Roland Camm-1 cutting accuracy

[mikeinpdx]

I have a Camm-1 GX-500 cutter and a Soljet III printer. I'm noticing a slight error when doing cut jobs that is really apparent when cutting decals with a black border. The designer is using a 0.03" offset, and that isn't enough.

I see the accuracy of the GX-500 is 0.2%, so if they media is 46 inches wide, I'm assuming that means it can be off 0.009 for width, if the job is 5 feet long, it can be off 0.012 inches. So it seems like 0.03 should be adequate. It seems like the plotter "scales" a little differently than the printer, I'm noticing it seems more accurate near the origin, and gets further off as it gets away from the origin.

I thought the cutter using the crop marks to calibrate skew and any slight differences in the printer width/length, but maybe that isn't true? Do I need to calibrate both the printer and the plotter? Or just calibrate the plotter? I'm not sure how to do either.

 

[rjssigns]

0.030" is not enough. At 0.2% over 46 inches you're 0.092" off. Not 0.009" (46 x 0.002=0.092)

When we run our SP540 for print cut jobs we "blob" the background with the border color. Few pennies extra of ink and all your decals become usable.

 

[mikeinpdx]

Thanks, you're correct - I should have had my reading glasses on for that calculation.

In this case, the customer has a thin black border around the image, so even if the stroke is wide enough for plenty of bleed so there's no white, the inside border can look pretty uneven. I've suggested adding a white border so the small errors aren't so visible, but the customer has claimed that other printers didn't have any issues ( of course ) Is the CAMM-1 is that much less accurate than more expensive cutters?

I'm pretty sure there is some sort of alignment procedure in the service manual for the CAMM-1, but I don't have a copy. I know there's an alignment process for the printer that you can use to calibrate length/width.

In any case, I realize it's still within spec even as it is now, but I thought it would at least be worth seeing if I could tweak it a bit more.

0.030" is not enough. At 0.2% over 46 inches you're 0.092" off. Not 0.009" (46 x 0.002=0.092)

When we run our SP540 for print cut jobs we "blob" the background with the border color. Few pennies extra of ink and all your decals become usable.

 

[rjssigns]

You are correct the CAMM-1 cutters are not very accurate. I'm getting by with my print/cut SP540V that I have tweaked out, but we're looking for a used Summa.

For deadly accurate jobs I leverage my subs capabilities and their ZUND flatbed.

Best advice I can give is to keep all you jobs under 5 feet in length. Depending on the age of your CAMM-1 you may want to check/adjust the nip pressure.