Colex Sharpcut - Register Marks Qty and Uses.

[djhotwheel]

Question for any Colex Sharpcut users out there.
When had our initial training it was a hard understanding education with all these new tech features for a inexperienced user to learn.
We did not get any formal documentation on a proper setup for registration standards. So for the past 5yrs now we have different techniques and many comments between all of us employees.

What I am asking is what is the standard for how many register marks does 1...
- simple rectangle box require to cut properly?
- a 10 pack of simple decals, lets say 5x5 in size.
- or a full sheet of circle logos at 6x6 across a full 5'x10' area.

I was under the knowledge that 1 object requires 3 points of reg marks. Meaning each object would need 3 marks. This would waste a lot of space on media and time for the equipment to read and process that Gcode before it runs. So if I have 10qty of 24x18 blanks to cut out of a 4x8 sheet, I can do 4 reg marks without issues. When I have 100-300 decals on a 54" x 116" section of decals to cut out. I would not think the cut will be accurate with 4 reg marks in the corners. I would place maybe 3 across the top, quarter sections going down and the bottom. This would be about maybe 12 or 15 reg marks. Better triangulation for cutting?

What is the recommended settings for adding reg marks to certain cutting loads. What works best for any of the users out there.
Any guidance and help appreciated.

 

[MGB_LE]

Your understanding is a little flawed. A minimum of 3 dots per sheet is required. The tighter the registration tolerance, the more dots are suggested, however for everything from an 11x17 toner printed sheet up to a 48x96" board, we standardize on 3 dots to conserve media space.
Early Colex sample files like for the cars cutouts, there were a 6-12 dots per file, which was WAY overkill. Sometimes we'll use 4 dots, but be sure they are not arranged in a perfect rectangle, else the orientation could be off by 180 degrees without throwing some error code. So 3 dots in a triangle, or 4 dots in a trapezoid pattern should do the trick.

 

[nsm]

Its going to be media and print method dependent. A screen print on vinyl with no bleed will require the highest number of marks where a simple geometric shapes direct printed on a stable media like sintra would need less. Always err on more marks and just delete the ones from the the registration layer that you don't use. You can always delete marks. You can't add marks after the print. Well you can but then you are doing manual registration off of features in the print.

Download ai-cut. Its an adobe illustrator plugin that adds marks based on a fixed quantity or sliding scale that takes in to account the number length of the vector cut path.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

On our Multicam we have run as few as 2 dots, One in each corner diagonally. There is no right or wrong answer, just know that the more points of reference the more compensation math can be done for precision cutting.

 

[JBurton]

On my router (not a colex) with optiscout, I can put as many marks as I like, but the thing will only read 4 unless I go in and change the group mark settings from 'off' to 'group only'. I haven't had a bad registration yet, aside from not adding bleed, but like nsm said, you can always delete marks, can't add after the print run.