Print and cut limitations

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

I would really appreciate any and all input that I can get with regards to a problem we are having with our Mimaki CJV150-130. I'm just wanting to get some feedback from other users and opinions before I speak with my technician. We purchased our printer/cutter a few months back and it's been a joy to own...for the most part. We run small print and cut jobs with basic cuts and we have no issues thus far. Basic shapes are cut with a good degree of precision, however anytime I throw something at it with 'complex' cuts, the cuts are very unpredictable, as in all over the place. For example, the attached photos show a completed job that had basic contour cuts and the job turned out just fine. I was printing and cutting over an area of about 24" x 12" and cutting them in sets of 9 just to be safe with no problems. Fast forward to the job I ran today, which is in the second two pics. These decals are roughly 30" x 9", so I rotated them 90 degrees and put them in groups of 5 across the 54" wide media. So on this job I'm basically cutting over about a 50" x 32" total print area using the recommended 25mm crop marks. As you can see, the cuts are not coming out anywhere near where they should be. They are about 1/2" off in the feed direction and 1/4" off in the print direction. I knew before I ran this job I should have probably just outsourced it to avoid any complications, but I wanted to see if the machine could handle it. Well, as you can see, it looks like I should have gone with my first instincts and just outsourced the job. Instead, I have a feeling I'm going to be pitching $90 worth of printed and laminated media in the dumpster.

So my question is, am I expecting way too much from a cut and print combo machine, or should this job be doable? I added a .100" bleed around the lettering, but it's not even cutting anywhere near the bleed area. Any insight and/or advice would be great before I continue to botch up more media. This machine has been great for the most part and is fully capable of running 95% of what I've thrown at it, but precision cutting has been a real issue with certain jobs.

By the way, I'm running Fine Cut out of Corel Draw and Rasterlink.

 

[blufftonsignguy]

Just my 2cents worth, it looks like in the set up the crop marks were off or the material wasn't running straight. I have had similar issues in the past with my Roland, but never that far off.

 

[Ultimate13]

It's tough to tell without seeing more pics, but are any of the letters close or is the entire cut off? Looks more like a setup problem or reading the marks incorrectly to be that far off. We use a Roland XC-540 and that is the only times we have trouble is when we screw something up in the setup after laminating and putting the material back in. It's clear you know how to run the machine since you got the contour cut right on in the first picture.

Things we look for - Don't get the media size again after laminating, also sometimes center on media is selected and shouldn't be or vice versa. Or some other box was checked when putting it back through that wasn't checked when printing.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

Well, here's an update. I had 20 decals to cut, each group of five decals with it's own registration marks for a total of four groups to cut on a big sheet of 54" x 12 foot media. The first set of cuts I ran started close to where they should have been then skewed way off shortly after, ending with the cuts shown in the 3rd pic. The 2nd and 3rd groups of decals cut just fine all the way through, with relatively perfect accuracy. And the fourth group did the same as the first with cuts that were way off the mark, even from the start. Can the weight of the media hanging off the front or back of the machine cause problems when cutting? That's the only remotely logical thing I can think of. The cuts are definitely shifting around at some point like the media wasn't feeding right or something. Do I want to use the media hold downs along the edges of the media when cutting? I did notice the media along the outer edges jumping around a bit, but figured I really only needed the hold downs when printing to prevent head strikes, or do they help with cutting, too?

I will say that I now have to reprint 10 decals, so instead of setting them up in groups of five with 25 mm marks, I set them up individually with the recommended 15 mm marks. I'll have to locate the registration marks for each decal now, which is going to kill my productivity on this job, but I feel I have a better chance of getting accurate cuts by employing that option. I definitely don't want to screw up any more material. The thing is, I've run probably a dozen or more print and cut jobs up until this point with great success. But all were basic cuts and they were grouped in relatively small groups. With this job, the decals are fairly large and I figured I'd test the waters and see if detailed contour cutting on a 50" x 32" area was possible and as it stands my odds of success seem to be 50/50. I just hope I'm not expecting too much from this machine, but I don't want my productivity to suffer either.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

Just my 2cents worth, it looks like in the set up the crop marks were off or the material wasn't running straight. I have had similar issues in the past with my Roland, but never that far off.

That's true, I may not have had it lined up perfectly the first time around. I used a makeshift 60" straight edge cut from a piece of 1/8" pvc to visually line the material up the last 3 times, but my fourth set of cuts were still off just like the first. And that's the thing, I ended up having to realign the media for every group of cuts because the material seemed to be shifting around slightly throughout the cutting process, at least on the first and fourth group of cuts it was noticeably shifting.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

It's tough to tell without seeing more pics, but are any of the letters close or is the entire cut off? Looks more like a setup problem or reading the marks incorrectly to be that far off. We use a Roland XC-540 and that is the only times we have trouble is when we screw something up in the setup after laminating and putting the material back in. It's clear you know how to run the machine since you got the contour cut right on in the first picture.

