Need some help….

[Michael77]

I’m running into a problem with a print job… I’ve just started my own printing company and I’m working with a VersaCamm VP540

I am working on a police department graphic for a local city. The graphic has a sweeping ribbon that goes up the side of the car, which isn’t a problem to print…. Lamination went uneventfully and then I came back to cut it… there was not any crawling happening when I loaded it or even when it read the crop marks…. However… when it started to cut… my only guess is that the sweeping lines and pressure from the cutter cause the media to shift side to side… anyone know how to stop this from happening…?

The solutions I’m looking at trying now are lowering my cut speed and adding rollers onto the middle of the media…. But it’s an expensive gamble and I’m running out of time if this doesn’t work…. Does anyone have any ideas I haven’t thought of….

Any advise will be greatly appreciated.

 

[SignsOfMaine]

Are you saying the entire sheet shifted, or that the cuts were just off a bit?

If the entire sheet shifted, that's crazy, the pressure from that dragging blade shouldn't be able to move the entire sheet in any direction, the pinch roller pressure is pretty good (at least on our xc-540) and the only time I've seen real shifting issues is when it's having to unspool from a big heavy roll.. and even then those were problems with printing on a banner, not related to your issue.

I'm guessing the cut is off somewhere in the design, like it looks ok at 100 or 200% zoom but at 400% you might see it. Otherwise, if it's truly cutting off, I always outline stuff wherever possible with at least .1 extra color outside the contour cut line. So if I had black text I'd put a .1 black outline around it, but then set the contour cut to cut along the original text lines, not the outline's line. Then, even if it goes off a bit, you don't get an ugly thin white area where it tracked off.

 

[Michael77]

The entire sheet shifts... up to 1/2 an inch.... ruins the cut...

the design is good.... I've checked.... the material is a little heavy... it's a 5mil reflective with a 2 mil laminant... the the preasure is up a little bit too... think I'm at 65 grams.... which is still light for what I need to get through...

I've calibrated the Crop/Cut Setup on it... it's less than a .1 Milimeters off and the Logos that cut first are fine... its really when it starts cutting the ribbon that everything goes bad.

 

[Michael77]

yes I'm sure it was square, I had manually scrolled it from begining to end to makesure no crawling was happening... and Actually I just finished running a corrected run....

I corrected it by...

Lowering my cut pressure a little and making it do 2 passes
Adding all available pinch rollers I could… a total of 7 were in place on a 27" width... probably a touch much... but better safe than sorry...
Lowering my cut speed from 30 cm/s to 10….

Thank you all for your input

 

[Color Dude]

What blade are you using? 45 or 60 degree? I am assuming 60 with a 7mil total piece.
Can we see the design?

 

[SignsOfMaine]

a half inch is nuts, I still can't fathom how that happens. Our default speed and 65-100 cut strength, using thick lam, doesn't track off by more than maybe 2 mm. Is the graphic like super long but very thin? I once foolishly contour cut some stripes that were like 150 inches long by a half inch wide, and there was some tracking... nothing as bad as what you're describing though. Your laminate must be made of teflon. I wouldn't mind seeing a pic of the design, or better yet the actual sheet pre-cut... or maybe just give us the dimensions and an idea of how long and wide the cut stuff is..?