New Guy Graphtec-Vinyl Express Plotters on VinylMaster

[Smoke_Jaguar]

First post here and I have been wandering the forums here for quite a bit picking up info on my apparently cursed combination of hardware. I am running an Epson 9900 and a Vinyl Express Q160 cutter. After a few days of tweaking, cussing and trying my damnedest to get ARMS to work properly, I decided to move on to the insanely priced and very overkill Flexi 19. Seems to be a great suite, but I traded my cutter problems for printer problems. Colors were screwed and support essentially told me that the Epson 9900 (listed as supported) wasn't supported.

So, below is a bit of code and junk to help any other poor bastards who might find themselves in my shoes when it comes to the apparently cursed Vinyl Express Q series. I apologize for the length of the post, but most of it is code, code comments and a settings file all laid out in text.

After all that, I started to make progress in my support request to the publisher of VinylMaster. Took a bit of hacking around in advanced settings, but I almost have a full working profile built for the VE plotter. I lack a Graphtec for full reference testing on the HPGL communications, but I have made progress in scripting better registration marks as well as tweaking the code.

With ARMS working, the type 2 registration marks seemed to be a huge pain in the butt. I had really good luck with Flexi as it used type 1. So, a bit of tweaking around in the AutoMark sCmd setting got me MUCH better results.

Default Code:
(Graphtec AutoMark 20x1)< 0.8 LW FB T L 20 HL 20 VL T R -20 HL 20 VL B L 20 HL -20 VL B R -20 HL -20 VL>
My Modified Code:
(Graphtec AutoMark 20x1)< 0.5 LW FB T L -20 HL -20 VL T R 20 HL -20 VL B L -20 HL 20 VL B R 20 HL 20 VL>
Code Notes:
(Graphtec AutoMark 20x1 ): Comment, should be changeable to whatever.
1.0 LW: Line width in mm, halved this for thinner lines, seems to read better.
FB: Unknown
T L; T R; B L; B R: Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Right
VL: Unknown (vector line?)
Conversion of type 2 to type 1 (and vice-versa) is as simple as reversing the 20 values to negatives from positives and negatives to positives.

The .vmplotter settings file that you can save or load can be edited in a program like Notepad++ and is attached below.


BeginSettings:
Vinyl Express: Q160 DirectUsbPort HPGL 1513.80004882813 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00100000004749745 0.25 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 \\?\usb#vid_0b4d&pid_1113#000000000#{28d78fad-5a12-11d1-ae5b-0000f803a8c2} 0 0 0
EndSettings:
BeginPlotter:
0 Vinyl Express Q160 1513.80004882813 0 0 HPGL HPGL 0 0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0, 0 112 TC1007,4,20,TB99,TB57,1,1,TB59,25,25,TB50,0,TB51,199,TB52,2,TB53,9,TB54,0,0,TB55,1,TB24,(FREELENGTH),(FIXEDWIDTH),TB99,&100,100,100,^0,0,\0,0, (Graphtec AutoMark 20x1)< 0.8 LW FB T L 20 HL 20 VL T R -20 HL 20 VL B L 20 HL -20 VL B R -20 HL -20 VL> M%.0f,%.0f/r/l M%.0f,%.0f/r/lD%.0f,%.0f/r/l 0 0
EndPlotter:
BeginEmulation:
EN=TEST_T1
MR=0
LR=1
PR=1
MC=PU;PA%.0f,%.0f;
LC=PR;PD,%.0f,%.0f,
PC=%.0f,%.0f,
LE=
PU=PU;
PD=PD,
FC=
SC=
UC=
PM=
CM=JK_LEGACY=1
FD=PA(FREELENGTH),0;!PG0;
HE=IN;(SPEED)(FORCE)
FO=(FEED)IN;
PG=
XU=40
YU=40
FU=1
BeginMacros
Test_Area=IN;PU;PA(MAXFREE);PR;PD,(MAXFREE1),PU;PA0,0;PU;PA(MAXFIXED);PR;PD,(MAXFIXED1),PU;PA0,0;IN;
Width_Test=IN;PU;PA0,0;PU;PA(MAXFIXED);PR;PD,(MAXFIXED1),PU;PA0,0;IN;
Reset=!PG;
EndMacros
EndEmulation: