Shift happens?

[GiveUsSigns]

My saga continues,
A continuation of a former post of mine.
Airmark installed a new mother board and a pressure head on my new cutter as it miscut at their shop.
I am cutting Substance vinyl/laminate on A Summa S2T140 and as I cut through my sheets, my cuts slowly
go off calibration as the vinyl moves up. My sheets are only 60" long max.
So my die cut stickers are getting mis-cut up by the time the cut get to the last rows of the cut.
It has been quite frustrating and wonder if anybody has had this happen.
I checked my cut lines and they all line up in my artwork, so no shift there.
It seems to happen as I cut multiple sheets.
This last job I have 4 sheets of 30"x60" with 120 stickers on each sheet.
The last/4th sheet was completely off and lost all but a dozen stickers.
Pics 0182 and afterlight4 shows the shift in cut.
Pic 0184 is how is should be and how it starts out.

So, could this be a printer tracking issue? or could this be a software issue?
Since it cuts fine from the start, I am assuming it is a cutter tracking issue.

Thoughts?
Happy New Year to all.
And a hopefully a happier new year to boot.

Frustrated in Seattle to say the least.

 

[balstestrat]

Add marks every 12 inches.
Turn on paneling.
If speed and acceleration is high take it down a notch.

 

[Saturn]

I'd put my money on it just being because it's sort of at the limits of what a roll cutter can do as far as the combination of the weight of the material and the thickness that you're cutting through. I bet it IS slipping and pushing itself around a tiny bit and as it goes further along the effect obviously gets amplified. Especially if you're still trying to do this as one pass/cut.

I know this material is spendy, but I'd sure be looking at breaking the sheets up into 3-20" layouts or 2-30" layouts, even if it costs the extra material between them. Sounds like an easy bandaid or stress reducer even if it's not perfect? I did try this material here, and I know it'll cut dead-on at least for a few rows, but out to 60"... 6 mil total, you bet, but 21 mil at max pressure? Yikes.

Also, from the #3 photo it does look like your blade's origin deviation might be off a little. When I get that kind of serrated looking (and feeling) edge it usually means I need to play with the origin setting or start a fresh blade. It shows up more in straight cuts on one of the two axes. Page 56 of the manual.

 

[GiveUsSigns]

Add marks every 12 inches.
Turn on paneling.
If speed and acceleration is high take it down a notch.

I just turned OPOS paneling to 2 mark.
We (Summa tech and I) reduced the speed already.
I will try adding in more OPOS marks and see if that helps.
I just cut my sheet length in half and will see how that goes here in a bit.
Waiting to outgas before I laminate.
The blade in there now is double wedge and is brand new.
Again, one issue I have is as it cuts, and because the media is pretty thick, it slivers a bit and slowly clogs up the blade and the small rollers in the tip. So, I clean it after each cut just to be sure.
This has been quite a bumpy adventure trying to get this dialed in.

Will update on next cut.

 

[iPrintStuff]

Yeah I’d either make the sheets shorter and just not put a gap between barcodes.

Or in the RIP go into the cutter settings and make the intermittent marks a lot closer then turn panneling on.

Only trouble with doing that is if the cutter has started to go out already, when it reads the next mark it will cut correct so they won’t align. So you’d need to make the marks close enough that the cutter will still be cutting correctly before it reads the next marks.

I’m going to assume you have Gperformance etc enabled and the speed or quality preference are set to quality.

 

[unclebun]

I don't think you should be getting slivers of the vinyl unless you are double cutting. And you shouldn't be double cutting. You should be able to cut the vinyl in one go.

The best tactic is not to cut long sheets. Keep it to about 2 feet.

What is a double wedge blade? Never heard that term before.

Edit: I looked up a Summa dual wedge blade, and as far as I can tell it's just a normal plotter blade, sharpened on both sides. Is that correct?

 

[GiveUsSigns]

I don't think you should be getting slivers of the vinyl unless you are double cutting. And you shouldn't be double cutting. You should be able to cut the vinyl in one go.

The best tactic is not to cut long sheets. Keep it to about 2 feet.

What is a double wedge blade? Never heard that term before.

Edit: I looked up a Summa dual wedge blade, and as far as I can tell it's just a normal plotter blade, sharpened on both sides. Is that correct?

================

Yes, Its the dual wedge blade, I always call it double wedge, it just seems to cut a bit cleaner. Recommended by Sales Mngr and their tech.
Also, I am not double cutting, just a single cut, but for some reason the laminate/vinyl thickness combo seems to sliver up a bit on the longer sheets.
And I always clean it off at the end of each sheet cut.
My sheets also are Not continuous, I run each sheet separate to alleviate the sheer weight of the Substance combo.
But, Now I have shortened my sheets now to about 30x30. My speed is nice and slow. I am maxed out at blade pressure at 600.
We tested everything with the tech and 600 is best for the Substance stuff.
I will see how that goes here in a bit.

 

[Saturn]

Frustrating how they named the blades... Double/dual edge/wedge...

As far as I can tell there's basically 3 "normal" blades, the 36 degree, the 45 and the 60—Then there's a 36 degree "double edge" one which is made to have a sharpened edge on both the lead and trailing cutting edge. The problem is that the description for the 45 degree blade is specifically listed as "dual wedge" even though the 36, 45, 60 all appear to be typical blade designs as any of us would expect. Only the 36 degree "double edge" one is unique, unless I'm missing something fundamental. I've purchased and examined all three of the "normal" blades.

Despite what other folks say, I think trying to get long term, dependable results will actually be harder with one pass rather than two.

 

[C5 Service&Repair]

turn the up and down acceleration (up acceleration, and down acceleration), down to .2G
speeds around 300-400

 

[GiveUsSigns]

Update from Shift happens central.
I successfully cut without shift the new portion of my order.
I took every ones advice here and put it to work. Changed speeds, pressure, shorter sheet, OPOS paneling on. etc.
It seems the biggest issue was the length of my sheets and the sheer weight of the Substance vinyl/laminate.
Again, I was using the 6mil/10mil combo for this.
I have tried the 6mil/15 mil combo yet as the 6/10 combo was not working.
So, the short sheets seems to alleviate the shift. I mean sheet length of no more than 36".
I then ran an order through that was just 6mil vinyl with no laminate and that was also successful with no shift, again using shorter sheet lengths.
So, I have another order to run that has the 6mil/10mil combo and will see how it goes.
I thank everyone for their valued input. But I am feeling a bit better after some success, finally.
I will update again after a few more Substance orders.

GO/Chaos

 

[P Wagner]

Are you kiss cutting (leaving the backing sheet intact) or through cutting (aka flex cut/ die cut/ perf cut)?

 

[GiveUsSigns]

Are you kiss cutting (leaving the backing sheet intact) or through cutting (aka flex cut/ die cut/ perf cut)?

I tried to cut all the way through, but it is very difficult to get a clean cut all the way around the artwork using the Substance vinyl/laminate combo. So I am currently kiss cutting.
I haven't even moved to the thick 21mil combo yet. I am not thinking that will be too successful at this point. Can you say flatbed?

 

[unclebun]

We use an ancient Mimaki CG-FX to cut the 21 mil combo day in and day out. We don't perf cut; just kiss cut. Unless your plotter is totally incapable, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to cut it.