Onyx Vs Flexi

[Thomas Fischetti]

I have had terrible experiences with both companies so far. Flexi stopped running our cutters properly when we updated to 19, their support is now on week 3 of fixing the issue.

Onyx when we send cuts, does not prioritize or organize the cut pattern. This leads to a very random cut order causing a ton of unnecessary wear on the machine and time consumed per cut. Support has no idea how to change this.

Do you guys have any other software for print n cut contour cutting?

 

[bannertime]

There are a few other programs out there, but I've never used them. What's the issue with Flexi? Have you posted about it here?

 

[greysquirrel]

what vinyl cutters do you own? You can always use the software that ships with the devices...I use Onyx...but I know what you mean about the prioritization....that order actually goes back to the way the file was built.

 

[Thomas Fischetti]

Hey everyone! We use summa s2 160T cutters, flexi has been doing 2 things. First is it stops flexcuts after the second foot of material length. It used to cutout our 6' jobs just fine. Now it just stops as if it stopped recieving data. Flexi support has been trying to work on it, but have been pretty slow. We have tried deleting the software and re-downloading it. We know its a flexi issue because testing with winplot it does all flexcuts from the same file.

The second issue, is the contour cuts come out 2-3mm too big. I am going to mess around with a setting called "output size compensation" to see if that might help at all. But so far no settings or changes flexi has recommended has helped.

 

[bannertime]

Hey everyone! We use summa s2 160T cutters, flexi has been doing 2 things. First is it stops flexcuts after the second foot of material length. It used to cutout our 6' jobs just fine. Now it just stops as if it stopped recieving data. Flexi support has been trying to work on it, but have been pretty slow. We have tried deleting the software and re-downloading it. We know its a flexi issue because testing with winplot it does all flexcuts from the same file.

The second issue, is the contour cuts come out 2-3mm too big. I am going to mess around with a setting called "output size compensation" to see if that might help at all. But so far no settings or changes flexi has recommended has helped.

Hmm. That is odd. I know it's weird, but what kind of cables are you using and how long are they?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Run corel or illustrator to generate your own reg marks, then do the plotting out of one of those programs.

I've done this with DRAW, Ai and Inkscape.

As far as cut prioritizing, if you cut directly out of the aforementioned programs, that would have to be done with how you build the files. Layer/sublayer hierarchy (aka cut prioritizing) is all you. At least in my experience.

 

[jimdtg]

I have had terrible experiences with both companies so far. Flexi stopped running our cutters properly when we updated to 19, their support is now on week 3 of fixing the issue.

You mean old Flexi 12 works properly? As my opinion, you should ask SAi help you to roll-back version 12 while waiting for they fix that issue.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Not with the cutting master 3 plugin, can't speak to CM4 as I uninstalled it pretty quickly.

I was talking about with no plugin at all. Using the File->Print option (which I think Corel has lost this ability). The only thing that one needed (if running on Windows(maybe Mac)) is having the printer OEM driver installed to have it pop up in the printer list, it provided no other functionality though.

On Linux, don't need the driver (which is a good thing as driver's aren't all that common from the hardware OEM on Mac, practically non-existent on Linux) to do this.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Corel can do it, you just have to fanagle a HP/GL printer with the right properties in windows, same goes for very old Gravograph engravers. If I remember right the curves tend to come through as lines.

I think it was myront that said that some piece of code was pulled that prevented newer versions of DRAW to be able to be used in this manner (my last experience with DRAW is X8, so it's outdated and given new licensing and program issues being reported, I doubt it'll get current any time soon). I could be remembering wrong though, but I am wanting to think that I was thinking about Old Paint and if he was to have been still around when that happened. He loved talking about how he was cutting from Corel since the 90s without anything else))))))))))))))))).

On Linux, just set cutter with a driver of HPGL Raw (the cutter can parse what it needs (at least Rolands anyway) since all the info is being sent) and for those that are going to be on the anti CLI rant, that is actually via GUI (not saying that this is you, but a lot of people think that that particular platform is all CLI all the time).

 

[DrunknMonk]

We use Onyx 18.5, HP Latex and Summa ST 160T cutter all works fine for us, kiss cut and Flexi cut