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Just printed on Oracal 3105 (Motocross) now cutter won't read registration marks.

TheSnowman

New Member
Anyone delt with this? I have a bunch of graphics I'm printing for garbage cans, and I can't get my cutter (Mimaki CG-130FX) to read the marks for some reason. It's read everything else today that I've tried, but getting nothing with this. I've put scotch tape over the top of it, didn't help, packing tape, didn't help, even tried masking tape, and a straight edge to recreate them (don't laugh, it worked for me on diamond plate) and it still won't work. I don't know how to make these things become cut!

Forgot to say, I'm using General Formulations 12 Mil Laminate.
 

TheSnowman

New Member
Here is what the crop marks look like. As you can tell, this first point it trys to find has now been pretty abused by trying to figure out what's going on here.
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TheSnowman

New Member
Ok, so APPARENTLY, a Mimaki cutter just TOTALLY hates the laminate on this stuff. I was able to peel it back enough to get it off the registration marks, and it seems to have worked. I'll just have to laminate differently. Just so anyone that uses this General Formulation stuff knows for future reference and time.
 

Charlie J

New Member
Looks like you've got laminate running thru your crop mark....I've had that problem before...you need to remove the laminate from the crop mark and the area around it.
 

JBusch260

New Member
Looks like you've got laminate running thru your crop mark....I've had that problem before...you need to remove the laminate from the crop mark and the area around it.

I would say this would be an issue. Our Graphtec does that sometimes too when we intersect lam with a crop mark. Does your plotter ever respond weirdly with crop marks under high gloss laminates?
 

TheSnowman

New Member
It must have something to do with the thickness...because in 8+ years with this machine, it's never been an issue w/ gloss. Reflective and "mirror" images obviously give me trouble, but never a laminate. I cut other stuff all day long while I was trying to battle this nightmare. I finally got it to cut, but now it's not deep enough by a long shot. I have a feeling there's going to be lots of back and fourth on this. About the time I get it dialed in, I'll have to cut something else and start over w/ blade adjustments.
 

splizaat

New Member
Next time toss a post-it note over each of the crop marks and laminate over them, then use a knife to cut the lam out and it won't be sticking where the post it note was :)

That laminate job looks terrible btw...why so many bubbles in the middle of the print?
 

splizaat

New Member
It must have something to do with the thickness...because in 8+ years with this machine, it's never been an issue w/ gloss. Reflective and "mirror" images obviously give me trouble, but never a laminate. I cut other stuff all day long while I was trying to battle this nightmare. I finally got it to cut, but now it's not deep enough by a long shot. I have a feeling there's going to be lots of back and fourth on this. About the time I get it dialed in, I'll have to cut something else and start over w/ blade adjustments.

I'm not familiar with your setup (we're on roland) but I know most guys printing/cutting motocross laminate are cutting once, returning to origin, then hitting cut a second time. Since you're using crop marks, you should be able to have it cut normally, then run it again and have it read crop marks a second time and cut again. I haven't heard of anyone able to get a nice clean cut on that super thick MX lam with just one pass of cutting.
 

TheSnowman

New Member
Ok, so I had 100 of these to do, and I worked on them 8 hours today, and knocked them out after lots of trial and error. From what I can tell, the thick laminate caused my print to not lay totally flat when the eye was trying to read the crop marks. It had nothing to do w/ the laminate being over the crop marks, because I did it this same way, didn't put new marks on, and just had a solid sheet of laminate on top of it. I ended up having to just hold my finger next to the reader as the media advanced and it was looking for the crop marks. If I did that, it worked every time, if I didn't...it wouldn't ever work. Crazy the amount of stuff I tried, but never had an issue w/ media being this "wavy".

The other problem was I had the blade sticking so far down, that as it would advance around the sheet, it was dragging the blade across the graphics. I also realized that these did need to be cut twice to get anything accomplished. Since I had already printed them all, there wasn't any going back and modifying the file to tell it to cut twice, so I essentially had to stop it mid cut and pull the blade out after each row of graphics, and then run again. So to finish a sheet of 10, it involved stopping the machine 8 times and inserting/removing the blade, since I had to go back and tell it to cut it all twice.

I had to do one reprint from the first print trying to get the blade depth correct, and so in the reprint, I gave it two cut lines, and it worked awesome.

It was a crazy learning experience, but I learned a lot, and made money in the process.
 

TresL

New Member
Need a table in front and back of the cutter to keep them flat when going through the cutter. Also add more pinch rollers if you can.
 
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