Question How to stop Vinyl losing position during rapid move of print and cut Roland SP540V

[Edd249]

When doing a print and cut operation on a Roland Sp540V, the rapid move causes the location to get off.
I is there any way to slow down the rapid move?

 

[rjssigns]

Buy a Summa. No really. I also own an SP540V and got tired of ruining cut jobs, or breaking them into small pieces, and still having it "eat" the job. I've done pinch wheels and adjusted tension on the pinch wheel bar and all kinds of other tricks to get it to cut consistently.

It got better, but not on anything over a 2 or 3 feet at full width. Now that I have a Summa I no longer cringe when I get jobs requiring contour cutting. Deadly accurate on decal runs of eight feet plus.

Right after I got the Summa running blood pressure dropped and my hair stopped turning gray and falling out.

 

[CSOCSO]

check your pinch rollers while cutting! you might see one of the pinch rollers has a separated rubber wheel that needs to be changed! It made cutting impossible. happened to me twice!

 

[Ahmed Samy Nagada]

Summa, the D series works excellent with me.

 

[Lindsey]

Hello Edd249, I use a Roland SP540-v for contour cutting. You can control the speed of the cutting two different ways:

1) Using the control panel on the printer itself. In the upper-right corner there is a button called "CUT CONFIG". When you push this button, the first item shown is the FORCE. Use the right arrow button on the control panel to scroll through the other items. You will see "SPEED" (speed of the actual cutting), "OFFSET", and "UP-SPEED" (speed that the tool travels when it's moving from decal to decal). You can use the up & down arrows on the control panel to change the settings for these items. I set the SPEED to 7cm per second. I set the UP-SPEED to 7cm per second also. Going too slow or too fast can cause bad cuts. You'll need to test to find what speed works best for the materials you're using.

2) Using the "Cut Controls" inside VersaWorks. Go to "Cut Controls" in VersaWorks, below the "operations mode" there are some other check boxes available (some will be grayed out). Click on the box that says "enable advanced settings". Once you click the box, it turns ON the advanced settings and you can enter the numbers you want for number of cut passes, the SPEED, the pressure (force), and the offset. When I'm using these settings, I still set the speed to 7cm/second.

In order to get good results, I just cut a few rows of decals at a time. How many to do once depends on the size of the decal, but I find it works best to do small groups/batches. I usually set my decals up so that they take up the full 52" wide, and about 1 foot to 3 feet of length at a time. I learned the hard way that trying to cut 100's of decals, or really long lengths of material at once is a bad idea. Small batches can help you avoid wasting material and time.

Good luck!

 

[Edd249]

Hello Edd249, I use a Roland SP540-v for contour cutting. You can control the speed of the cutting two different ways:

1) Using the control panel on the printer itself. In the upper-right corner there is a button called "CUT CONFIG". When you push this button, the first item shown is the FORCE. Use the right arrow button on the control panel to scroll through the other items. You will see "SPEED" (speed of the actual cutting), "OFFSET", and "UP-SPEED" (speed that the tool travels when it's moving from decal to decal). You can use the up & down arrows on the control panel to change the settings for these items. I set the SPEED to 7cm per second. I set the UP-SPEED to 7cm per second also. Going too slow or too fast can cause bad cuts. You'll need to test to find what speed works best for the materials you're using.

2) Using the "Cut Controls" inside VersaWorks. Go to "Cut Controls" in VersaWorks, below the "operations mode" there are some other check boxes available (some will be grayed out). Click on the box that says "enable advanced settings". Once you click the box, it turns ON the advanced settings and you can enter the numbers you want for number of cut passes, the SPEED, the pressure (force), and the offset. When I'm using these settings, I still set the speed to 7cm/second.

In order to get good results, I just cut a few rows of decals at a time. How many to do once depends on the size of the decal, but I find it works best to do small groups/batches. I usually set my decals up so that they take up the full 52" wide, and about 1 foot to 3 feet of length at a time. I learned the hard way that trying to cut 100's of decals, or really long lengths of material at once is a bad idea. Small batches can help you avoid wasting material and time.

Good luck!

As you found, cutting in rows 1 - 3 feet does a good job of solving most print and cut problems. We use "custom cut" paper option keeping the print and cut in the 1-3 foot range. I will play with the Up-Speed to see if this will help.
Thanks for the info.

 

[TimToad]

We do tons of contour cut decals including lots of fairly small intricate text on a 10 year old VP-540 VersaCamm and am amazed at how precise it cuts on a daily basis.

Part of it has to do with our shop philosophy about "speed" versus quality and doing everything we can to raise the odds on creating fewer failures of any kind. Nearly any plotter will drift and miscut if you ask it to cut too fast or don't have the settings optimized for a particular job.

Most of our decals are laminated, so in our minds it makes absolutely no sense to go through the effort and expense of printing and laminating material only to rush through the phase of the process that you can't undo or fix once it goes awry.

 

[Chriswagner92]

I also use the sp540v and it has always been terrible at cutting. Replacing the plastic blade holder with an aluminum one helped a little, but it is still not a good plotter. I'm looking at upgrading to a 315 and d-140

 

[Edd249]

We do tons of contour cut decals including lots of fairly small intricate text on a 10 year old VP-540 VersaCamm and am amazed at how precise it cuts on a daily basis.

Part of it has to do with our shop philosophy about "speed" versus quality and doing everything we can to raise the odds on creating fewer failures of any kind. Nearly any plotter will drift and miscut if you ask it to cut too fast or don't have the settings optimized for a particular job.

Most of our decals are laminated, so in our minds it makes absolutely no sense to go through the effort and expense of printing and laminating material only to rush through the phase of the process that you can't undo or fix once it goes awry.

What changes have been made to provide the accuracy of cut?

 

[Karen in Ocala]

We have a VersaCamm SP-540V and our contour cuts were getting progressively more out of whack, even at a very slow speed. I went into service mode and did a print/cut adjustment there and we are back to our cuts being spot on.

 

[TimToad]

What changes have been made to provide the accuracy of cut?

There are routine cut alignment adjustments that should be done when one notices things starting to drift over time. Also, having the correct blade offset depth for each given material thickness helps increase accuracy.