Help with Summa D60 SE and OPOS registration

[signdude]

Hello,

Total newbie here. Cutting out small decals with the Summa using the registration marks and the OPOS. Using Illustrator to print and the bundled Winplot software to cut.

For some reason, the cuts are not aligned with the OPOS origin marker. They are offset by about 1/2" in the Y axis and 1/8" in the X axis. The cutter does go and correctly senses each of the registration markers. What am I doing wrong? Right now I am compensating with my contour file and shifting everything up and over a bit, but this is obviously a clumsy solution.

Why is everything offset? Do I need to do something special to the contour file? Also, the cutter cuts out the registration markers which seems odd. Is it supposed to do that? How can I turn that off?

Thanks!

 

[bob]

Most likely the actual print is slightly different in both directions than the logical print in your software. Then, when the plotter senses the registration marks, it's not doing anything with that information or doing too much. Once the registration marks are sensed the plotter either has to send this information to the software driving the plotter so that the logical points can be mapped to physical points or the plotter may do the mapping internally.

This is either the software or the plotter, not both. If both do it, any compensation required to map the logical points to the physical points will be twice what they are supposed to be. If neither does it, the cut will be off an amount representing the difference in X and Y motion between the two machines.

The time where this would not be the case would be if both the printer and the plotter exhibited exactly the same tracking characteristics. In other words if n inches in both the X and Y directions were exactly the same on both machines. Trust me, they're not the same.

 

[signdude]

Bob,

I appreciate your response, but I'm not sure what the proper remedy is. The logical print and physical print do appear to be the same apart from the origin shift, because once I shift the contour file's origin everything works fine. In other words, the cuts are correct, the only problem is the origin shift.

Also, does anyone have any info for me on the registration marks being cut out? Is this supposed to happen? If not, how do I make it stop?

 

[FlambeauMan]

I don't use the same machine, but I've had to run the check camera offset function before. That caused my dieline to be off. Don't know about cutting out the dots. Just a thought.

 

[FlambeauMan]

Are the decals laminated? could be some wierd stretch going on also.

 

[signdude]

As it turns out this was all caused by some kind of problem with the machine that required a full factory reset to correct. Thank you all for your help.

 

[nitro912gr]

Sorry for bringing back this thread for the depths of the forum but I had the same problem lately and I found out what it was (probably).

I had the very same problem, I couldn't figure out what was the reason it occurred but it was completely random, like for example I could cut 1 print perfect and everything else from the same design on the same paper was 1 mm offset. Then I was cutting some mixed media stickers, the paper one had this offset, the pvc one didn't. I got the pages close to each others and I did noticed the paper sticker was a bit darker white and a bit open black on the registration marks, so I did printed the same file but on the pvc paper (all pass through my laser printer) and it worked...

My guess at this point is that since I do OPOS calibration with a black vinyl with bright white back, it have problem registering when printed in the different paper sticker, while the pvc one provide closer results to the black vinyl.

I will go test this a bit more but this is going to be a pain if I had to recalibrate every time I change media, then again this is the very first OPOS made with the red laser and it is not very good.

 

[nitro912gr]

UPDATE
It was after all, just the pinch rollers failing. This is why it was working with the thicker pvc sticker and vinyl but not with the paper one that is overall thinner as a material.
The rollers where not able to hold firmly on the material.

So when one of them literally fall apart and replaced them both, everything went back to normal.