Hopefully I can explain what's happening, here. I'm new to this particular shop and also to Vuteks (previously ran a Scitex FB6100). I'm not the press guy, either - just trying to figure out what the problem is.
Printing on 1/4" acrylic sheets, 5' x10'. The art is low ink coverage, but hi-res printing with white ink, double strike for saturation, and it takes about an hour per sheet to complete the printing cycle. We can get seven panels out of each sheet of acrylic, hence the 5x10 substrate size.
The problem: the reference dots for the router are out of place. They were created in the Esko iCut program and placed automatically, but the distance between the dots on one (long) end of the sheet is 1/4" shorter than the pair of opposing dots along the other edge. Of course, that screws everything up when it comes down to routing and now we have 21 randomly out-of-square, 1/4" acrylic panels with holes randomly out of place. These sets of seven panels/per store location are meant to be changed out during the year according to the season (TGiving, Xmas, etc.) so the mounting holes for the stand-offs obviously should be exactly in the same place on every panel.
Has anyone else seen anything like this before? The production people here have some theories as to why it happened (e.g., shifting substrate on the conveyor belt, substrate overheating during the printing process) but I think it's something else - I just don't know what. Is the iCut auto dot plug-in known to be a bit glitchy? At my previous shop we always placed our own cut dots in Adobe Illustrator layers and never had a problem. If you need a better explanation please ask for more details and I'll gladly provide them.
As always, any input is greatly appreciated!
Printing on 1/4" acrylic sheets, 5' x10'. The art is low ink coverage, but hi-res printing with white ink, double strike for saturation, and it takes about an hour per sheet to complete the printing cycle. We can get seven panels out of each sheet of acrylic, hence the 5x10 substrate size.
The problem: the reference dots for the router are out of place. They were created in the Esko iCut program and placed automatically, but the distance between the dots on one (long) end of the sheet is 1/4" shorter than the pair of opposing dots along the other edge. Of course, that screws everything up when it comes down to routing and now we have 21 randomly out-of-square, 1/4" acrylic panels with holes randomly out of place. These sets of seven panels/per store location are meant to be changed out during the year according to the season (TGiving, Xmas, etc.) so the mounting holes for the stand-offs obviously should be exactly in the same place on every panel.
Has anyone else seen anything like this before? The production people here have some theories as to why it happened (e.g., shifting substrate on the conveyor belt, substrate overheating during the printing process) but I think it's something else - I just don't know what. Is the iCut auto dot plug-in known to be a bit glitchy? At my previous shop we always placed our own cut dots in Adobe Illustrator layers and never had a problem. If you need a better explanation please ask for more details and I'll gladly provide them.
As always, any input is greatly appreciated!