Crop Marks on Reflective

[David Snider]

When we have a print/cut job on reflective, our Mimaki plotter does not read the crop marks. We have come up with a solution of white squares that we cut out a window for the crop mark. We measured the size of the crop mark and cut it out of the square. Then place it over the crop mark on the reflective material. It works great but is kind of a time waster.

Any other ideas here?

 

[signage]

Dave you may want to try to use a small piece of mask over the crop mark then redraw with a sharpie! just an idea!

 

[thewood]

Have you tried putting a matte laminate over the reg. marks?

 

[bob]

Another way is to lay some rectangles of white vinyl in the area where you know the registration marks are going to be. Let the marks print on the white vinyl. You need to be sufficiently familiar with your equipment to have a pretty good idea of just where the marks are going to be located. You might have to bump your margins a bit to fit them in. Or not, depending. The pieces of white have to be large enough to contain whatever search area your system uses.

 

[David Snider]

Thanks for the ideas so far.

 

[signswi]

Cut down on the ambient light. Less light = less reflection. Hold some black showcard over the cutter while it tries to sense the crop marks in order to cut down on the intensity of the overhead lighting. That's what we do for our CG-160FX.

 

[TheSnowman]

I did a whole thread on this. Two days of trial and error. Wasn't on reflective, but on chrome and gold leaf. Same idea. http://www.signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51543

 

[SeaWriter]

David's technique works great on certain metallics as well, have used this method many times.

 

[eddesign]

crop marks

been running reflective with crop marks for five years and never had a problem with detecting crop mark. Have you tried running material in heavy mode.

 

[Gary1]

Not reading crop marks on reflective.

I have the same problem. Called my vendor who I bought the printer from,
(Mimaki CJV 130) and because I didn't buy their reflective vinyl they couldn't help me due to differences in reflectivity. Hmmm. I do know the real reason behind this.

Now, I first tried immediate cutting after printing option with an arrow printed for direction. It read the first mark but it seemed to me that the arrow was in the way because the laser was going back and forth. Then I redid the crop marks without the arrow for direction and it worked. I did it again with the arrow, and it worked. Then I did a print and cut later. Depicting the event of printing then laminating, then cutting. It never found the first crop mark at all. Placing show cards, and closing lights, and placing crop mark stickers clealy indicates a problem with the Mimaki setup not doing it's job when printing and cutting reflective film. I have an ambulance coming up soon, I will be doing this with my Gerber Edge because the Mimaki system is not reliable at this time. Mimaki, please feel free to add any comments or sound suggestions.

 

[omgsideburns]

If I'm printing/cutting something like perf, I'll usually stick down a piece of tape or vinyl where the marks are printing. Like.. I let the first pass hit lay down my tape, and try not to forget the marks at the end.