Segmenting cut files on long print/cut runs

[jpena9137]

I am new to printing, so pardon me if I am not using the right terms or if I am overlooking something obvious. I am on the trial of ONYX 11 printing on a HP L260. What I would like to do is pre-setup a large contour cut vinyl job to print overnight, however, I don't believe that I want to have the job generate one enormously long cut file.

It would seem to me that it would be common that users would want to segment the contour cut files so that the final product would be a large roll of printed decals that are separated approximately every 6 feet. Then the user could take the finished roll and cut off each section to run through the cutter in order to avoid loosing accuracy because of excessive length.

My understanding at this point is that I would have to send each section to the printer separately and would require some baby-sitting to start the next segment after the previous was finished.

Since I haven't purchased a RIP yet, I am wondering if this is possible to do in ONYX or any other RIP software. It seems like this feature should be there somewhere and I am just overlooking how to do it. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[bob]

While I have no idea about the capabilities of Onyx, this sort of thing is done all of the time in Flexi. I try never to print a page of decals longer than 48". All you do in Flexi is send the first page and tell Production manager not to delete it when done. Then just keep printing and cutting that same page over and over until you're done.

It would not be unreasonable to expect Onyx would have a similar feature.

 

[Hotspur]

Onyx can help you achieve this:
Separate your work into files that will produce a cut job of around the length Bob suggests as a maximum - any longer and you will lose accuracy on even the best cutters.
Send all the files into the rip making sure the placement strategy is set to "print files individually" and in the Setup "Automatically start printing" is on
Assuming you have set the quickset to print the correct cutter marks and have CutContour name recognition switched on, each job will be sent to the printer as an individual job with its own set of cut marks as soon as it is ripped and each file will have its own separate cut file visible in CutServer - no baby sitting required.
Alternatively, and especially if all the files are identical, there is another route:
Set your placement strategy to "Conserve Media" and in the Setup to the right go to the second tab Options and turn off "Print All Rows At A Time"
Then send your one job to the rip and once ripped and waiting to print, right click for job properties and select the number of copies to fill the roll.
You will see a gap appear in your nest between each row and it will print all the copies in one long print run unattended but crucially will give a separate set of marks for each file - and separate cut jobs in CutServer - preserving the accuracy.
Remember if you have the cutter switched on in your profile options then after each cut job is printed it will slice off the job from the printer - you may or may not want it to do this automatically if unattended. Most people turn the cutter off inside the profile and keep it all on the roll and load the finished roll straight onto the cutter.

I have a Summa D160 and thus I can ask the system to work automatically and unattended. Using the above workflow I can print in one unattended print run a full 30m roll of different files and give each file or group of files its own set of cut marks to maintain accuracy.
Then I import the whole set of cutfiles from Onyx Cutserver into the Summa barcode server with a few clicks by asking it to cut to a folder instead of to the cutter and load the printed roll onto the cutter.
Once I hit "cut" the Summa will scan the barcode of the first job and look at the list of cut jobs in its queue and find the correct cutfile and cut that job - it then moves the media along to find the next barcode and so on until the whole roll of individual, different cut jobs have been cut out unattended - this saves me hours of time as I run it overnight.
As an extra bonus Onyx has a special reg mark for the Summa called OPOSXY which prints a solid black line at the front edge of each job - the Summa will read along this line as well as the usual reg marks and if the vinyl is bowed in the middle (yours will be - you have a Latex they all bow the media by a few MMs ) it will take this into account in the cutting to maintain accuracy
Good luck!

 

[walkrite]

More complicated follow up to segmenting cut files- if you will

I want to load a lot of cut images into Onyx, and then have it (Onyx) nest them into jobs ranging from 48 to 72 inches in length, whatever makes most sense to conserve material. Is there any way to do this? We may have the equivalent of 100 feet of 24 inch and 36 inch images to print and cut every day. They are not the same files or dimensions. Is there a Quickset or anything to do that would allow me to have Onyx nest a job at a certain length and then move on to the next one?

There are lots of software programs to nest rectangles, I just wouldn't know how to import those nested eps into Onyx the same way.

I hope that makes sense. Finding an automated solution, versus nesting all the jobs ourselves would be a huge time saver. Thanks.