What is happening is that the Edge is downloading more data from the GQMgr spooler on your computer and printing pauses while this is happening. If you open GQMgr you will see it happen. During this pause, the foil motor does continue to run, for whatever reason, but the foil is not being advanced. The pause will not happen during every job because sometimes the size of the job does not exceed the capacity of the memory buffer in the Edge and it all gets downloaded in one shot.

 

[Tony Teveris]

Peewee - from GspPlot save the job as a spool file (under the File menu) and send me the spool file. I'll try it here.

 

[natedawg9640]

if you are printing a linked picture for example of higher resolution, if you send the job and then start it right away while the image is still "sending", the printer will do that at the end of that pass untill the next color pass is sent over, where-as if you wait untill the all the color passes are ripped (or if they complete while the first one is still printing) it won't do that. no harm either way, the foil doesn't advance.

 

[Marlene]

I had this happen a lot and the Edge doesn't start back up again, it just makes the noise and that's that. Tony had me go to my computer/system/advanced/performance/settings/advanced/virtual memory/change/set itital size to 3900 and max size to 4500.

that and always creating a spool file on the plot page to print from worked
I still have it happen once in a while, but not like before

 

[Tony Teveris]

I printed both of the spool files and had no problem. Now I printed from spool files while Peewee most likely printed straight to the printed (it still makes spool file(s)) but with a pre ripped spool file the computer is not ripping and printing at the same time. Also, know Peewee's computer its no slow engine so either the computer is doing something else to slow / stop the communications to the printer or I'm full of it.

Virus scans, etc

If anyone else has this problem the first thing to do is make a spool file and print/cut from it. I think the printer is starving and the pausing should be accuring at 12" or 6" intervals depending upon print resolution (300 or 600)

 

[peewee the pinstriper]

Thank you Tony!

 

[graphixplus]

clean out your setpath

 

[peewee the pinstriper]

Setpath? I'm lost..

 

[Marlene]

Setpath? I'm lost..

find your seppath folder and delete the files there

 

[Tony Teveris]

It's OK to clean it out but in no way has it to do with the pausing, believe me.

We have thought many times about getting rid of these files and not creating them at all. All they really do is provide for faster rendering of a repeated job that contains image(s).

When rendering occurs and the job contains image(s) the IMOs are the result of the original image color corrected, rotated and channel separated. They really are Windows bitmaps.

When a job is rendered and nothing has changed the image rendering just reuses these files, if something changed or they are not there they get created again.

This was done in the early days when computers were slow, today I'm not sure we need these any more.

 

[peewee the pinstriper]

Thank again folks.. But I couldn't even locate them in windows7 if I had to.. Yes I'm a 'tard. Thank one more time Tony!

 

[Mike Paul]

I imagine your ripping from Omega but this may help...

I used Flexi to print to my Edge 2 for years and had that pause issue when I was beta testing for them years ago. When it happened, a very thin vertical pixel line would appear in the prints. When they released 7.6v2 many issues with Edge printing were fixed including the pause problem.

A year or two later I sent my Edge in for a head replacement. When it came back and I hooked it up the pause issue was back. Damn! Not sure what was going on. I believe it was a Gerber tech that suggested a factory reset for the Edge using the hidden button in the keypad. The reset fixed the pause problem. Give it a shot, it may work for you.

 

[peewee the pinstriper]

Will the reset effect other things?

 

[Tony Teveris]

Gerber's special folders can be found by using the Windows Start menu/Gerber Omega 4.00/Gerber Folder Locations/ then a bunch of folders are listed. Selecting one of these will then bring up Windows Explorer to that folder.

These location are different between an XP system and Vista/Windows 7.

Reset will not effect or hurt anything. It will just put things back to factor settings.

 

[The Equipment Guy]

Tony,

Maybe a setting at the start that would allow the user to decide whether Omega keeps the seppaths or not on an ongoing basis would be good. For most signshop users the seppaths are redundant now.

I have a few customers that have product lines that they use the Edge for and they print a half dozen or so files and believe in keeping the seppaths.

Yes, I do tell them about spooling etc. but most industrial types end up working out their work flow after training and by the time I am back, they seem set in a system.

Overall, I would be fine with seeing them disappear.

Craig