Very frustrated with cutting. hp 315

[Micheal]

I dont know how a 10 year old roland can cut to perfection but this new 20k unitl cant do a few 1000 1.25 cirty stickers and stay straight.

Can anyone on here confirm that its possible to get the cuts perfect on small stickers across a 54 inch page? is this printer just not made for that kind of work? I need to know because this is terrible i just printed 7k stickers and they all cut wrong.

I do my designs in corel, save them as EPS with a cut line then send them to PM - cut lines are all over the palce if i do to many ... 2 days into it. any advice will help.

Ive dont ALL calibrations on cutter ive tried so many different things i just give up on this unit right now.

Bigger decals seems to cut fine but whats the point of spending all this money if its not accurate?

 

[Snydo]

Are you printing on low-end material that is massively warping while printing? Try printing on some cast vinyl and I'd bet they cut much more accurately.

 

[Micheal]

the roll i just went through was a poly roll avery brand - i did pick up some 3m material that I will give a test run with

how much is acceptable of a movement, should i be able to tell with my naked eye the difference after 3 or four rows? no right?

 

[Snydo]

It's not that easy to see the warp, place it on a table and put a straight edge on it. I would recommend lowering your heat as low as you can and increase the print passes. I lived your current problem back when the L25500 first came out and it takes some dialing in but I'm sure you'll sort it out.

 

[jasonx]

Not sure about the 315 specifically but the HPs have a calibration for making the print straight. It consists of printing a target. Taking a straight edge and seeing which way it bends. Making the adjustment then doing it again to see if you've corrected it.

If you have a Summa you can also print a bar which it scans to compensate for any variance.

 

[ddarlak]

you bought a unit with a cutter that is designed to work with flexi and then you use corel? on top of it you print 7k stickers without test cutting?

your blaming the equipment instead of knowing their uses and limitations.

 

[Micheal]

What's wrong with Corel? If I'm using Corel and add the cut lines there should no issue. Everything looks good in job setup cut lines are in proper place.

I didn't cut 7k at once I did it in small batches this machine should be able to accomplish this. It doesn't cut 2 rows correctly

Usually I use Corel save as eps and send to versa works so using Corel is just the way I've been doing things. I shouldn't have to change my design software.

 

[TomK]

Correction, the HP 315 is just a printer. What cutter are you using that you are having these issues?

As much as I dislike my Latex machine (print quality sucks, durability of the mechanics suck, etc), I use it to print 1000's of small'ish stickers 2" or 3" a week, and cut them on my Summa S2T cutters.

I love my Summa cutters, any issues I have with them are typically PEBKAC issues. I print the black line on the XY to make sure the cutters compensate for any heat issues the Latex Grain Train Nuclear Heaters use to dry their waxy inks.

 

[ddarlak]

I didn't cut 7k at once

I never said you cut 7k at once, i said you printed 7k...

when making 7k decals I would make a template of what i would reasonably think the cutter could handle and give me the quality i desire, print that template, run it over to the cutter, cut it, see if it worked to my satisfaction and then proceed to print the rest.

It's not rocket science, it's not the equipment's fault, it is a user error.

all i was saying is that the machine works, figure out how to use it...

 

[bannertime]

No one disagrees with you on that. It should just work. Which it probably does. Which means you're doing something wrong.

 

[Micheal]

It's a summa cutter, I also think I'm doing something wrong but for the life of me I don't know what. Everything is calibrated, black line for the sensor is straight no bowing, cut lines are correct, only running 20 stickers at 1.25 inch the bleed is very small because the text wraps around the circle and cut line is basically on edge of text. Using a avery MPI mono film but I just bought a 3m higher end film for testing. Rolland cuts these so perfect, done to perfection!

 

[Micheal]

Here are my results with 3m, still off the cutline.

 

[woolly]

looks fairly consistent so i would go back to cutter off set settings on 54 " material i use all the pinch rollers i got for cutting

 

[Micheal]

After talking to another printer I'm almost sure it's a material issue going to order some recomended material and report back

 

[Jb1983]

Why don’t you adjust the graphics a bit and give yourself a little more bleed room also.
My 315 cutter is very accurate but I still like to give extra bleed

 

[Micheal]

Why don’t you adjust the graphics a bit and give yourself a little more bleed room also.
My 315 cutter is very accurate but I still like to give extra bleed

Yes but look at the design, there is text wrapped around the circle there really isnt much room for error if i made more of bleed room the text would look wonky

 

[Jb1983]

Yes but look at the design, there is text wrapped around the circle there really isnt much room for error if i made more of bleed room the text would look wonky

Yes I do these type of labels a lot. I would adjust the text inwards a bit to compensate too.

Also how far of feed length do you do each set? I tend to keep my long run label jobs in sets of around 36” in the feed direction this will help keep it more accurate.

I just did 10k in 3”x2” that were contour cut in an uncommon shape and there was no visible off tracking.

my machine has been acting up not recognizing front/back barcodes lately though

I use Arlon 510 gloss/clear adhesive for these....

 

[ewded]

Did you set up the offset of your blade correctly? May sound stupid, but since you have no bleed you may be missed this one as well. I also see that the cut line is misaligned but consistent are you sure you didn't move the cut layer by mistake in corel? If not you may try to move it to compensate the misalignment since each circle is misaligned in the same direction.

 

[ewded]

BTW, we had a summa cutter (tangential knife) that sucked sooo bad. We went back to the old Mimaki cutter.

 

[zstekovic]

I have same problem with cutter. Prints are prefect (printed on HP Latex 115) but cut is really bad.
16 years of experience... can't figure it out. Roland did it better.