Looking at a VS540i and a Summa S2 T Series - what RIP?

[Stratguru]

Hi all, thanks for your help. I am looking at the 540i and a Summa cutter but, from what I see from searching here, VersaWorks will not work with the Summa?

My only experience was with a Mutoh into Flexi and a Graphtec that I had some very brief hands on with (until now we outsourced all our printing). But I liked the single interface, one RIP to do the job solution.

Is there a way to get a single RIP to run both? Only solutions I've seen require several steps and programs to work together to accomplish a print and contour cut.

Your thoughts and expertise are MUCH appreciated.

 

[AF]

Summa ships with Winplot which will cut your AI / Corel / Eps vector files. You could try to work around the limitations of Versaworks while demoing various rips. Rips that have the correct the Summa barcode are Onyx, Caldera, Colorgate and others.

 

[LittleSnakey]

You can still use the summa if you only have versaworks. If you design with coral or illustrator there is plug in to put the opus marks on for you, or you can make your own marks around your design and send the contour cut and the marks to the summa using winplot.

Yes you are right it is a little extra work doing it this way.
I use Flexi with the roland vp and summa.
Once in a great while I use versaworks if I get a design that was originally done in illustrator cause flexi has a hard time with some files with gradients.

If you use flexipro to design it will put the marks on and rip without versaworks.
Good luck

Hi all, thanks for your help. I am looking at the 540i and a Summa cutter but, from what I see from searching here, VersaWorks will not work with the Summa?

My only experience was with a Mutoh into Flexi and a Graphtec that I had some very brief hands on with (until now we outsourced all our printing). But I liked the single interface, one RIP to do the job solution.

Is there a way to get a single RIP to run both? Only solutions I've seen require several steps and programs to work together to accomplish a print and contour cut.

Your thoughts and expertise are MUCH appreciated.

 

[Stratguru]

Thanks for the info. I think I should probably clarify a couple things.

Everything we do is in Adobe Illustrator on the Mac. Mixed media, vector and raster. Normally saved as a tiff. We then bring the tiff back into illustrator and add the cut lines on a separate layer.

We then layout all the files in one large file to send to print. Tiffs and vector cut lines.

It would be nice to then open that file in VersaWorks and print, laminate, then load into the cutter and cut it.

We can go with a Roland GX Pro but, not sure it will meet our needs as we do mostly small (sometimes 1.5"x.25") cuts and the Roland is not the ideal tool based on reviews here. Not to mention we do some things on Convex with a 12mil laminate.

Thanks for your input!

 

[LittleSnakey]

I don't know how well the roland cutter is, but we tried a graphtec fc8000 before the summa and could never get it to find the registration marks consistantly. We returned that to our supplier and got the summa. At that time roland did not have a 54" cutter. We don't use the thick convex material so I don't know how well the summa cuts that but on everything we use it finds the marks and cuts very nice. We only have the drag knife version.

Since you have a vector for the cut path it will be no problem for you to use versaworks and winplot.

Using the summa you can use any thing you want for opus marks. It reads the shapes on the outside, I usually use the same square that flexi prints when doing it with versaworks.

So the only thing extra you will have to do is add some marks. Then save only the marks and cut path, single color, I usually use black as an eps file. Send the tiff to versaworks and print then send the eps to winplot and send to the cutter.
The tiff must have the registration marks but not the cut path.

Thanks for the info. I think I should probably clarify a couple things.

Everything we do is in Adobe Illustrator on the Mac. Mixed media, vector and raster. Normally saved as a tiff. We then bring the tiff back into illustrator and add the cut lines on a separate layer.

We then layout all the files in one large file to send to print. Tiffs and vector cut lines.

It would be nice to then open that file in VersaWorks and print, laminate, then load into the cutter and cut it.

We can go with a Roland GX Pro but, not sure it will meet our needs as we do mostly small (sometimes 1.5"x.25") cuts and the Roland is not the ideal tool based on reviews here. Not to mention we do some things on Convex with a 12mil laminate.

Thanks for your input!