Graphtec FC 7000 130-MKII contour cutting problem

[os101king]

Ok, I'm running a Mutoh 1204 VJ and a Graphtec FC7000 MKII 130. Just recently my contour cuts started acting up. First I noticed on a 12' run, about 14-16" of the cut was off by about a half inch. The rest was close. Next problem that appeared was a tendency to cut a full inch off on repeated jobs. Next issue was reading the registration marks in a different order than it should have, then shooting the vinyl out of the plotter as it looks for a final mark that would have to be 4' past where the vinyl stopped. It cuts fine on color vinyl, no issues. I recently updated to Flexi Pro 10.5.1 and Production Manager of the same version but have been doing fine with that until now. I tried running jobs that had previously cut correctly to no avail, however I had cleared out my old jobs in PM so I don't have them saved, I had to re-process them. Is there any chance this could be software? The sensor will scan the first mark then the second and then just fire the panel out of the rollers. It keeps doing the same thing over and over. I bought it from GRS... I love those guys and they've helped me in the past but I can't get anybody to call now that everyone's switching to service contracts!!!!!! Anyone have any idea???

For clarification, I'm running a PC with Windows 7 Pro.

 

[omgsideburns]

OK you have a few things to check.

First, make sure that the amount of material you send to print is the same length that it's actually printing. If you send 12' and it's coming out 11'6" then you will have a problem since it only checks within a couple inches of where it thinks the mark is supposed to be.

Second, calibrate the FC7000mk2. You'll need a pen tool, some big paper, and a fairly accurate ruler. Also your software may have it's own calibrations. I'm unfamiliar with cutting master or with flexi so I'm not help there.

Third, if it's getting off as it cuts, is the media skewing as it cuts? Make sure you sequence the plot to cut nearest objects to reduce media travel. Also make sure the grit rollers are clean as any build up will cause material to skew.


anndddd i just finished reading your post. It's reading the 1st mark at the front, then the 2nd mark at the back and then continuing to roll it out, or is it not finding the rear mark and it falls out looking for it?

 

[os101king]

OK you have a few things to check.

First, make sure that the amount of material you send to print is the same length that it's actually printing. If you send 12' and it's coming out 11'6" then you will have a problem since it only checks within a couple inches of where it thinks the mark is supposed to be.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean on that. In flexi's production manager the only setting that seems to fit what you're saying is "media size" which defines what size material. Those settings are identical in both cut and print production files.

Second, calibrate the FC7000mk2. You'll need a pen tool, some big paper, and a fairly accurate ruler. Also your software may have it's own calibrations. I'm unfamiliar with cutting master or with flexi so I'm not help there.

There I am completely in the dark. I have never done that, nor do I know how. I do appreciate the suggestions however.

Third, if it's getting off as it cuts, is the media skewing as it cuts? Make sure you sequence the plot to cut nearest objects to reduce media travel. Also make sure the grit rollers are clean as any build up will cause material to skew.

The media is not skewing as it cuts at all, regular simple vinyl cuts are not an issue. It's only getting it to recognize contour cut marks.

anndddd i just finished reading your post. It's reading the 1st mark at the front, then the 2nd mark at the back and then continuing to roll it out, or is it not finding the rear mark and it falls out looking for it?

Actually, no. Sorry if I mis-spoke but it's reading the far right mark, then the far left mark both at the beginning edge of the vinyl. It then advances and skews to the right again to find the right mark at the other end of the material, but runs the sheet no matter how long out of the cutter. It goes way past where the mark is.

UPDATE: I spoke to Chris Phillips at GRS here in NJ. He seems to think after going over it with me that it may be a Flexi problem. As in Production Manger is sending mixed messages. I'm going to go to the root... delete both my printer and cutter setups and re-install them. I've got a few things to do this morning but that's the next step and I will post results.

Thanks!!

 

[omgsideburns]

Yeah, mine reads front-back-front-back when reading the marks, but I'm cutting out of Signlab.

 

[bob]

...
UPDATE: I spoke to Chris Phillips at GRS here in NJ. He seems to think after going over it with me that it may be a Flexi problem. As in Production Manger is sending mixed messages. I'm going to go to the root... delete both my printer and cutter setups and re-install them. I've got a few things to do this morning but that's the next step and I will post results...

Twaddle.

If the plotter either is scooting right past the upper right mark or it doesn't advance far enough to find it then your problem is this...

You have two devices, your printer and your plotter, that each have their own idea of what, say, 12" of media is. A 12' print, as you originally describe, is always going to be problematic with automatic mark sensing if both your plotter and your printer are not in reasonably close agreement as to what 12' of media is.

If the combined media fee error is, say, 1/8" per foot [not good but not unrealistic either] then on a 12' run the cumulative error is 1 1/2". Enough that the plotter probably won't find the upper marks.

You can check and set the output feed compensation on both your printer and your plotter but it's inherently an imprecise process. Any time you're dealing with printed marks and rulers with their inherent parallax, then best you can hope for is to come close.

No matter how close you come, unless both printer and plotter are in exact agreement then there must necessarily exist a length which the plotter will fail to find the upper marks.

