Help with Gerber GS-15 Plus

[Nfire86]

Got a new CAD job for a stone company part of my responsibility is fitting graphics to stone panels and cutting the design out on a GS-15 Plus cutter my company has with hartco sandblast mask. A couple things if y'all could help make my life easier.

They got this thing in the early 2000's it does not look like it's been taken great care of it's gunked out in lube oil and hair in the gears.


It constantly comes off track and starts eating mask. The roller on it looks pretty beat up plus the gunk could cause this?



How fast do you go through blades with the thicker sandblast vinyl? I find I have to adjust the blade force from 1 or 2 on a new blade to up to a 5 with an old. How often should I replace blades? I'm on a 1 per roll thing right now.



We use this in jobs from address blocks to giant signs. On the large sign I cut strips with match lines as it's only a 15 " cutter and the guys in the shop have to puzzle these huge graphics together. Is this the best thing for large signs with 12 to 36 in letters? The guys sometimes if it's simple square stuff will ask for a paper template and cut by hand .



The software looks like it came from 1995 as well as the cpu it's attached to cause everyone is scared to tear down the setup. I can't use the software as I don't have the patience and do my line work in autocad and Photoshop. In autocad I save as dxf and open in Gerber and the letters lose formating and sometimes are thicker/thinner.

Do I need to give up on this thing and tell my boss he needs a new solution or are these issues solvable ?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Jburns]

Can you share a picture of what the two rubber rollers look like?

 

[brdesign]

Do the sprockets have a build-up of adhesive if so that needs to be cleaned off. The clamps that hold the vinyl down on the sprockets should have some tiny wheels on them, they are bad for falling off over time.

 

[brdesign]

Do you have the option of using Illustrator or Corel Draw to design? I have found that most filetypes exported from AutoCAD give unpredictable results when they are imported to other programs. From what I remember .eps or .ai files usually work best with importing to the older Gerber software. Save the .ai or .eps down to version 3 (not CS3) of Illustrator,

 

[Billct2]

Like was said, clean the sprockets, I use some alcohol and then a bic pen with the nib/ink tube taken out to finish around the sprockets. Give the rest of it a food general cleaning. You should find it with google If the rollers are really chewed up you may need to replace them. For large easy designs handcutting with a pattern is probably the way to go.

 

[Signsfyi]

What version of software? Gerber Graphics Advantage or Omega? I still use Omega version 7 and find it very capable. Upgrades are reasonable and run on my Win10 64bit just fine. As far as the GS15+, start with cleaning it. All that gunk on the sprockets will encourage the roll to jump. Clean the rails and check the bales out. Not the springs conditions. If the roller is worn out, you can get replacements along with other parts. I consider it worth it, especially with heavier media cutting like rubbers and magnet. These plotters are workhorses and excellent for rubber cutting. As far as blade life, you seem on track. Just considered part of the consumables. I tend to prefer a 60deg blade over the 30deg when cutting rubber. Though I have much newer and faster plotters & printers, I do the bulk of my work in Omega with some time in Illustrator and Photoshop. I find Omega superior in vector editing. Not as much in printing and color management. My GS15+ is usually reserved for heavier materials and pounce patterns at this time. My Envision and Graphtec 8600 really do not cut those sort of things. My suggestion is refurbish and getting it running solid again, but also improve your tools with additional software and plotters suited for other tasks. Cheers

 

[Nfire86]

Thanks for the replies. New to all of this and have no idea about these things lol. Here are some pictures wanted to upload video of it jamming but file is too large

 

[Nfire86]

What version of software? Gerber Graphics Advantage or Omega? I still use Omega version 7 and find it very capable. Upgrades are reasonable and run on my Win10 64bit just fine. As far as the GS15+, start with cleaning it. All that gunk on the sprockets will encourage the roll to jump. Clean the rails and check the bales out. Not the springs conditions. If the roller is worn out, you can get replacements along with other parts. I consider it worth it, especially with heavier media cutting like rubbers and magnet. These plotters are workhorses and excellent for rubber cutting. As far as blade life, you seem on track. Just considered part of the consumables. I tend to prefer a 60deg blade over the 30deg when cutting rubber. Though I have much newer and faster plotters & printers, I do the bulk of my work in Omega with some time in Illustrator and Photoshop. I find Omega superior in vector editing. Not as much in printing and color management. My GS15+ is usually reserved for heavier materials and pounce patterns at this time. My Envision and Graphtec 8600 really do not cut those sort of things. My suggestion is refurbish and getting it running solid again, but also improve your tools with additional software and plotters suited for other tasks. Cheers

