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Printing Bounding Box Around Registration Marks

StickerGuy83

New Member
I am trying to print a white (or grey) bounding box around the black Graphtec registration marks, within Flexi 21. There is an option to print those boxes in any colors, to help aid in reading the marks when printing on highly reflective materials. My problem is I require white ink to be printed in some areas of the design, but not all of the design. I can only get it to print a white bounding box around the reg marks if it is set to "under color". When set to this, it will lay white under all the colors it sees in the design. My goal is to have white only to be printed where I have the underbase added in Flexi Design, but also print the white for the bounding box for the reg marks. I've tried it 100 different ways and nothing is working. Anyone have any ideas how to get this to work?

Flexi Sign and Print 21
Epson s80600
 

Medina Signs

Old Member
Not a lot of experience with this, but is there a reason why you could not simply cut a box in the cut file or manually cut a box around the registration marks, weed it off and then run the actual job through your plotter? It adds another step, but may be a short term fix.
 

bob

It's better to have two hands than one glove.
Assuming that your're using automatic registration marks. Cut some rectangles large enough to contain a registration mark from while vinyl. Then make a bounding box around the image you want to print and contour cut. Make is a hairline and, say,10% black. Now make two jobs. The first is just the hairline bounding box. The second job is everything, including the hairline bounding box. Align the leading edge of the media with some landmark on the printer, THIS IS IMPORTANT. I use the top of the black bar that the plotter uses to sense media width, your mileage may vary. Now print the first job, just the bounding box with the auto reg marks. Advance or back up the media so it's convenient to put two of the white rectangles over the top registration marks. Do the same for the bottom pair of marks. Advance or back up the media so the leading edge is once more aligned with the same landmark that you set the first time. Now print the second job. The registration marks for that job should fall right inside the white rectangles.

This is not theory, I do this a lot. Anytime I have to print on non white. metallic, or reflective media. This is one of those things that it's far more complicated to describe than it is to do. Since you have the ability to print white it shouldn't be hard to figure out a way to first print the white boxes and then print the whole job. The thing here is using a two [or more] pass method.
 
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StickerGuy83

New Member
I figured out a workaround. In Flexi Sign & Print you can add contour marks in the design software. I can add create a box around the reg mark and add an underbase to it, and map it to white.
The only PITA is you have to send the file with the actual contour lines removed when printing, and send the cut file separately.
 
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