It's far better on longer prints, like most anything longer then 4-5 feet, to print your own marks on the corners of a known rectangle and then use the plotter's auto or manual mark sensing capability. When you do it that way it's damn near impossible to miss a mark. The actual process is not particularly complicated but there are a lot of steps. Once you do it a couple of times you can do it in your sleep. I believe that Graphtec has the definitive description of the process posted somewhere on their web site. I probably have a copy of it somewhere as well.

 

[os101king]

Bob, are you telling me there's a possibility that the two just suddenly decided there's a difference between an inch and an inch between them and from now on I will have to go through a different more time consuming process to get the contour cuts to work? I'm sorry, but I also don't understand the idea of printing my own contour marks. They're printed by the print job to correspond with the location of the contour cuts. How would I print them independently? (edit) Sorry, I saw the suggested link to Graphtec for that. Any idea from you or anyone on why this could suddenly become an issue? I deleted the setups for both printer and cutter and reloaded them in Production Manager to test, same results.

(EDIT)

At this point I'm running all the different types of reg marks since I did not understand the idea of "printing your own marks" and cannot find anything other than the manual on the website. So far, the 4 bomb site method worked oddly. The first two asked me to move to the mark and hit OK. I did that. The carriage then moved on it's own to the third. I hit enter on that, it moved to fourth. I centered it, and the machine began to cut to the LEFT of the printed media, OUTSIDE the registration mark borders.

(SECOND EDIT)

I tried the 2 bomb sight method but used the laser pointer to correctly align them. It worked. I'm going back now to trying the 4 mark method, since cutting a large run would never work well with just two.

(THIRD EDIT)

Rather than posting over and over for ease of search in the future, so far I have been able to get it to work on a very small run with the four bombsight alignment method. In the cutter tab in RIP and Print in Production manager I selected "4 Point" registration marks. At the last screen "ALIGNMENT" I selected "Digitize Alignment" and allowed it to use the laser pointer (next selection screen). This so far has worked as I said with a small run. I am running a 6' run of decals as a test of accuracy and function. I will post those results next.

 

[bob]

Bob, are you telling me there's a possibility that the two just suddenly decided there's a difference between an inch and an inch between them and from now on I will have to go through a different more time consuming process to get the contour cuts to work? I'm sorry, but I also don't understand the idea of printing my own contour marks. They're printed by the print job to correspond with the location of the contour cuts. How would I print them independently? (edit) Sorry, I saw the suggested link to Graphtec for that. Any idea from you or anyone on why this could suddenly become an issue? I deleted the setups for both printer and cutter and reloaded them in Production Manager to test, same results.

I have no idea why this should be happening but it is what it is. You might check the output feed compensation on both devices jst to see how close it actually is. As previously stated, 12' is a really long run for automatic mark sensing.

Doing manual marks is rather simple. The description is unfortunately lengthy...

First create the registration marks. The should be 20mm wide and high and the lines should be .3mm thick. That's 3/10 of a mm.

Create your image and the contour cut path.

Simple so far, eh?

Now create a rectangle that bounds the image and contour path. Make this rectangle of simple dimensions, like an integer number of inches high and wide. Remember the size of the rectangle.

Place the four registration marks at the four corners of the bounding rectangle.

Print the image and the registration marks. Do not print the contour cut path or the bounding rectangle.

Load the print into the plotter, position the blade within the first [lower right] registration mark.

Invoke the plotter's Auto Registration Mark Reading function. This is described in the Graphtec manual.

The plotter will read all four marks and then pause displaying what it thinks are the X and Y dimensions of the bounding rectangle described bu the marks. You enter the actual size of the bounding rectangle. That's why you kept is simple when you created it and remembered its size.

If. for some reason or another, the plotter's auto mark sensing fails, you can select the manual option where the plotter prompts you to position the blade at each of the four marks. The bounding rectangle correction works the same either way.

Make sure your software is set to no margin, no image offset, and no easy-weed box. You want it to think the entire cutable image is at 0,0.

Send the contour path and the registration marks to the plotter. It should cut the contour path and, unfortunately, the registration marks as well.

If you want to test it to see if it works and all of your setting are correct, select the light pen and see what it does. If it seems to be working, then select the blade and do it again starting back where you first invoked the plotter's auto mark sensing..

If you don't want to cut the registration marks, just make the contour path a different color, select 'cut all colors' and then specify not to cut the color of the marks. You can do this in Flexi, I'm not sure how to do it in other packages.

I do this all of the time for any image larger than ~4'. I learned how to do it because I grew weary of throwing away large prints that refused to auto sense properly out of Flexi. Once you get the hang of it you can do it in your sleep.

 

[os101king]

Thank you!!!! I printed that out and it's tacked to my board for reference!!! Even though I did get it to work so far on a run of about 5', this is non-cleared stuff that I can hand-cut if necessary. If I'm dealing with cast and long runs I may very well try your method! For now, the four-sight method is working for me. Twice so far, so I'm running at half-throttle so as not to get my hopes up... or miss a detail! Hope this thread helps down the line!