Have Gerber 4.0 and only option at the moment is Acad and the Gerber software. Have Corel draw but have had trouble getting it to connect to plotter. Used to have Adobe illustrator boss doesn't want to pay for it because " the last guy didn't use it" funny thing is the last guy told me he is leaving because everything In here is from the 90s ( computers, software tools) and the boss had everything done the hard way because he didn't want to buy new equipment

 

[Billct2]

The sprockets don't look terrible, the roller is a little beat, but wow, the drum looks pretty bad. Probably from too much blade pressure cutting right thru the material. You're not supposed to cut all the way thru sandblast, just enough so it pulls off. You also should use a 45 or 60 degree blade.

 

[Nfire86]

The sprockets don't look terrible, the roller is a little beat, but wow, the drum looks pretty bad. Probably from too much blade pressure cutting right thru the material. You're not supposed to cut all the way thru sandblast, just enough so it pulls off. You also should use a 45 or 60 degree blade.

So if I set the tool force between one and two it works fine on a brand new blade. And as I was instructed as the blade dies you increase the tool force. I've never cut all the way through the mask. Also everything has to be double cut because the guy's out in the shop are pre Madonnas. And if it's not easily weedable they throw a fit. So I double cut everything another issue I have is when it comes over to do the second pass it gets caught up in the previous cut

 

[Nfire86]

The sprockets don't look terrible, the roller is a little beat, but wow, the drum looks pretty bad. Probably from too much blade pressure cutting right thru the material. You're not supposed to cut all the way thru sandblast, just enough so it pulls off. You also should use a 45 or 60 degree blade.

And sorry by drum you mean the rolling pin looking thing right ?

 

[Nfire86]

Do the sprockets have a build-up of adhesive if so that needs to be cleaned off. The clamps that hold the vinyl down on the sprockets should have some tiny wheels on them, they are bad for falling off over time.

Sprockets look pretty clean. One clamp is missing a set of rollers when I started here and I thought that was an obvious place to start so I did order new ones of those still comes off track though

 

[highrolling24]

When I have to do sandblast mask I use the thicker stuff and I had to make sure to use tangical cut (not sure if your model has that) and I also had to make sure when it lifts and goes to the next letter that the blade is high enough, I have to shim my blade holder up with some shims from gerber, I also do a double cut with a 60 degree blade, one last thing is go slow, those machines can go fast but I slow mine down to a crawl then it doesnt bunch up anymore well rarely. I rebuilt mine and love it now its a beast (I have the HS15plus so different but the same)

 

[WhiskeyDreamer]

strange question, since you mentioned that the plotter is chewing up the punch. are you making sure that both arms are seated securely and properly before cutting? one side will adjust slightly to allow for variance in material width. if that arm is not down on the sprockets, it will totally eat your vinyl.

like was previously said, that drum is f'd. if you're not using the correct angle blade, that could be the reason why you have to keep applying more and more weight, and that could be killing the drum because as you can see, the blade is cutting through the backer.

 

[Billct2]

Yes, the drum is the "rolling pin" Like High roller said, go real slow and double cut.

 

[netsol]

Jimmy the plotter dr. Has the drums. (Refurbished)
Sometimes you find one on eBay

 

[Joe House]

Also, make sure that the floating sprocket and bail move very easily. They should be cleaned and lightly oiled so they can slide back and forth to compensate for slight variations in the punch width. If you have some genuine Gerber punched media - vinyl or paper, hold it up to the stencil and compare the punch pattern. I've seen variations in the punch pattern cause media to jump the tracks as well.

