New Guy New to Mimaki

[Kemik]

Hey,

I'm not new to Signs101, but new to Mimaki! I've only used Roland ECOSOL Print/Cuts in the past. The setup of the Mimaki UCJV300 was very rough! I guess some tube came lose during shipping and some parts were defective, because setup took a week, and half a bottle of white ink all over the floor and inside the machine! Mimaki will be replacing the parts that have white ink all over them, so that good anyway, hopeful there are no more issues! Well other than the ink drops that are building up on the head as I print, the techs are supposed to come back to have a look at that!

Anyone else have a UCJV300 that can put my mind at ease?!

Also I was wondering about the Mimaki contour cutting blades, do you buy original Mimaki blades, or have a recommendation for a good quality aftermarket blade? Also the same question for the sheeter blade? Although I have not priced out the original Mimaki part for that.

I do miss using Roland VersaWorks, although I am getting used to RasterLinks. Another question, for the Mimaki Print/Cut users. Do you always print with crop marks? This has been recommended by all the techs I have talked to, but with Roland I only used crop marks when I did a Print/Lam and Cut..

Cheers!
Kevin

 

[Kemik]

Another question about the UCJV300, how do you know the exact point on your material where the print will start, or where it will sheet cut? This was very simple on the Roland, but with the Mimaki, it never seems to print or sheet cut where I think it will, sometime it will roll forward 4 cm and cut, other times it rolls backwards and cuts, and the distance seems to change as well. Is there any way to know for sure where it will cut? I keep cutting through my prints!

For now, I will just use my hand held knife to cut, and look into getting a separate 64" sheeter.

 

[Solventinkjet]

When I install these printers I usually take the ink supply covers off while inking up specifically to catch any leaks as they occur instead of finding out when ink starts dripping out of the covers. The ink line connectors can be hard to tell if they've clicked closed all the way so I'm always cautious at first. Since you're using white ink, the tech would have had to disconnect and re-connect a bunch of those exact same connectors so I bet one didn't close all the way, they threw the covers on, and inked it up not knowing about the leak.

My customers have had good luck with the after market blades we sell. I've never gotten a complaint on after market or OEM.

The sheet cutoff blade should last you a very long time before replacing if not the life of the machine. If you're cutting a lot of banner it will get destroyed though. When you sheet cut, it should always move forward a little bit and then cut. Not sure why yours would be randomly moving forward or backwards though.

I will usually throw crop marks on print/cut jobs just in case something happens to stop me in the middle of a job like a power outage or communication error from the printer to the computer. That way I can just read the marks and save the job. It's not absolutely necessary though. Also, while the print/cut accuracy is close to spot on without registration marks, cutting with them does allow better accuracy especially on longer jobs.

It's inevitable to have some hiccups with a new machine but the UCJV300 is a very good machine. It sounds like your tech probably ran into some issues during the install.

 

[Kemik]

When I install these printers I usually take the ink supply covers off while inking up specifically to catch any leaks as they occur instead of finding out when ink starts dripping out of the covers. The ink line connectors can be hard to tell if they've clicked closed all the way so I'm always cautious at first. Since you're using white ink, the tech would have had to disconnect and re-connect a bunch of those exact same connectors so I bet one didn't close all the way, they threw the covers on, and inked it up not knowing about the leak.

My customers have had good luck with the after market blades we sell. I've never gotten a complaint on after market or OEM.

The sheet cutoff blade should last you a very long time before replacing if not the life of the machine. If you're cutting a lot of banner it will get destroyed though. When you sheet cut, it should always move forward a little bit and then cut. Not sure why yours would be randomly moving forward or backwards though.

I will usually throw crop marks on print/cut jobs just in case something happens to stop me in the middle of a job like a power outage or communication error from the printer to the computer. That way I can just read the marks and save the job. It's not absolutely necessary though. Also, while the print/cut accuracy is close to spot on without registration marks, cutting with them does allow better accuracy especially on longer jobs.

It's inevitable to have some hiccups with a new machine but the UCJV300 is a very good machine. It sounds like your tech probably ran into some issues during the install.

Can you send me some pricing on the aftermarket blades?

I had a tech in for most of today, he is guessing that the drippy print head has to do with the low humidity and the pads around the capping station which have a good amount of ink on them from the install. They've ordered new ones to replace those, but that could take a while. He also suspects that the media guides are bent, so they are replacing those as well, when we print without the media guides, there seems to be no issues with ink splatter.

Anyone have experience with Grouping several small jobs in RasterLinks? I could accomplish this quite easily in VersaWorks, I could add anywhere from 3 to 20 different PDFs and print 2 of this 20 of that 6 of another etc. and arrange them around on screen with little effort, then click the alignment button and VersaWorks would squeeze everything together so they are all nice and aligned. This doesn't seem possible in Rasterlinks? Sure I can move things around but they end up overlapping and not being in a straight line, etc.. Am I stuck doing layouts like this in Illustrator?

