Graphtec FC8600-75 Plotter and Flexi 7 compatibility

[Bobby H]

Our shop is replacing a pretty old (and now malfunctioning) Graphtec vinyl cutter/plotter we bought about 15 years ago with a new Graphtec FC8600-75 unit. The host computer that drives the vinyl cutter/plotter is a PC running Windows 7 and Flexi 7.6v2. Has any participants in this forum worked with this combination or it is incompatible?

I ask this because the drivers list under Flexi's Production Manager setup for Graphtec drivers only goes to the FC7000 series. Would that driver be able to control the FC8600-75 without any odd issues? I realize Flexi 7 is a pretty old version, but is there any way to add the FC8600-75 to its plotter drivers list?

I'm almost positive Flexi Cloud will directly support the FC-8600-75, but I'd like to be able to get by using Flexi 7 if I can. We already have one Flexi Cloud license installed on a more powerful computer that's used for design work and running a large format printer. But that machine is running Win 8.1 Pro and Flexi 7 won't run on that, which kind of prevents us from swapping Flexi installations.

 

[P Wagner]

There is a pretty good chance that the new plotter model (FC8600) will work (reasonably) with the older (FC7000) driver for straight cutting, particularly if you are interfacing using USB and not serial RS232. Both models use the same language (HPGL) when interfacing with Flexi. The operation of the ARMS sensor might be questionable however...

There is no way to update the older Flexi 7 software with the newer FC8600 driver, unless you upgrade to a newer version of Flexi.

Paul

 

[Bobby H]

BUMP

So we "punted" -ended up ordering an upgrade to Flexi 12, which was fairly expensive. I'm still having problems trying to get this new Graphtec 8600-75 to work correctly. Flexi 12 has a driver for that cutter/plotter. But it refuses to work properly; everything is cutting at a speed of 50, regardless of what we set on the cutter itself or what I enter into the cutter options within Flexi's Production Manager (I have a custom slow setting of 20 saved).

We have the vinyl cutter/plotter hooked up via a RS-232 serial connection. Could that be the problem why it wants to only cut at 50 speed? If so I don't know why Graphtec would even bother putting a RS-232 port on the machine if it couldn't be fully controlled through it.

We tried hooking it up directly via an Ethernet cable. But I have no idea what the cutter's IP address could be. Flexi can't auto-detect it in its own software. If the vinyl cutter/plotter is connected via an Ethernet connection does it have to be connected through a Router or Switch?

Hooking the cutter/plotter up via USB isn't so practical for us since there is about 20' of distance between the computer workstation and the cutter/plotter with a huge application table between the two. It's easier to run long stretches of Serial or Ethernet cable than USB.

 

[Bobby H]

Figured out a solution! The RS-232 connection wasn't the problem. It was the plotter/cutter's command language setting. It was set to "auto." We changed it to HPGL and now it's working properly and accepting the cut condition commands from Flexi.