Workflow Question?

[jfiscus]

I believe that my workflow is not efficient & possibly you guys could help me. Maybe there's a piece of software that I'm not using to its fullest potential or another software that would simplify things...

Hardware:
Epson GS6000 (Printer only)
Graphtec FC7000 (plotter only)
Gerber EdgeFX (thermal printer)
Gerber EnVision375 (plotter only)

I design primarily in Adobe Illustrator or Omega.

When I'm printing to the Omega & plotting on the EnVision, I just click "output" & it brings up the Rip window, where I choose the number of duplicates & tell it to print, laminate it, then load the media into the EnVision & cut it from that same Rip. No problem here.

When I'm printing to the Epson, I make my design in Illustrator, then I have to manually step/repeat it. Then I output it in ColorBurst Rip. After that I convert a copy to Omega/PLT (and only keep the cutlines/reg marks) so that it can be cut through Omega's Rip on the Graphtec.

Seems innefficient - what's your idea?

 

[J Hill Designs]

maybe you need a print/cut package?

 

[cartar929]

we have a graphtec fc7000 and design in illustrator while printing from a hp 8000.

in order to get around using omega to do the cut work on our plotter we had a plug-in installed on illustrator, that will output to the graphtec. the software is called cutting master 2 and the version is 1.60. to me it looks like what flexi uses to output cut paths to a plotter from what i can remember.

the cutting master will allow you to put registration marks around your print and die-cut your image, and as well you can load regular ol' vinyl into your plotter and cut lettering out too. below i have some screen shots of what the cutting master looks like and how it shows up in illustrator.

i'm not sure if this really answers your problem, but it sounded similar to the issue we use to have.