Horse & Buggy Software - Need a Car!

[MarkH42]

We recently purchased a SUMMA D140R plotter to contour cut decals printed on our Mimaki JV160SP. Up until this point, we had printed decals on a Gerber Edge 2 or we screenprinted them. The Mimaki was used only for banners and large prints because we didn't have a plotter that would cut over 24" wide. Before the Mimaki, we had all Gerber equipment (Edge & Envision plotters) and we used Gerber Composer for all design and Gerber GSP Plot for all printing and cutting. Our work is fairly industrial, so Composer and its limited design capabilities worked fine, BUT Composer will not automatically print the registration (OPOS) marks needed for contour cutting. So here is our current "horse and buggy" system. We design in Composer and create a master file. Small 2mm squares are painstakingly added at each corner, then carefully aligned to be sure they are in line with each other (PITA). We then delete all the cut lines and make a "print file" and save it as an EPS. This gets printed on the Mimaki. Then the master file is opened again and all the print areas are deleted leaving only the 4 registration marks and the cut lines. This "cut file" is saved as an EPS and we use the free SUMMA WinPlot software on the SUMMA plotter to cut the print. It works, just like a horse and buggy will get you to the store. But I KNOW there is a much better way and I need some guidance on which way to go. I'm told Corel Draw will automatically print the registration marks, but I've never used it and I'm not sure I want to learn unless it is really going to streamline the process. Will Flexi do all of this in fewer steps? Again, I've never used it, but I'd be willing to learn and bit the bullet on buying the software. Any suggestions on how to take a step into this century on these digital contour-cut prints would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[J Hill Designs]

yep flexi will add the registration marks needed for the summa OPOS, as well as be able to output the print to the mimaki, then the cut to summa, with the click of a few buttons

 

[jayhawksigns]

I know the Flexi has its issues, but we are long time users here. Used it with our JV3 and Summa plotter.