Cutter not making perfect circles

[ehang33234]

I have a Sticka STX-8 and am printing off of Illustrator CS2 (no plugin, just printer driver). The circles in my designs are not cutting as complete circles. They are coming out almost oval. Larger circles are no problem, but small 1" and below ones are noticeably akward.

I am using only basic color and vinyl material, so I dont think it is the vinyl causing this problem... but then again, I could be wrong. Blade is 45 degree, I believe. I've even tried cutting at slower speeds and the circles are made in illustrator using their circle tool, so it is a perfect circle.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[imaSIGNr]

Circle tool and oval can be the same tool . Is there a box that shows you what the height and width is ? These should be the same.

 

[OldPaint]

brings up the funnest one i ever heard....back when PC's wasnt as graphic as macs....i had a mac guy tell me this one.....PC's cant make perfect circles...ONLY MAC CAN!!!!!!!
FIRDAY FUNNY!!!

 

[bob]

Circle tool and oval can be the same tool . Is there a box that shows you what the height and width is ? These should be the same.

A circle merely is a special case of an oval, the definition of an oval is x=r1*cos(a), y=r2*sin(a). If r1=r2 then it is a circle.

The salient point here would seem to be that an object is rendered differently depending on its scale. According to the original poster an object that appears a circle at some size appears an oval when that scale is reduced.

Did this just start happening or has it always been the case?

If it just started then hardware slippage would be something to look at although it would not be unreasonable to expect the deviation to be more pronounced the larger the object rather than the smaller if this were the case.

If this anomaly has always been the case I would suspect that the output is chords, not arcs, and perhaps the curve resolution is sufficiently coarse coupled with some less than optimum floating point routines. This might exaggerate what is at best only an approximation of a circle when it is done with chords.

 

[Ken]

Yeah...what Bob said..lol.
Have you tried the native program for the Stika?
Colorchoice or Dr. Stika...I forget.
But might be worth a try and see if you get the same result.
Good luck.
Ken

 

[ehang33234]

Thanks for the input fellas. I know this is as perfect a circle as Illustrator can draw because I am holding down cntrl+alt to draw the circle, which draws it equal-distant from the center. I have never had this problem before when doing print media...so I assume it is what Bob said and a cause of the cutter. This is a feed printer without the dots along the edges, so the vinyl may be moving...not sure.

I bought this printer from someone online, so I dont have the Dr. Sticka dongle that must be attached to the computer for activation. It would be interesting to try it through that. Does anyone have the plugin for Illustrator CS2 for the Sticka cutters?

Thanks again.

 

[Geary]

Not cutting a perfect circle is always in the interpretation of the information from the software to the hardware. You are correct in your last assumption that it is the cutter. Maybe uninstall and/or update drivers and start over....see what that does.

~Gear