Tiles printing at wrong size!

[talonracer]

(Apologies for the double-post. I first posted this to general signmaking questions, without seeing the flexi forum)

Thanks to everyone for their participation on this board. I've been viewing it for quite a while to get a lot of help! However now I have a dilemma that I haven't been able to find an answer for on here, so I'm throwing it out in hopes for some assistance!

Mutoh VJ 1204, Flexisign 8.62
I was printing some large windows that were about 8" too wide for my printer, and so I printed them in tiles (which I created in photoshop, not flexi).
For example, window A was originally 53" wide and 66.75" vertical. I made the left portion 45" wide, and then the second piece had a one inch overlay (horizontal).
I then saved the two files as tifs and imported them into flexi.

I sent the the large portion to print, and it printed at 66.75" vertical, which was correct.
However, when I printed the smaller portion, it printed at approximately 67", which of course threw off the alignment of the entire piece.

This is the second time I have encountered this with Flexi. I double checked the files, and even production manager to ensure that there was no scaling set, and everything checks out. Has anyone encountered this before, or would you have any suggestions on what would cause this?

 

[thewood]

Could this be a printer issue rather than a software issue? If you send two files of the same length and they print at slightly different sizes, I would look at the printer (media comp, takeup, etc). Just a thought.

 

[astro8]

Could this be a printer issue rather than a software issue? If you send two files of the same length and they print at slightly different sizes, I would look at the printer (media comp, takeup, etc). Just a thought.

I was thinking the same thing.

You can get a variation as to whether the media is printed not yet attached to the take up (or is attached during the print) and then the next print is printed attached..but then realised that the 1204 doesn't have a tensioning take up (or am I behind the times?) so this more or less rules this out (or diminishes it as the problem...)

 

[luggnut]

are you opening the file in flexi and then hitting rip and print or are you opening in production manager and printing?

if i open a jpg or tiff in production manager it sometimes get the size wrong... i think it has something to do with the resolution of the file?

if i open in flexi and make sure the size is correct there it works.

why wouldn't you just tile the job in flexi?

 

[talonracer]

I would have tiled the job in flexi, but the way the layouts worked, there were 4 windows that were too big, and so I needed to print 4 of the smaller tiles as well, all of which fit side by side on the roll. I didn't know how to put those 4 smaller tiles side by side any other way than to create them as separate files.

As for the earlier post, is there a tensioning feature in the VJ 1204?

Could this be an encoder strip issue? I've noticed ours is dirty and has a few scratches on it.

 

[talonracer]

Oh, luggnut, I did open the jobs in flexi, ensure they were the correct width and height, and print. I double-checked the measurements in production manager, and they were the same there as well.

 

[luggnut]

Oh, luggnut, I did open the jobs in flexi, ensure they were the correct width and height, and print. I double-checked the measurements in production manager, and they were the same there as well.

then is has to be a setting somewhere ... in the software or the printer. does it only do it on this job? do you have the media size width set right?

 

[talonracer]

Yes, the width of the media and length are both set correct.

Interestingly enough, I also later tried correcting the vertical length of the tiles by printing the smaller ones at 66.531", which led to them being printed at 66.75".

Any ideas what could be causing this?