Hello everyone, first post on these forums! Well a little information about myself and the company I work part time for...
My name is Ryan and I work for a vehicle lettering/pin striping/sign company here in Chicago. It is a family business and I work part time as a computer tech/vinyl weeder/printer. Having said that we have two Graphtec 24" plotters and finally took the plunge and invested in the Mimaki CJV-30-130 and Seal 54" laminater (after realizing we were loosing some jobs that required digital printing). Quite a lot to embrace at first as we have only worked with SignLab 7.1 and had to quickly transition to Adobe Illustrator and Fine Cut/Rasterlink. Well it has been about a 2 months and we are very happy with the Mimaki. We have gotten pretty fluent with Adobe as well as Fine cut. However we have run into a few quirks if you will and I want to see if anyone has any ideas on how to resolve these issues.
The first one seems to be a semi-common problem among the CJVs, that is cutting. When doing a simple rectangular sticker with a black outline (with bleed over) the cutter never gets equal amounts of border. The top is almost always less than the bottom. Now I have tried recalibrating the laser light for the registration mark finder and I have reduced the cutting speed per the manual. Crop mark detection is set to 4pt in Rasterlink. We are not really concerned about cut speed, rather cut accuracy. Is there anything to improve cutting accuracy that I have not done already?
Second, we do not print everyday. Usually we print every other day but rarely everyday. having said that, coming back into the shop after a weekend and printing on a Monday, we quickly found out the head gets a tad bit clogged. We have got into the habit of test printing before each print (first print of the day only) and if print doesn't look good, we do a custody wash. Now my question is, is this normal? I'm thinking it is not and I believe the culprit is when it does a cycle during sleep mode, it only does it every two days. Should I move that up to every 24 hrs to avoid a clogged nozzle? It is a very minimal problem, a 5-10 minute custody wash clears the problem up but I still feel it is not normal to have to do that.
And finally my third question is about the Seal laminator, which I know this isn't the correct area but maybe I can get an answer here...We have 3M Intermediate vinyl and the matching 3M overlay, however even with full pressure on the laminator, there are tiny bubbles after it goes through the laminator. What is causing this?
Any help with the above will be greatly appreciated and I hope I can return the favor one day!
My name is Ryan and I work for a vehicle lettering/pin striping/sign company here in Chicago. It is a family business and I work part time as a computer tech/vinyl weeder/printer. Having said that we have two Graphtec 24" plotters and finally took the plunge and invested in the Mimaki CJV-30-130 and Seal 54" laminater (after realizing we were loosing some jobs that required digital printing). Quite a lot to embrace at first as we have only worked with SignLab 7.1 and had to quickly transition to Adobe Illustrator and Fine Cut/Rasterlink. Well it has been about a 2 months and we are very happy with the Mimaki. We have gotten pretty fluent with Adobe as well as Fine cut. However we have run into a few quirks if you will and I want to see if anyone has any ideas on how to resolve these issues.
The first one seems to be a semi-common problem among the CJVs, that is cutting. When doing a simple rectangular sticker with a black outline (with bleed over) the cutter never gets equal amounts of border. The top is almost always less than the bottom. Now I have tried recalibrating the laser light for the registration mark finder and I have reduced the cutting speed per the manual. Crop mark detection is set to 4pt in Rasterlink. We are not really concerned about cut speed, rather cut accuracy. Is there anything to improve cutting accuracy that I have not done already?
Second, we do not print everyday. Usually we print every other day but rarely everyday. having said that, coming back into the shop after a weekend and printing on a Monday, we quickly found out the head gets a tad bit clogged. We have got into the habit of test printing before each print (first print of the day only) and if print doesn't look good, we do a custody wash. Now my question is, is this normal? I'm thinking it is not and I believe the culprit is when it does a cycle during sleep mode, it only does it every two days. Should I move that up to every 24 hrs to avoid a clogged nozzle? It is a very minimal problem, a 5-10 minute custody wash clears the problem up but I still feel it is not normal to have to do that.
And finally my third question is about the Seal laminator, which I know this isn't the correct area but maybe I can get an answer here...We have 3M Intermediate vinyl and the matching 3M overlay, however even with full pressure on the laminator, there are tiny bubbles after it goes through the laminator. What is causing this?
Any help with the above will be greatly appreciated and I hope I can return the favor one day!
