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Yard signs

I just got a used Canon Arizona 460 GT. I'm using onyx rip. I can't figure out how to layout 8 up yard signs and still be able to cut them on my summa cutter. When I try to add reg marks it won't print and says "waiting for media size". Aka, it's trying to out reg marks outside of the printable area.

Does anyone know how to set this up so I can bulk print and cut yard signs?
 

Pauly

Printrade.com.au
What size are your signs? Are you sure that the total size isn't bigger than your total bed size?
Is your page size set correctly?
 
Standard 24"x18"

When you gang up the signs, they're 90"x48" (if you do 10-up).

If I turn off my cutter in onyx, I can send the file to print, I just can't cut it anymore.

My only thought was maybe there is a way to change how the reg works so it's only placing them on the two ends instead of the sides.
 

dale911

President
I don’t know if summa will read the marks on it’s own if you place them in the file but we have the same issue with it for running our Kongsberg. I manually place registration at the top and bottom of the sheet. I made a template in illustrator with my cut lines and registration so our staff can just open the template and run it. Our Kongsberg doesn’t care where the marks are located so this is the only way I could figure out to get it to work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Outta curiosity..... how many signs are we talking in general being printed and then cut ??
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Yes, I know how to calculate how many up, how many across, but how many do you need to print at a time ?? 50, 200, 1,000 ??
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
I'm not sure if you're strange or just being obtuse. Of course one would only make what a customer would order, but if all you're gonna do is 10 or 50 at a time, why even worry about registration marks on such a low end job ?? Put 'em on a straight edge. One cut down the middle and then 8 more cuts. Wam-bam-thank-ya ma'am, you're done in about 2 minutes.
 
I'm not sure if you're strange or just being obtuse. Of course one would only make what a customer would order, but if all you're gonna do is 10 or 50 at a time, why even worry about registration marks on such a low end job ?? Put 'em on a straight edge. One cut down the middle and then 8 more cuts. Wam-bam-thank-ya ma'am, you're done in about 2 minutes.
I'm not being obtuse, I just wasn't looking at your question the same way. I could definitely cut them by hand, but I don't want to. I'm a one man shop and I want my equipment to do the work. I just want to load and unload. I like when signs are all cut the same when you stack them and when I cut them, they're not. I'm also slower. I'm new to it, and I'm sure there is something obvious that I'm missing in setting it up right.
 
When running standard 24x18 no bleed signs on a 48x96 sheet, router is a waste of time, we just hand trim, a good operator can hand cut the sheet in less time than you can print one side. (Olny 6 cuts) Our guys and gals get in a groove and just crank, we do thousands of signs like this a week. We let out router work on more profitable or complex projects. If people want full bleed, we A. Charge more to cover the set-up and router time and B. Print them smaller at 23x17. makes it so much easier.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Ya know, about 11 years ago after we got our flatbed, I was doing just that...... making them slightly smaller, until a customer said, you charged me for 18×24 and that's what I'm paying for. So, I became gun shy and always made a full 18×24. I might just go back to that. It was more likely, just a dumb-a$$ customer. Hmmmm..........
 

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
Ya know, about 11 years ago after we got our flatbed, I was doing just that...... making them slightly smaller, until a customer said, you charged me for 18×24 and that's what I'm paying for. So, I became gun shy and always made a full 18×24. I might just go back to that. It was more likely, just a dumb-a$$ customer. Hmmmm..........
Just put in small type on your invoice description that 18x24's are finished size of 17x23. I used a similar tactic when dating... advertised size is larger than actual.
 

CanuckSigns

Active Member
Ya know, about 11 years ago after we got our flatbed, I was doing just that...... making them slightly smaller, until a customer said, you charged me for 18×24 and that's what I'm paying for. So, I became gun shy and always made a full 18×24. I might just go back to that. It was more likely, just a dumb-a$$ customer. Hmmmm..........
That customer would have a fit at home depot when he measured his 2x4....
 

CanuckSigns

Active Member
Summa has a plug-in for illustrator and Corel draw that adds crop marks to your file so the rip doesn't need to add them, By default it puts the marks pretty far outside the print area, but you can manually move them. I've asked summa about adding an option to place the crop marks inside the print area for applications like this, but they told me it's too difficult, I'm considering having a macro made up that would do this automatically
 
Summa has a plug-in for illustrator and Corel draw that adds crop marks to your file so the rip doesn't need to add them, By default it puts the marks pretty far outside the print area, but you can manually move them. I've asked summa about adding an option to place the crop marks inside the print area for applications like this, but they told me it's too difficult, I'm considering having a macro made up that would do this automatically
I'll try that, thank you.
 

tulsagraphics

New Member
Here's the "crop mark" script I use with the latest version of Illustrator... I've been using this one for years. Or if you need one that works with an older copy (CS6 or something) just do a Google search for "MakeCropMarksAI.jsx"
In Illustrator, use the File > Scripts > Other Scripts function to open it, or you can simply keep a copy of the .jsx file on your desktop and drag the script to your artboard when needed. A pop-up dialog will appear. The trick here is to use a negative number in the offset values (see attached screenshot). This will give you "inline" crop marks instead of exterior ones.

One other quick thing to keep in mind about crop marks. Technically, you are adding a center line stroke to the crop marks -- so if your artboard is already resized to fit your artwork when you add the crop marks, half the stroke thickness will overlap the artboard edge -- so you can either adjust your artboard size accordingly, or simply give it a thicker stroke to make sure enough of the line is visible on your print (e.g. 2pt stroke = 1pt visible) -- if that makes sense.

Oh... and one more thing... since this is a .jsx file, you can open it up in a text editor and change the default values to fit your workflow. That way you don't have to key in the values manually each time. :)
 

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Flatbed Tools

Merchant Member
I just got a used Canon Arizona 460 GT. I'm using onyx rip. I can't figure out how to layout 8 up yard signs and still be able to cut them on my summa cutter. When I try to add reg marks it won't print and says "waiting for media size". Aka, it's trying to out reg marks outside of the printable area.

Does anyone know how to set this up so I can bulk print and cut yard signs?
What front-end software do you have with your Summa?
Does it have edge recognition? I would print them with 0 bleed and then edge detect the border of the sheet and cut to size required.
 
What front-end software do you have with your Summa?
Does it have edge recognition? I would print them with 0 bleed and then edge detect the border of the sheet and cut to size required.

It's the software that came with it. I think it's called axis control and go produce. There was no edge feature that I could find, I'll have to keep looking.


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