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FC8000 Cannot find crop marks

LittleSnakey

New Member
Anybody else having trouble with the ARMS system. We have about a 50/50 chance of it finding the marks the first time. We print on a VP540 using Flexi for the rip.
 

tooserious

Premium Subscriber
I have the FC7000 but I sometimes have trouble..with glossy and or colors.....put the ARMS knife inside both lines not right on them to start
 

jiarby

New Member
I have luck with a flashlight pointed at the blade holder. With overhead lighting the cutting head creates a shadow where the optical sensor is looking. Try it! I use an "OTT Light" and also added a magnet backing from a name badge to hold a small flashlight to the side of the lamp and point right at the blade holder.
 

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jjwstar

New Member
i have the 7000 & like to confirm where to align the plotter head to scan the registration mark?
is it the knife holder between the mark? or the RMS point?
 

jiarby

New Member
I put my blade holder where indicated and then the ARMS scans over the marks.... If I get much closer it jumps past it and I get a Mark Error
 

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ProWraps

New Member
blade goes in between the marks. if yours cant find the marks no matter what you do, take a ruler and a FINE point pen such as a Precise V5 from Pilot, and redraw the marks on top of the lam.
 

LittleSnakey

New Member
Thats where we are starting at also. Most of the time it will find 2-3 of the marks and sometimes if we hit retry it will find the rest. Sometimes it just starts cutting without reading the marks. Sometimes it reads all the marks and cuts waaaaaay off. I can send the same exact job from the product manager in flext and get different results, sometimes it works sometimes it does not. We have tried unplugging the cutter, sanding the marks, turning off the lights, reseting the factory settings. Nothing can make this work consistantly tech is coming in friday.
Thanks for the help!



I put my blade holder where indicated and then the ARMS scans over the marks.... If I get much closer it jumps past it and I get a Mark Error
 

Bill Modzel

New Member
Are you sure that there's no dirt or fuzz on the light? Just a thought.
I have a FC7000 and if I'm anywhere close to square lining up the vinyl it always
finds the marks. Glossy, matt, laminated, whatever.
I'm using Cutting Master out of Illustrator for my cutting instead of my RIP. I ran 125 yards of 3x4 inch decals last week set up in sheets of 60 per without a glitch.
 

LittleSnakey

New Member
Bill,
I use Flexi 8.6 for design and rip. So are you saying you save the contour cut as a plt file from your rip then load into cut master?
What do you use to rip?
 

Bill Modzel

New Member
Not really. CuttingMaster is Graphtec's driver for Illustrator. It basically cuts whatever you place on a cut layer. The plug in won't work in Flexi.
 

jasonx

New Member
Does this happen when doing an ARMS test from the machines panel or only from sending from flexi?
 

TresL

New Member
I was having issues with a FC7000.
It would scan the first mark fine about 75% of the time, then error on the others.

I put some matte lam over the reg marks(print with oracal 210 gloss lam), and it completed scan fine several times in a row.

Tried the dark room trick with no luck as well.

For those that never use Flexi, Cut Master is based from the Flexi production manager.
 

LittleSnakey

New Member
Jason, havn't tried that yet. I'll give it a try tomorrow with the tech.

Bill, We are only having trouble with print/laminate/cut process, it cuts fine on just cut vinyl without crop marks.

How do you send print files from Illistrator with no rip?

Tresl. I did notice the cut master looked just like flexi 7 product manager.




Does this happen when doing an ARMS test from the machines panel or only from sending from flexi?
 

Bill Modzel

New Member
I don't print from Illy, I design in Illy and set my registration marks from cuttingmaster in the file. I open and print the file in Posterjet on my HP9000s with the cut layer "turned off".

After the prints dry and maybe laminated, I load it in the Graphtec and aline the knife within the first registration mark. I reopen the same file in Illustrator "turn on" the cut layer and off the rest of the layers except the registration layer which cuttingmaster built and send the file to cut.
 

Graphicdetailsinc

New Member
Here is what we do.

1. Align the media and rear set.
2. place origin at the x, this way all your marks are within what the machine is seeing as workable area.
3. The machine goes to origin and then starts swiping diagonal to find mark and by the second swipe sees the mark and continues from there.

Works Every time!

we used to set the origin inside the marks, and it was inconsistent.

Give it a try!!

also lighting really should make no difference, there is a small black guard around the laser that drops and guards that spot, so adding or removing light should make no change. Another tip for reflective or super high gloss is to add 3M magic scotch tape. It is a semi matt finish clear tape and seems to help a lot on reflective.
 

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LittleSnakey

New Member
Thants the way we are doing it also.
Yesterday it just started cutting without even trying to read the marks and cut way off. then I sent the same job again (same piece of print, and same job file in flexi) and it read the marks and cut perfect.
Still waiting for the tech to get here.


Here is what we do.

1. Align the media and rear set.
2. place origin at the x, this way all your marks are within what the machine is seeing as workable area.
3. The machine goes to origin and then starts swiping diagonal to find mark and by the second swipe sees the mark and continues from there.

Works Every time!

we used to set the origin inside the marks, and it was inconsistent.

Give it a try!!

also lighting really should make no difference, there is a small black guard around the laser that drops and guards that spot, so adding or removing light should make no change. Another tip for reflective or super high gloss is to add 3M magic scotch tape. It is a semi matt finish clear tape and seems to help a lot on reflective.
 

LittleSnakey

New Member
latest responce from graphtec
Black is me, blue them


problems we are having

sometimes it will find all marks and cut off using Cutting Master 2 see if same issue,

sometimes it will just start cutting without reading the marks when in ready mode, press Menu >> Up arrow >> Command >> HP-GL >> Enter >> Menu.

sometimes it has a very hard time finding the marks. See attached for positioning of the print



I really don't have to start using another design program causing double the work and hard drive space used. Its difficult to fix a cutter that’s nothing wrong with it, or to isolate the exact cause, let’s give Cutting Master 2 a try to see if different software fix the problem or not.



Thank You for your help. sorry to sound mad
 
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