what I learned this morning by trial and error

[gabagoo]

My Summa d-140 can be a very finicky piece of equipment. It cuts great and as a plotter is good. The opus reader has been a thorn in my side for over 6 years. I have tried many cures but there always seems to be a job 2 or 3 times a week that frustrates the &^%^ out of me with the reader refusing to pick up the registration marks. I have done so many things to help it along over the years. I have 3mm black squares I have cut out of gloss vinyl to place over the registration marks, and it can work, but is a time waster as you are stuck waiting for the plotter to reject the reading of each mark. I have tried rubbing the laminate after it fails and that too has worked, but again very time consuming and frustrating, especially when you have more important duties to attend to. I even found that after rubbing the laminate to get it glossier or remove silvering that a little moisture over the square really helped the reader.

So anyways Friday I needed to cut 21 logos about 14" x 21" and I printed them in lots of 6...they were laminated 2 days earlier and every piece drove me near crazy with refusal of every technique to find those marks.
I gave up Friday and left it to this morning and again the same issue. I really have to change this laminate to something a little more user friendly.... but I thought today I am going to shut the lights out in my work room and see what happens. I used a small led light to line up the plotter and then shut it off and hit enter.....remarkably the plotter found all 6 marks on the first try and it cut effortlessy. I have an 8 foot double fluorescent light above the Summa with T8 bulbs...I never would have suspected that to cause an issue.

lets see how long this fix works.

 

[rjssigns]

Thanks for the tip. I imagine it could work for all makes and models.

 

[Gino]

Hope that works !!





We've had a similar problem with one of our printer/cutters.

For some reason, certain jobs would just ditch sometimes a few inches in or maybe a few inches before the end. Nonetheless, it was frustrating. We tried everything. The tech was out a few months ago and said everything was fine and all tests were good...... and of course, it didn't happen while she was there. We asked about this cable or that belt and whatnot, but always the same answer. Nah, fraid not, that wouldn't cause it.


Well, this past Friday, last thing of the day, we had a bunch of banners to print. The first few went fine. They were all 36" or less. The last one stopped about 5 times. I looked at it, studied it and just looked like I thought I knew what I was doing. Usually, we just do a banner right down the middle of the media and all goes well. This last one was 42" plus the extra 2" for the hem, so essentially, it was 46" to the printer's brain. Putting it in the middle, put the banner almost to the edge of where the head has to go to be almost at it's fullest extent. I told Jeremy to put the banner up against the print-head side and see what happens. It printed fine all the way to the end. Was that the fix ?? I doubt it, but we at least fooled the printer so we could finish the job. We'll see how many more times this 'Quick-Fix' works.

 

[MikeD]

We have the same issues with detecting marks or barcodes. What you did really took a lot of environmental variables out of the process and you made it easier for the machine to do it's job. Reflectivity, glare and the substrate's face among other things, affect what the sensor is viewing.
Something I do not do as often as I should is calibrate the sensor to work with whatever substrate I'm cutting (and to some extent the lighting in the workspace.) The calibration should be done when switching between media types and if there is any change in shop lighting, or of course if we begin to have problems with mark detection.

 

[gabagoo]

OH I forgot to mention this little variable, and it is a real head shaker. I sat there Friday and I tried running the cutter and after a few minutes I was frustrated and re booted the plotter. Tried again with the same results... I then rebooted the computer and the plotter (as sometimes this has worked) and again...no go!!. I then was looking at the program manager and because I had sent the job out in 3 identical runs, decided to try using a different file to cut with.... There is no answer i can give, but it actually worked on one of them. I can only think the info in each cut file was identical, but for some reason using a different one worked on that one set. and then back to the problem and I shut everything down and went home for the weekend.

I will say that Summa technical service is suberb and way ahead of anyone else's, but this issue is not something that can be talked about over the phone. I will say that I have not recalibrated the opus for every media as it is continually changing

 

[gabagoo]

Well it seems that worked once and not again as I have tried the lights out method yesterday and today and the same wandering of Mr Opus. More trial and error this morning on a job printed on matte material with no laminate. Should be a breeze one would think, but no....Mr Opus can't seem to find anything to register.

I used the old rub my finger tip on the square until I felt an intense amount of heat from friction and it helped but Mr Opus needed more help. I thought about it and it seems that that Mr Opus likes to see something dull or very shiny for contrast...the wet method didn't seem to work either so I grabbed a pencil eraser, instead of rubbing all the layers of skin off my finger and it works like a charm!!!! Now mind you the reader hesitates on all 8 registration marks or goes into that frantic search mode...but the eraser made Mr Opus very happy and the job is cut.

Now another issue I was thinking about that might help others with this issue and speeding up the process. When Mr Opus can't find the mark and does go into that horrible routine of making a square and slowly moving out and then after a minute or 6 it starts all over, I have found a way to halt that process without killing the power. Simply lift the opus reader up and it jumps around and starts the search again....lift it one more time and you will get the beep you need to pull out the eraser!!!!


just more tip on how to satisy Mr Opus and make your day a little more pleasant

over and out for now

 

[Jester1167]

On our Roland we used to cover the parts of the print close to the registration marks with white removable vinyl to get it to read correctly. For some reason dark or black graphics next to the registration marks confused the cutter.

On thick matte lexan laminate we used to put black vinyl circles over the registration marks to get it to read as well.

 

[XtremeXccessories]

One suggestion I was given, but haven't needed to try yet, is to put a piece of low-tac tape over each registration mark (1" square or so) before lamination, laminate, then cut the lam on the edges of the tape and pull both off. That way you don't have the lamination messing with the OPOS sensor, it's reading directly on the ink/material. A little time-consuming, but better than trying to get the sensor to read 5 or 6 times before it catches on..

 

[gabagoo]

One suggestion I was given, but haven't needed to try yet, is to put a piece of low-tac tape over each registration mark (1" square or so) before lamination, laminate, then cut the lam on the edges of the tape and pull both off. That way you don't have the lamination messing with the OPOS sensor, it's reading directly on the ink/material. A little time-consuming, but better than trying to get the sensor to read 5 or 6 times before it catches on..

Thats a lot of extra work, besides with my printer and software ( flexi and Mimaki) I dont just get registration marks that are used, we get a continuous line of black squares about an inch or 2 apart, so in reality you never know outside of the first ones where the remaining marks to be used are. I have even seen it ignore the last registration marks and use the ones before ...just weird

 

[FrankW]

You would not have that trouble with OPOS X, with a SummaCut D140R, if you know how to calibrate it.

 

[gabagoo]

You would not have that trouble with OPOS X, with a SummaCut D140R, if you know how to calibrate it.

...but I don't have a d140R Franky

 

[MikeD]

gabagoo + Frank-
both of you have mentioned your technique of lifting the sensor to stop its search when it has trouble. Can you elaborate and maybe post a picture? I don't have the guts to try it on my boss' plotters!
Are you doing that while it's moving?

Thanks for the tips!