Your plotter is one of the best roll plotters for doing sandblast stencil. The sprocket system normally works very well. Best option would be to use a flatbed plotter where the stencil stays put - usually with a vacuum table - and the plotter does all the moving around.
There is also a 30" version of that plotter - GS-750 - that would be better if you do larger jobs on a regular basis, but it's limited to 30" material (minus the perf pattern on both edges)

IMHO, that drum doesn't look too bad. They can take quite a beating and still cut pretty well. As long as the rubber hasn't melted off, you should be good. When the drum gets chewed up too much, you'll notice some cuts don't go all the way through, but you didn't mention that in your post, so I don't think it's an issue at this point.

Good Luck.

 

[Jburns]

also wipe the chrome thin rails - this is important.

 

[James Burke]

First off, your equipment is not junk. The software may be a little dated, but it's still very much relevant to the trade. I'm running Omega 6, and it essentially does the same thing as your Omega 4 when it comes to vector creation and cutting. Stay the course.

I'm also a stone engraver and I run a GS15 Plus. I've cut a lot of rubber over the past 18 years, and there should be absolutely no reason to have to double cut anything....period. And, it should be extremely easy to weed. Slow down your speed....especially with Hartco material. They add PVC to their rubber and it doesn't cut like "real" rubber.

Based on your photos, I'm willing to bet good money that I understand your problem. It appears the stencil is getting hung up on the cam bar as the material cycles back through the plotter (the cam bar is the shaft that "reciprocates" to raise and lower the knife).

This is usually because there isn't sufficient powder on the rubber stencil. Always unroll your material on a table and wipe well with a coarse terry cloth rag (BEFORE you load the material into your plotter). You need to make sure there are no glossy or tacky areas. If it needs a little extra powder, use unscented cornstarch baby powder. Regular corn starch will work also...it's just a little tough to sprinkle out of a box. ALSO: make sure to clean off any adhesive residue on the cam bar, and on the top deck of the machine, both front and back (the black surfaces). Adhesive residue will cause the material to grab.

Now, with that said, DO NOT powder it like you're powdering a baby's bum. Your only goal here is to eliminate the tackiness of the material. Done correctly, you should NEVER be getting powder on the plotter. In my opinion, Gerber should have really made the cam bar with a roller sleeve so that it allows the material to pass through without friction, but that's for another discussion.

(Side Note: On second thought, I don't believe Hartco material comes with any powder on their stencil material. When you use powder, make sure to wipe it off after plotting using a damp cloth, and dry it well BEFORE weeding. It MUST be wiped off for the transfer tape to adhere).

Even with a rough drum like you show, you should still get fairly good results because of the heavy backer used in monument stencil.

Important: Do you see drag marks from the knife blade across the stencil? This is another easily solved issue, let me know.



With all that said, I use ACAD along with SignLab and Gerber Omega, Illy and Corel. They don't always work well with other, so try to do as much as possible in your cutting program.

I also tile big jobs, and sometimes I need to cut across an image or make extremely unusual shaped pieces to tile together. This is where AutoCAD really shines.

For the tiled project shown below, the layout was done in Omega. I used AutoCAD to do the tile borders, and for the vector work around where the lettering intersects the tree trunk. This design wasn't majorly complex, since some of our tiles tend to resemble funky jigsaw puzzle pieces.

I normally use Anchor 116 material, but this was done during the time they were literally under water a few years back, and only 3M was available. My, how the tables have turned.

The recessed panel in this stone was entirely hand worked using only an angle grinder and chisels.

JB

This is before it was cleaned up....there's still a little adhesive residue left on the stone.

 

[James Burke]

the last guy told me he is leaving because everything In here is from the 90s ( computers, software tools) and the boss had everything done the hard way because he didn't want to buy new equipment

Believe it or not, even with the old equipment, you're better equipped than most monument companies out there....seriously.

I would suggest the boss upgrade you to Omega 7, it's not that difficult to learn. AutoCAD has its place in your shop, but not when it comes to doing text. When you output (exploded) ACAD text, it sends a gazillion polylines and splines. And when you try to edit that in Omega, it's a freeking nightmare.

A larger plotter would prove helpful for some jobs, but applying smaller tiled pieces is a lot easier. Be patient. Once you get up to speed, you'll be able to knock out a stencil in no time.


JB