Roland VS-540 Constant Cutting Problems

[Nicholedene]

Hi guys. I bought in a new VS-540 about 18 months ago now. When I was shopping this thing one of the major concerns I had was around the cutter. Historically we always printed on our (ooooold) Mimaki 54" with OPOS crop marks, straight out of Flexi Production Manager, then cut on our 54" Summa. The quality of our prints back then were unimpressive, but the cuts were always beautiful. With the Roland we learned that still printing through Flexi was cumbersome (colors are off, process was more time consuming) My Roland rep consistently pushed using Versaworks, so after a few months we made the switch. Beautiful prints, perfect color, great consistency. Unfortunately, the cutter associated with the Roland has been a nightmare. I would say an average of 1 out of every 3 print/lam/cuts comes out all F-d up. We've had the Roland rep up a few times. Each time he would run the three calibrations (bidirectional, feed, print/cut), tinker for a while, run a good cut and call it done. Then he'd leave, and sometime in the next day or two the problem would come back. Eventually he told us to stop printing stretches over 8' in length, and then over time that became 'stop printing over 5 feet' ... can you see the pattern? At this point it doesn't matter if we printed a 24" length, did all three calibrations then immediately run the contour cut, it's still doing the same thing, which is to say the cut starts in the wrong place and cuts right through the middle of the graphics. I'm tired of tossing out perfectly good prints. Can anyone help?

Note: We tried going back to Flexi Production Manager for the rip and print and now the Roland is consistently dumping extra ink and printing horribly. Print the exact same thing a second time through VW and it's just fine. The employee I had on staff who was making this process work before is gone now, and apparently he knew something I just haven't figured out. Pulling my hair out!

Advice please?

 

[J Hill Designs]

i dont use the combo, but I have heard time and time again to not 'center on media' when doing print/lam/cut

just a few pennies in the cup

 

[Baz]

Sounds like the printer doesn't have the basepoint set on it before cutting.

 

[rjssigns]

In a nutshell: Roland print/cut rigs aren't too swift at contour cutting. I know I've got one. I have been on a mission to get the ol' gal back into top form. Replacing the cambered outer wheels, setting nip tension, shimming the center pinch wheels, calibrations, etc... Although there has been marked improvement it has a ways to go.