Skinner

Just to follow up on 3 different items, to hopefully help many others having some of these issues. 1) MzSkeeter is absolutely correct the USB Serial chip set in the SC2 is pretty bad. I installed one of my industrial converters and it never buzzed or lost position again. Since the entire file is sent to the cutter, I can only imagine it becomes corrupt or missing portions due to the bad transfer. I've been thru this before when our techs go to Walmart and buy converters then corrupt everything. 2) 4 items must be done. A) Do the initial laser pointer alignment when you power up the cutter and pressing the right arrow. This is a little hard because the jog mode moves pretty fast. Get it as close as you can. Then B. Spooler, Calibration, Do the Blade Offset C) the scaling, then do D) ARMS Offset. Yes, Arms Offset. It allows you to really zero in the laser with 4 points. 3) When you choose the contour wizard, you have 3 modes to choose from. Manual, Semi-Automatic, and ARMS. Choose semi-automatic. Once you do that, you can put in your material, jog to the square by the alignment mark and press origin. Then when you select cut, it will tell you to do the origin deal that you just did, press next. The cutter and laser will turn on and tell you to align with mark 1 using the keys on the cutter, then press enter. It will rapid over to mark 2, and repeat for all 4 marks. It will ask if you want to cut now, say yes. It will do a perfect contour cut. There are about 3 versions of instructions floating around. Use the link MZSkeeter provided. Pay close attention to Step 2 and Step 6 because it's different than what in the user manual. Here is two sources for using ARMS OFFSET calibration in VM4.3. Tony is a developer at future for VinylMaster. Subject: RE: VM 4.3 Software Arrow keys in Calibration dont work [#335478] Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2021 17:24:40 +1100 From: Tony Braun <tonybraun@iifutu******> To: 'Richard Skinner' Ok, your cutter does not support moving the cutter head using the software. It must be done using the arrow keys on the cutter. To calibrate, you use the ARMS calibration, NOT the laser calibration. Peter M. (USCutter) Dec 7, 2021, 14:54 PST There are three likely reasons that you can see a cut not match up with a print when contour cutting: 1. The blade offset hasn't been calibrated correctly. If you are using VinylMaster software you can go in the Calibration section of the Vinyl Spooler and click the "ARMS Offset" button. Edited - Inserted for brevity: --> Then Peter talks about blade offset and scaling to be calibrate as well

Do you have an SC2? Not being rude but I understand it doesn't have ARMS, but they included the "SemiAutomatic" version of ARMS in the firmware. This came from the manufacturer and Tony over at iFuture, and I tried it and it works perfect. In semi-automatic mode, the commands sent are different, and you still have to manually align the pointer to the alignment marks. You're right, it shouldn't be called ARMS offset, but it is, and it works.

We posted about the same time so I didn't see your reply while I typed mine. I do plan to try that, however it's most likely not the answer to my particular problem. If it were the internal USB to Serial converter, it would do it regardless of Pen / blade combination so I'm not buying that will solve it, however due to all the warnings here, mainly from you, I plan to try it regardless due to my knowledge or cheaper USB emulator chip sets. I've bricked a full items over the years due to cheap converters and most of my eprom and flash methods will randomly fail using the retail converter, or give the impression they completed when they didn't.

To partially update some of the items I found about VM and the SC2. #1 It doesn't support the VinylMaster Laser Calibration (fast) or (Full). So no matter what, the spooler calibration for the laser pointer won't work properly using that method. Even though this cutter does not support ARMS, you must use the ARMS OFFSET calibration in order to adjust the offset or fine tune it. Initial calibration is done via Power Up and Right Arrow key, then ARMS offset allows you to fine tune it. #2 The SC2 or at least mine, has a very weak stepper motor/driver for the X axis. If you look at it wrong it buzzes and looses steps. With nothing in the cutter holder, anything over 200 in speed will loose steps. If you barely touch it while moving it looses steps. Either is a bad design or there is something wrong with this one. I have over a dozen CNC's in here from small stepper motor designs to huge servos, and it's evident this stepper is loosing steps and it undersize, or the settings for the max speed and accel is incorrect. My inkjet will crush your finger if you stick it in there, not this thing. This means if a pen tool is used, you have to set the pressure so light it barely writes, and turn the speed down to 200 or less, or it looses position. Hopefully this is just my machine that is this weak and I can fix it by replacing the motor or driver board. I do embedded programming so I have some industrial chip set USB to Serial adapters. Retail versions usually miss data and they don't adhere to timing very well so I learned my lesson years ago on that. Knowing that, I have not tried one yet and I do plan on trying it soon just to see if it helps. I will follow up on that part later.

I have the same problem here with VM Cut 4.3 and a new SC2. Vinyl cuts perfect, contour cutting is loosing steps big time. I turned the speed down from 300 to 100 and I have the pen barely touching to make sure there isn't too much drag causing lost steps. I can hear it stumble and studder and grind slightly. Does it with nothing in the knife holder. But yet, it cuts vinyl fine. I personally think there is something wrong in VM Cut because the cutter calibration for the knife offset, and scaling works fine, but the laser offset simple and full do not work. They never drop the blade or pen to make any marks and you can hear it buzz like it received a move command but lost steps. Like the speed and accel is set way too high.