New Blade, Bad Cuts

[Black Star]

I've had an issue going on for what literally seems like forever and wanted to see if any one has any advice. I always have issues every time I swap my plotter blade to a brand new blade. I have a Mimaki CG-100SR III. I use the brand new Mimaki SPB-0030 blades and am mostly cutting Oracal 751. When I swap a new blade, it's almost as if the blade needs to be worn down before I get consistent clean cuts. My issue is that if I don't cut deep enough, I can't weed the vinyl. If I put a little more pressure down, it cuts the vinyl so deep that it cuts into the paper and then is hard to get the backing off the vinyl because the paper sticks to the back of the vinyl.

It has been very rarely that I can change the blade and have it just work correctly.

 

[Black Star]

Load the blade, test cut, repeat. You may want to check the cutting strip as well, assuming the mimaki has one.
Alternatively go to the 3m vinyl with the synthetic liner, as it's very hard to cut through and no paper to annoy you!

I've done exactly what you said. Let's say I start at 30 for the pressure. I'll do a test cut and then try and weed and it will not weed. If I bump up the pressure to 35(the next step), I can weed it but it's cutting into the paper way too deep.

I can try swapping my cutting strip but I don't know if that's the main issue. I didn't realize 3M has a synthetic liner.

 

[Gino]

Sounds as if you just can't dial in the correct pressure. You can't get between 30 and 35 ??

 

[Black Star]

Nope. With Mimaki the increments between 20 and 100 move by 5's. Once you get over 100 it then moves by 10s. Under 20 moves by 2s.

 

[Black Star]

What speed are you running it at? Sometimes higher speeds will change cuts a lot (like deeper cuts on straight aways, more shallow on tiny text/stuff with lots of turns...), slowing it down may give more consistent cutting force.

The speed is at 20. It's not cutting super fast and the cut is consistent. It is cutting evenly but it's either too much pressure or not enough. It's super frustrating.