Things we look for - Don't get the media size again after laminating, also sometimes center on media is selected and shouldn't be or vice versa. Or some other box was checked when putting it back through that wasn't checked when printing.

The cuts started fairly close to where they should have been, but they were still off maybe a 1/16" to 1/8" in the feed direction. Then as the machine continued to cut, the cuts were getting farther and farther off, which happened not too far into the cutting process. It almost seemed like on the first group I cut, the material moved early on and the majority of everything else was way off at that point. The fourth set of cuts happened in a similar fashion.

 

[AF]

The cuts started fairly close to where they should have been, but they were still off maybe a 1/16" to 1/8" in the feed direction. Then as the machine continued to cut, the cuts were getting farther and farther off, which happened not too far into the cutting process. It almost seemed like on the first group I cut, the material moved early on and the majority of everything else was way off at that point. The fourth set of cuts happened in a similar fashion.

It gets expensive fast when stuff isn't working the way it should. My guess is you need to calibrate the machine so it feeds the correct amount. Also try to eliminate user error, which is difficult to discover as you are the user.

 

[bold_will_hold]

I'm not sure how that mimaki works. Only mimaki I used did not have a cutter so instead we laminated prints and feed them into a graphtec plotter to contour cut. I would assume the machine checks for all crop marks and if it is misaligned will not cut or at least give you some sort of message. There is usually an option to manually align crop marks for a more precious cut, but that can me annoying and take more time. I would make sure settings in your print software are setup to print crop mark specifically for a mimaki. Also like stated above print graphics centered, when you send cut file do not hit pole size or align the graphic just send it to cut.
Another thing I always do is remove all tracking wheels besides farthest two and place them on the ends of the material, all the other can be place in a position the do not contact the grips. so you would use the two end rollers and position all the others where they are not on the grey area so they do not contact the grip and rotate. I don't know how old the machine is but could be that the actual rubber wheels are deformed or worn down and skewing the feeding of the material. The wheels are cheap if the machine is older I would suggest trying to replace them. Also if there is a build up of little cut vinyl stuck craps on the grips I would peel any of that off.

 

[paperstrategies]

Firstly, If your cuts are that far off, I would absolutely call a tech. Could be alot of things. Perhaps some more troubleshooting on your end before you call the tech. Can you cut without crops? Have you lightly cleaned the encoder strip? Are your pinch roller settings correct? Try using well above the recommended size of your crops.

 

[myront]

Couple of things. Our mimaki has two settings for the tension on the pinch rollers i.e. tight and not so tight. They all have to be set the same. There are 4 pinch rollers that can be adjusted laterally too in order to accommodate different widths of material. Also you can choose to use just two. Cutting just straight vinyl we use two unless it's reflective. All other print and cut vinyls we use all 4 rollers, especially on longer runs. The blade has two positions, one for "Half cut" and the other position for straight cuts. If you forget to switch the blade from the "half cut" slot back to the other, your cuts will be way off.

 

[paperstrategies]

Couple of things. Our mimaki has two settings for the tension on the pinch rollers i.e. tight and not so tight. They all have to be set the same. There are 4 pinch rollers that can be adjusted laterally too in order to accommodate different widths of material. Also you can choose to use just two. Cutting just straight vinyl we use two unless it's reflective. All other print and cut vinyls we use all 4 rollers, especially on longer runs. The blade has two positions, one for "Half cut" and the other position for straight cuts. If you forget to switch the blade from the "half cut" slot back to the other, your cuts will be way off.

On a cjv150 the halfcut is defined in rasterlink. Its not mechanical. Typically the settings for vinyl (unless its reflective like above) I only use the outside rollers and set them to high. Just for clarification.

EDIT: When is the last time you calibrated? I would try the print/cut adjust just for kicks

 

[StickyBandit]

The cuts started fairly close to where they should have been, but they were still off maybe a 1/16" to 1/8" in the feed direction. Then as the machine continued to cut, the cuts were getting farther and farther off, which happened not too far into the cutting process. It almost seemed like on the first group I cut, the material moved early on and the majority of everything else was way off at that point. The fourth set of cuts happened in a similar fashion.

Check your speed on your machine, you may be running too fast. I have a XC-540 which did a similar thing.