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Randomly cutting my designs twice using Rasterlink tool for Illustrator

MulticopieLM

New Member
Hello everyone,

I often have the problem of my cutting lines cutting twice. This cause jams and all kinds of problems while cutting. Im using the rasterlink tool from illustrator.

The problem happens randomly and we cant find what is the problem. Anyone had this issue? Is there a way to know in Rasterlink that the line will be cut twice before starting the job?

Thanks in advance!
 

A Signage

Owner / Operator
I often get illustrator art from clients and almost always there's 2 sets of letters on top of each other. If you don't remove the extra set the plotter will cut both.
Great way to destroy the cutting strip!
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
What is the artwork that you're cutting? If it is customer provided artwork in the form of a PDF file then there's the problem. PDF files are technically only meant for viewing and printing. PDF is not supposed to be an art file format to be edited further. But we don't live in a perfect world and have to settle for using PDF elements in many situations.

The only kind of edit-friendly PDF file is one that was created in Adobe Illustrator with Illustrator editing capability preserved. What that really means is AI data is appended to the PDF.

In all other cases PDF files will almost always be littered with all sorts of clipping masks, clipping groups and duplicate paths that have no stroke or fill. Astute Graphics' Vector First Aid plugin for Illustrator can automatically find and remove unpainted and un-stroked paths and other duplicate objects. The plugin will fix all sorts of other errors common to imported PDF content. The plugin won't fix everything though. The artwork still has to be policed to make doubly sure any duplicate paths have been eliminated.
 

DL Signs

Never go against the family
If you use the Mimaki FineCut plugin, it has a preview feature where it does a cut simulation, you'll see when/ where it does double cuts. Helpful.

If you use EPS files you eliminate the random PDF anomalies and masks that sometimes are viewed as shapes, make sure lines are lines and not shapes, make sure shapes are either just a stroke or a shape, not a shape with a stroke, or it'll cut both. A line with a 1pt stroke will cut once, if the stroke gets outlined it becomes a shape and both sides will get cut, at 1pt wide, it's basically a double cut.

I never use customer provided cut paths unless I know that they know what they're doing, always do my own, always in EPS, and 99.9999% of problems are gone.
 

Philw

New Member
Hello everyone,

I often have the problem of my cutting lines cutting twice. This cause jams and all kinds of problems while cutting. Im using the rasterlink tool from illustrator.

The problem happens randomly and we cant find what is the problem. Anyone had this issue? Is there a way to know in Rasterlink that the line will be cut twice before starting the job?

Thanks in advance!
I usually find this happening where the cut line is supplied with the artwork and it's not actually a 'line', it's more a compound path and when released it's made up of an outer line, a fill and an inner line. Has the same effect on both Rasterlink and VersaWorks.
 

MikePro

Active Member
for me, in onyx, it was an issue with using a stroke rather than an object fill for the cutshape designator.
was treating the stroke as two lines, and cutting them
 
You'll have issues if there is / was transparency in the file. I can't remember the option name when saving but you need to select level 3 from the drop down. I'm not at my pc, hope that helps lol
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
MikePro said:
for me, in onyx, it was an issue with using a stroke rather than an object fill for the cutshape designator.
was treating the stroke as two lines, and cutting them

I don't recall ever having problems using unfilled, stroked paths for cut lines in print and cut jobs output with Onyx. I apply the "CutContour" custom spot color to the line stroke in the PDF sent to Onyx and it works fine. My only frustration is those rare occasions I have to do cut-only jobs in Onyx. I have to use a SVG file for that. Every now and then they move the goal posts on what flavor of SVG will work. For now SVG Tiny 1.1 saved out of Adobe Illustrator seems to do alright.
 

myront

Dammit, make it faster!!
With using Coreldraw & the FineCut plug -in, I was able to incorporate a "fail safe" macro whereby throwing a caution pop up message if there were intersecting lines detected once you hit cut. Worked great for this and also if you had overlapping text characters i.e. AX. You could then go back and check things (weld the text etc.) then hit cut again. We've since upgraded or reloaded and I just never implementing it again. I really wish the folks at Mimaki/FineCut would implement this feature.
 

Broome Signs

New Member
the problem is how the user has set illustrators art work, as the rip will see both sides of the cut path and cut them both
allays set the stroke to .001mm


PB
 

Attila Nagy

New Member
the problem is how the user has set illustrators art work, as the rip will see both sides of the cut path and cut them both
allays set the stroke to .001mm


PB
Stroke size does not effects the cut in the Rip. If it was true, 0.001 would have 2 sides as well. but only if you convert Stroke to outline.
One of The main mistake the default vectorizing method 2 colors. Should choose silhouette. or Flatten transparency has an default option to Convert Stroke to outline.
 

Broome Signs

New Member
Stroke size does not effects the cut in the Rip. If it was true, 0.001 would have 2 sides as well. but only if you convert Stroke to outline.
One of The main mistake the default vectorizing method 2 colors. Should choose silhouette. or Flatten transparency has an default option to Convert Stroke to outline.
Im uncertain of what rip you are using. Versa works seas the illustrator vector stroke lines as a double cut path unless you resize it down
this has only become an issue with the latest illustrator versions, older outdated versions work fine.

PB
 

Jetpack Stickers & Labels

Jetpack Stickers & Labels
We have the same problem with Versaworks. We found the "Cut Stroke" must be centered over the path. If the "Cut Stroke" is set to inside or outside the path we get two cuts.
This... we don't use Rasterlink, but the same thing happens with Flexi. Stroke must be aligned to center or 2 cuts.
 
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