roland XC-540 NEW/USED Issues

[B13 Signs]

Hello,
I just purchased a Roland XC-540 used and I have been running a Roland SC-545EX for years so I am familiar with the Roland printers. I am running into a lot of issues with registration marks and alignment...
some time it reads the marks no problem but cuts off as it feeds out; even after doing a full calibration. Other times it wont find the marks at all and I go through the whole process and manually align the marks and I hit cut, it tries to find the marks itself anyway and cant find them.... I don't see the point with the manually finding the points if it dose it on its own. And further more I don't care for the fact the you can just set up the sheet to find the marks first then hit cut. you need to align the base point and hope it finds the points and if not you need to reload the sheet and do everything all over again. At least with the SC-545EX you knew if your crop marks would work or need to be manually input before getting the versa works involved... lol

is there something I didn't set up on versa works at would help or is this a problem with everyone and you just need to keep resetting up the sheet after every failed attempt?

as for the alignment issues I have calibrated the printer and it seems to be dead on until I go to cut?

I am running Windows 10 up-to-date
Versa works V5.5.1
ROLAND XC-540
and ROLAND SC-545EX (which still runs Great)

Any Insight would be greatly appreciated!

Regards,
Brandon

 

[White Haus]

We had this come up every so often with our old XC-540. It mostly happened with jobs that had full bleed black print and with a gloss laminate. We tried turning off the lights, having the cover open or closed...etc etc. I think the thing that helped the most was putting a small piece of premask over the closest corner of the print (nearest the first mark it reads) and it stopped getting confused. The other thing you can do is to skew the vinyl and try again until it lines up correctly and finds the marks. Not very fun, but it had to be done sometimes. Otherwise the thing would just inch the media forward and try to look all over for 5 mins and end up not finding anything. I also never got the manual mark alignment to work.

When you're aligning the media to load it for cutting, we would score the vinyl with our nail on both sides to make sure marks were within the cutting strip. This worked 95% of the time. Line up your mark with your cutting strip then hit base point. Do not hit "detect media" in Versaworks. Just change print only to cut only and hit print.

Regarding your cut accuracy when you can get it to read your marks, what kind of tolerances are you talking? They're not very accurate after say 5-6 feet or so if you're working with tight tolerances/bleeds.

With your calibrations, are you sure you're running the correct one(s)? It's been a while but I believe there is a cut/print one, then a cut w/ marks one. (Or something along those lines)

 

[Jim Hancock]

Try cleaning the crop mark sensor on the bottom of the cutter head with a swab and alcohol. You may also have ink buildup on the crop mark sensor board, which can also cause random reading, (#2 in attached drawing). This will require a bit of disassembly. You can also check the crop mark sensor voltage. Edited to add - You can clean the sensor board with contact cleaner and a soft toothbrush. Be sure it's dry before re-installing.