Need Help Very slow cutting curves

[Thane K. Sherrington]

Hi there,
I hope I'm posting this in the right forum. If not, I apologize.

I'm an IT support person, so I don't know anything about sign design, but I have a client who does, and he is having a problem with his D60/U cutter using WinPlot 6.70 Build 6770 (which is old, but I assume is because the cutter is old).

The USB port on his cutter failed, so he switched to serial, and now the cutter cuts extremely slowly when cutting curves (straight lines are normal speed).

He's designing in Corel Draw and importing to WinPlot, but he also tried importing a test EPS file and the same thing happens. If he prints a demo directly on the cutter it's normal speed.

Summa thinks it's the number of nodes, but weren't very helpful, so I'm wondering if anyone might have any suggestions.

Thanks for any help.

T

 

[papabud]

its most likely cutting at the same rate. but instead of one movement its doing two at the same time which would seem like half speed.
think of an old etcha sketch. a cutter works the same. it drags the material back and forth as the cut head moves side to side. so a curve involves moving the media forward as its moving the head to the side.
even my cutter "feels" like it slows down while cutting a curve.

 

[Thane K. Sherrington]

He says it's much slower than it was when he was using it with USB, so I'm not sure if it's the two direction thing you mentioned, although that does make sense.

T

 

[papabud]

well i cant say if using a serial cable slows down the data enough to effect the cut speed.
normally it sends cut data to a ram buffer then starts cutting. but there are other settings that take over during cut. like the step value. this tells the machine how many straight lines to use to make a curve. and other things.
but my 2 cents would be to tell your friend. a good cut is way more important than a fast cut.
i never run my cutter on full speed. mine for a simple quick cut still only runs at about half speed. the harder the cut the slower i make it run

 

[FrankW]

I would suggest to use the newest version of Winplot. Doesn't matter if the plotter is old, it should work.

Check the transmission speed of the serial interface. Should be at minimum 9600 baud. Check too the number of knots of the curves ... older corel versions make strange things there sometimes.

 

[Thane K. Sherrington]

I really appreciate all your help guys. I'm going to go over and take a look. I'll check baud rates and upgrade to the newest WinPlot. I'll update if there's any improvement.

 

[Thane K. Sherrington]

Ok, I went over to take a look. He's right, when I do the internal tests (where it cuts out "Summa" and some graphics, it's very fast, and once the knife drops, it keep moving until it needs to move to a new spot. When I cut from WinPlot, the knife starts and stops repeatedly (quickly) when doing curves, and that slows the production to a crawl. I tried 9600, 19,200 and 38,400 speeds, and tried N, 8, 1, and N, 8, 2 and both hardware and Xon/Xoff. No change.

It's very strange. It can't be the speed of the connection, because the speed at 9600 and and 38.4 were identical.

 

[Bly]

Has he tried some different artwork?
Some vector files like those from Autocad convert all curves to a series of unjoined straight lines.
Cut some text and see if that is quicker.

 

[Thane K. Sherrington]

I've tried even simple curves from EPS files and there's no change. I think it's a problem with WinPlot printing to a serial port. Does anyone use it this way?

 

[billsines]

Are you confident it's the USB on the cutter? I assume you went through all the troubleshooting steps to rule out the cable and the USB on the computer?

Does this computer have a new antivirus?

If it absolutely is the USB on the cutter can that be replaced, rather than switch to the serial port?

Is there some other port on there that can be used?

I don't know anything about your machines but I do a lot of troubleshooting on mine so these are just a few of the questions I run through when looking at my stuff.

 

[Thane K. Sherrington]

The USB port on the cutter is physically damaged (the wires are bent). There are no serial ports on the laptop, so he's using a USB to serial converter on the laptop and a null modem cable to the serial port on the cutter.

It's the same AV as he was using before, so I doubt it, but I guess it's possible.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[euronymous]

Maybe a long shot but check the power settings on the PC he's using.
Prevent Hard Drive from going to Sleep in Windows 10/8/7
EDIT: I've seen this affect digital printers before, print carriage just hangs at each end of the printer after each pass waiting for more info from the computer, could be something similar.

 

[ikarasu]

The USB port on the cutter is physically damaged (the wires are bent). There are no serial ports on the laptop, so he's using a USB to serial converter on the laptop and a null modem cable to the serial port on the cutter.

It's the same AV as he was using before, so I doubt it, but I guess it's possible.

Thanks for the suggestions.

How are you with soldering?

10x Plug Port Connector Socket PCB Replacement USB 2.0 Type B Female Right Angle | eBay

I'd buy locally instead of from China... but ports are pretty easy to fix... I believe it's 4 pins you have to solder. I've replaced some ports on other devices... I've never tried with the graphtec, but its pretty easy. You can buy a soldering iron, some wire solder, a de-soldering braid and some usb ports for under $20-30 for everything... then a bit of practice soldering/desoldering and it should be pretty simple. The connectors on usb ports are fairly large, so it doesn't require too much finess.

I'm going by what port is on my graphtec... not sure whats on summas, so if you do go this route verify which usb port you need.

You may also be able to buy just the usb bord connector from summa... I'd shoot them an E-mail and ask. If it's just a board with a wire, it may be easy.

If your comfortable with soldering or learning how... I'd go that route though. It's only a couple bucks to buy a new usb port... And I went from zero experience to replacing ports in an hour. It's a great skill to learn too, especially if you're in IT / repair stuff, I've replaced dozens of phone charge ports... repaired a faulty monitor connector...etc.

 

[woolly]

Possibly need to set the handshaking to hardware.
The data sent plotter speak is the same usb or serial it's just how it's delivered