Thanks,
Kevin

Thanks!

 

[InkHead]

We have a UCJV300 for about a 1.5yrs. Its been great and is so versatile. As for the blades, we use Clean Cut Blade for the UCJV as well as our Summas. They work fantastic and last a long time.

It is possible to group smaller jobs in Rasterlink. You just highlight all your jobs in your Job List and click on "Arrangement" icon. It is the 2nd one down on the right hand side of the screen. Than just click Arrange. It will nest all the jobs together in the job list. Once that completes, click on the "General Print" button (4th one down on the right). You will now see all your jobs in the job list on the left. Here you just click on each job and set your image parameters for size, spacing, arrange to center, etc.. When done, under the images of your job is a button the looks like a dart with a reverse checkmark and "Minimize" as the default option. Click on that and it will arrange all your jobs to minimize the spacing, etc.. You can play with the option in the drop down.

Rasterlink kinda blows though. It is best to use a real RIP. The only issue with this is if you have the Clear and White ink, the RIPs have a hard time with this and I haven't been able to figure it out. So I just use Flexi for CMYK and any jobs that use white or clear, I use Rasterlink

 

[Kemik]

We have a UCJV300 for about a 1.5yrs. Its been great and is so versatile. As for the blades, we use Clean Cut Blade for the UCJV as well as our Summas. They work fantastic and last a long time.

It is possible to group smaller jobs in Rasterlink. You just highlight all your jobs in your Job List and click on "Arrangement" icon. It is the 2nd one down on the right hand side of the screen. Than just click Arrange. It will nest all the jobs together in the job list. Once that completes, click on the "General Print" button (4th one down on the right). You will now see all your jobs in the job list on the left. Here you just click on each job and set your image parameters for size, spacing, arrange to center, etc.. When done, under the images of your job is a button the looks like a dart with a reverse checkmark and "Minimize" as the default option. Click on that and it will arrange all your jobs to minimize the spacing, etc.. You can play with the option in the drop down.

Rasterlink kinda blows though. It is best to use a real RIP. The only issue with this is if you have the Clear and White ink, the RIPs have a hard time with this and I haven't been able to figure it out. So I just use Flexi for CMYK and any jobs that use white or clear, I use Rasterlink

Thanks for the info on the blades, and I believe it is the "Minimize" and reverse checkmark that I was looking for! I will give it a try and see how flexible it is.

 

[Retro Graphics]

Had mine about 1.5 years now too. If by chance you are using Flexi and Rasterlink, save yourself the effort and just drop the Rasterlink. I would design in Flexi using pngs but when I would send the work to Rasterlink, the shadows would have a box the size of the original image frame even though it was a png with clear background. I have printed the same design in Flexi and it works great. Also if you need to upgrade to Windows 11, Rasterlink is not supported.

While I do love my UCJV300, it was a heavy beast and my shop is in a basement, so it took 4 dudes bigger than me to get it down my narrow ass stairs.

Registration cuts, if you are going to cut it, use registration cuts every time. I use 4 corners and the size and thickness vary but generally larger jobs will be a 1" registration cut mark. The UCJV is great but when it comes to cutting larger intricate jobs, or large batches past 36", by god you better have registration marks b/c everything after 36" is going to start going off otherwise. I lost so much vinyl my first year with this machine. if i'm doing a batch of 100x decals, i will set the registration mark on a single, then just increase count at rip so that every single decal gets a registration mark. I'd rather waste a little more ink and a marginal bit more vinyl for registration mark spaces then waste a whole sheet.

I have found that none of the suggested fixes work when trying to cut with registration marks on perforated vinyl. The laser eye just freaks out from the holes, so if you plan to print on perfs, either leave a think black outline you can manually cut or just do whole sheets.

to print with white backgrounds in Flexi, just do a contour shape (w/ or w/o holes), make it the specific white you specified in your RIP settings to print white, then move in Design Editor, to a separate layer. badda bing badda boom. You will have to download the profiles for color, I use Arlon vinyl mostly so there is a profile for the mimaki for that as well. There are profiles for download on Mimaki's page I do believe, but some companies like Arlon have profiles also for download already.

your tech should be helping to walk you through some of the setup and print settings though too. My tech guy spent a solid day making sure I could use my machine, then came back 2 weeks later as a checkup to see what new issues I may have then we did a 6 month checkup. now I just email him from time to time with random questions. Granted I bought my machine through TyrrellTech, so they did pretty good by me.

 

[Kemik]

Had mine about 1.5 years now too. If by chance you are using Flexi and Rasterlink, save yourself the effort and just drop the Rasterlink. I would design in Flexi using pngs but when I would send the work to Rasterlink, the shadows would have a box the size of the original image frame even though it was a png with clear background. I have printed the same design in Flexi and it works great. Also if you need to upgrade to Windows 11, Rasterlink is not supported.

