Summa D-Series botching circles?

[Raven Graphics]

Hi all,

Long time reader, first time poster! So to get down to the brass tacks, my Summa plotter (Summa D-Series) has been cutting bits off the edges of circles, seemingly at random. Sometimes it'll botch the cuts, and other times it will cut the exact same print perfectly. When this happens, I always review the cut files, yet nothing seems to be amiss. Has anyone encountered this problem before, and if so, did you ever find a solution? It's honestly driving me mad with the material we're wasting.

Some additional information: Blue line meant to represent cut line (changed from 100% magenta for contrast). I've also removed the client's logo/identifying information for confidentiality.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[PHILJOHNSON]

Good afternoon,

Are you flex cutting out these shapes or are these being kiss cut? What material is this that you are cutting as well? If you are trying to flex cut these shapes you might try doing a double pass cut(non-flex) cut at lower pressure and see if you get better results. If you absolutely must flex cut these for some reason then I would adjust your flex cut parameters like your full and flex lengths to much smaller values. This will reduce the tab width and the gaps between the tabs and hopefully your start and stop points for the perf cut will align better that way.

Like I mentioned above, the better bet for through cutting curves is to reduce the knife pressure and do a double pass cut of the circle. Happy equilibrium point would be where the cutter scores almost all the way through the material without the shapes actually falling out while the cutter is still cutting.

Hopefully this helps to improve your process and end results so you don't continue to waste material due to bad cuts.

Best regards,

Phil Johnson
Airmark Corporation
(800)527-7778, ext 112(office)
(509)280-6354(cell)
philj@airmark.com

 

[Raven Graphics]

These decals are kiss cut. In the example provided, the material was IJ680 (thick reflective material), however the material is irrelevant as this issue has occurred on various substrates (IJ180, 3M 1080/2080, Gerber 220, etc.) Usually only happens with larger curves.. The cut seems very intentional, as it has a sharp point and once it falls back on the cut line, it proceeds cutting the rest of the decals with no issue, so it's not like material has gone askew in the plotter.

I wish I could give more specifics, but as I mentioned in the original post, it happens seemingly at random. The circle immediately next to the one shown (exact same size) was cut without issue.