• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

FC-8000 Cutting Issues

Matt-Tastic

New Member
Whenever I have a new Graphtec that just "acts funny", I always do a factory reset:

shut down
restart holding up and down (should come up with a settings menu)
press the 1 key 3 times)
shut down
restart

it will clear your condition settings (and change your command/step size settings), but once you set it back, things usually work a lot better. Also, if you're using ONYX 10, make sure you've got the patches ONYX put on their downloads page.
 

bob

It's better to have two hands than one glove.
This plotter is the most tempermental POS ive ever used. This thing is garbage....

No, it's not. You have to have at least a minimal understanding of just what it going on when software directed automatic mark sensing is going on.

After reading the first mark the software moves the plotter to where it thinks the next mark should be. It then searches in a small area around that position. If the mark is not where the software thinks it is then it fails.

This can be the result of the media feed rate and optional feed compensation set by you being substantially different between the printer and the potter. In English that means that what the printer thinks is, say, one foot is not what the plotter thinks is one foot. The further the distance between the marks and the less square the media is loaded, relative to the marks not the media, contribute to this.

The biggest issue with missing the marks is that the software, at least all I've seen, does not publish the size of the bounding rectangle described by the marks. If it did it would be a simple matter, after an automatic sensing failure, to use the plotter's automatic or manual sensing. In order to do that the logical [what the software thinks] size of that rectangle must be known.

You can always print your own marks at the corners of a rectangle, the size of which is known by you, make the contour path not a contour cut, use the plotter's automatic or manual sensing, and then cut that path. Hint: Make the contour path a color other than black and then cut only this color. This avoids cutting the marks along with the contour path. This method seldom if ever, fails. Whenever I have a longish print, say over 4-5 feet long, I use this method.

If you're printing on other than white media, like silver or etched or whatever, you can specify using manual four point registration, ala bomb sight, and use the plotter's built in light pen to manually locate the marks. If you do carefully this is every bit as accurate as automatic mark sensing either from the software or using the plotter's build in capability.
 

Case

New Member
No, it's not. You have to have at least a minimal understanding of just what it going on when software directed automatic mark sensing is going on.

After reading the first mark the software moves the plotter to where it thinks the next mark should be. It then searches in a small area around that position. If the mark is not where the software thinks it is then it fails.

This can be the result of the media feed rate and optional feed compensation set by you being substantially different between the printer and the potter. In English that means that what the printer thinks is, say, one foot is not what the plotter thinks is one foot. The further the distance between the marks and the less square the media is loaded, relative to the marks not the media, contribute to this.

The biggest issue with missing the marks is that the software, at least all I've seen, does not publish the size of the bounding rectangle described by the marks. If it did it would be a simple matter, after an automatic sensing failure, to use the plotter's automatic or manual sensing. In order to do that the logical [what the software thinks] size of that rectangle must be known.

You can always print your own marks at the corners of a rectangle, the size of which is known by you, make the contour path not a contour cut, use the plotter's automatic or manual sensing, and then cut that path. Hint: Make the contour path a color other than black and then cut only this color. This avoids cutting the marks along with the contour path. This method seldom if ever, fails. Whenever I have a longish print, say over 4-5 feet long, I use this method.

If you're printing on other than white media, like silver or etched or whatever, you can specify using manual four point registration, ala bomb sight, and use the plotter's built in light pen to manually locate the marks. If you do carefully this is every bit as accurate as automatic mark sensing either from the software or using the plotter's build in capability.


Bob hit it dead on... Honestly, most people just don't know what they are doing sorry to say...
 
Top