While I do love my UCJV300, it was a heavy beast and my shop is in a basement, so it took 4 dudes bigger than me to get it down my narrow *** stairs.

Registration cuts, if you are going to cut it, use registration cuts every time. I use 4 corners and the size and thickness vary but generally larger jobs will be a 1" registration cut mark. The UCJV is great but when it comes to cutting larger intricate jobs, or large batches past 36", by god you better have registration marks b/c everything after 36" is going to start going off otherwise. I lost so much vinyl my first year with this machine. if i'm doing a batch of 100x decals, i will set the registration mark on a single, then just increase count at rip so that every single decal gets a registration mark. I'd rather waste a little more ink and a marginal bit more vinyl for registration mark spaces then waste a whole sheet.

I have found that none of the suggested fixes work when trying to cut with registration marks on perforated vinyl. The laser eye just freaks out from the holes, so if you plan to print on perfs, either leave a think black outline you can manually cut or just do whole sheets.

to print with white backgrounds in Flexi, just do a contour shape (w/ or w/o holes), make it the specific white you specified in your RIP settings to print white, then move in Design Editor, to a separate layer. badda bing badda boom. You will have to download the profiles for color, I use Arlon vinyl mostly so there is a profile for the mimaki for that as well. There are profiles for download on Mimaki's page I do believe, but some companies like Arlon have profiles also for download already.

your tech should be helping to walk you through some of the setup and print settings though too. My tech guy spent a solid day making sure I could use my machine, then came back 2 weeks later as a checkup to see what new issues I may have then we did a 6 month checkup. now I just email him from time to time with random questions. Granted I bought my machine through TyrrellTech, so they did pretty good by me.

No, I don't have Flexi, I've only ever had Rolands and VersaWorks until now. Maybe I will look into getting Flexi, is there a way to buy it without the monthly subscription?

My Tech ran me through the basics, I have a pretty good grasp of the cleaning and maintenance, and know my way around RasterLinks, I've been watching videos for several weeks while waiting for delivery... But I am used to VersaWorks and had perfected my work flow. I do a lot of small business jobs where they have several products and want very few prints of each, VersaWorks was great for this. Any time I asked the techs about a specific Roland Feature or VersaWorks feature, the reply was normally, it's Not a Roland, it can't do that.

Rasterlinks cant group a large amount of files, I think the limit is 20?
It can't organize the layout of multiple files EASILY, it's kind of frustrating, I will have to do this in Illustrator.
I loaded in a 57 page PDF which loads fine, but Rasterlinks does not allow me to use the Crop Marks with a multipage PDF, and everyone stresses how important the crop marks are, so at the moment I am testing print and cut without crops to see if I can fine tune it for this job, 57 different 4" x 2" images with contour cut, 1 print of each. VersaWorks would be a simple, load the file, get the print width, rip and print.

Maybe I should just do the layout for this in Illustrator as well, and then it will be a 1 page PDF that I can add Crops too?

 

[Kemik]

So after trying to fine tune the Print/Cut without crop marks, I gave up and did the layout in Illustrator.
Either I was adjusting the wrong settings, or the Tech Guy gave me the wrong info to adjust the X/Y of the cutting without Crops.
I moved the X to the max + and max - positions and neither of them had any effect on where it cut.

The tech told me to adjust the [TP Detect Setup], which doesn't sound right to me? I would think this would be adjusting the cut with Crops? Not without?

 

[Solventinkjet]

The tech told me to adjust the [TP Detect Setup], which doesn't sound right to me? I would think this would be adjusting the cut with Crops? Not without?

Correct. What you want to adjust is the PC Origin Offset. Download the operation manual here, and then go to page 100. It will tell you how to adjust the print/cut without registration marks and it's called PC Origin Offset, not TP Detect.

 

[Kemik]

Correct. What you want to adjust is the PC Origin Offset. Download the operation manual here, and then go to page 100. It will tell you how to adjust the print/cut without registration marks and it's called PC Origin Offset, not TP Detect.

Thanks!
I've already done the job by laying it out in Illustrator, but I will definitely try this when I have a similar job to print, which will probably be tomorrow!

 

[Retro Graphics]

Thanks!
I've already done the job by laying it out in Illustrator, but I will definitely try this when I have a similar job to print, which will probably be tomorrow!

I actually found a video on youtube that helped me setup my crop mark, it was a smaller mimaki but the process was much the same. Before you set your TP marks, watch these two videos. Do the cut origin alignment first if you haven't done so already. The 2nd part isn't directly on the tp adjust but I believe he had to go through it in the menu when setting up his cuts in this video.

1st.

2nd.