quick ? networking a gx24

[RubberDuckyDecals]

we just got our roland gx 24 out of the box and set up. We were hoping to be able to just have a computer hooked up to it and use other machines in our house to connect and send data to the cutter without having to move files to the directly connected computer.

While I've had success installing the gx24 as a usable printer from my machine in the other room, i'm not able to get the dimensions of the vinyl to come up.

does anyone know of a secret to getting this to respond from multiple machines?

thx in advance

ilana
rubber ducky decals

 

[OldPaint]

"While I've had success installing the gx24 as a usable printer from my machine in the other room, i'm not able to get the dimensions of the vinyl to come up"
NOW THERE IS A QUESTION?????only can answer it with more questions.....
what dim? where are these dim youre lookin for? on the computer softwear? you got me thoughly confussed......

 

[RubberDuckyDecals]

sorry didn't mean to cunfuzle. here's the rundown

machine A is hooked up to the cutter directly. It works great when printing from roland cut studio.

Machine B is in another room and has the cutter installed as a printer via our internal windows network. It also has winxp drivers for the cutter as well as roland cut studio installed.

Machine B is the problem. here are the steps to reproduce:

Open Roland Cut Studio and choose Cutting Setup (gx24 selected printer)
Click Properties and click "Get from Machine" (grab the vinyl dimensions)
Error Message "The machine is not responding"

This is with a piece of vinyl loaded and the origin set and the power on.

After a few hours digging for non existent documentation, i've pretty well given up and settled with the fact that i'll have to drop another 200 bucks on a monitor for machine A. We're on a bit of a budget at this point so I was trying to avoid it but no project ever goes as planned lol.

 

[gerald]

Do you have a production manager like the one in Flexi Sign? If so, that will network easily.

 

[Fred Weiss]

I'm not familiar with Roland recommended setups, but with our Gerber network we have to have the spooler installed and open on each host machine for other workstations to be able to reach the plotter.

 

[RubberDuckyDecals]

we're extremely barebones at this point.. profit will increase that as time goes by so no management software atm. just the default prog that roland ships and an old fashioned windows network printing environment.

I'll look into flexi sign for future use and try leaving the spooler open on both machines to see if that helps.

thx again for the feedback, folks

 

[iSign]

how about using WXP's remote desktop connection from Machine A, to access the printing software on Machine B & send the file from B, without having to get out of your chair at A.

The downside is if someone else is using A at that time, you will be competing for control, but if not, it could be a helpful alternative solution.

If you use a network storage device or a server to save all your data files in one central location, then that will not be an issue either... pulling up the file from A... even if you just designed it on B, becasue it is stored on C anyway, which can be accessed by everybody.

 

[OldPaint]

if youre that bare bones and just startin..why 3 computers????? you that busy? you ever hear of USB jump drives? and as slow as plotters are......still iam confussed.......but thats just me.....

 

[learned the hard way]

I agree with Old Paint. I know networking many computers to one machine is the "in" thing, but I use jump drives to move files from one computer to another. In the old days I used floppies. That was fine when I was just cutting vinyl, because the files were small. But these days, digital printing makes for files that won't fit on a floppy. Then I switched to CD's. Worked great, but it takes too long to burn CD's if you're in a hurry. Jump drives are the answer for me. Inexpensive, fast and reuseable.

 

[maxxgraphix]

networking

The command to "get material size" only works over serial.

 

[Pro Signs & Graphix]

Unlike a printer - why would you want to network a plotter? Networking a plotter may give you more headaches than it is worth, and that is not making reference to the configuration - especially with a friction-fed plotter.

We understand that you are trying to set a smooth workflow. Your best and safest solution would be to have a third machine that is dedicated to the plotter. This can be virtually anything, since it does not take lots of "power" to drive a plotter. File transfer can happen via network, or even flash drive, but you really should consider a central location for the storage of files (and a backup protocol).

With printers and sprocket-fed plotters this would not be a problem. With friction-fed, the end result will be lots of walking back and forth to the plotter.

For designing networking is a good idea - not cutting.

 

[gerald]

I have 2 Graphtec FC-5100's that sit side by side and I heve them networked via a an inexpensive print server through the parallel ports. The print server plugs into my network via cat 5 cat-5 cable. Works great for over 3 years.

 

[RubberDuckyDecals]

if youre that bare bones and just startin..why 3 computers????? you that busy? you ever hear of USB jump drives? and as slow as plotters are......still iam confussed.......but thats just me.....

Hehe, we actually have 7 machines in our house. My husband has a design firm and his team works here quite often as well as our personal gaming habits which require a few machines for each of us. We pulled one of our betatest servers to use for the plotter.

After having the weekend to play with all the new gear, we settled with just getting the plotting server a blowout 50 buck monitor and i've just gotten used to copying files to be cut to the plotting server and running back and forth between rooms. It seems to work pretty well and does provide a nice backup of files.

thx again for all the advice folks!

 

[ctrl-X]

The command to "get material size" only works over serial.

My "get material size" works fine USB with multiple laptops I use.