theishkid

Members
  • Content Count

    163
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by theishkid

  1. I hear you... let me know when you find out where to set the cuts outside the wheels and still be able to measure!
  2. theishkid

    About to buy new CE6000-60

    Hey Motoxchic, I'm glad to see another user with the same machine; the more users there are the easier it is to troubleshoot. The 6000 is definitely better than my PCut, but I know exactly what you mean about it being "different". There are a few things I was used to doing with my other machine that I am having to re-learn now. One example is that the pcut seemed to cut a much thicker line in the material than the CE6000; now I love how beautiful this new machine cuts... but sometimes it's hard to tell where my cut ended when i'm slicing a design off the plotter. I've messed up on two different occasions now. That line was so thick on the PCut I could see it every time, but I wouldn't trade that for the quality of cuts and easy weeding I go through now... it's just different. The plastic doesn't bug me as much anymore, especially since what I thought might have been more metal and rubber with the CE5000 was probably just the same type of plastic but I could never really tell due to the low quality images and video on the web... I just assumed that was a "more expensive" material than plastic. I am still a little shocked that the PCut at times feels more substantial than the 6000 but weight is the only place that machine might win out over the Graphtec. Really my only problem with the machine has been the roller bars. They are not as straight as I think they should be and make the vinyl wobble a little as I roll out or roll up material. I told the people at Graphtec about it and I need to follow up with them. As far as the manual... to be honest I didn't keep reading it like I should have. I read just the first couple of chapters, enough to get me going... but honestly once I tried cutting a couple of cuts and got it to cut Oracal 651 with condition 1 I stopped reading as much. I picked it back up and read a couple of chapters the other night but I didn't keep going. I have all intentions of setting up a couple of different conditions, one for 651, one for 631, just to fine tune things. But right now they both cut great on condition 1 out of the box and it's making me money so I didn't keep reading. And I just skipped the section on ARMS because I'm not using it anytime soon. It's also kind of a hard read... lots of supplement items all over the pages. You can just almost tell it was translated by someone that English is not their first language. And it wasn't designed very well to keep you interested if that makes sense. As for the software I pretty much opened it once and then shut it off. I've got 500 customer files in Illustrator and Flexi so it was going to take something AMAZING to get me to switch to something else and I didn't see it (but like I said, I did not give it a fair shot or read the instructions for it yet). I'll actually play around with it again some other time... but I knew Flexi from years ago working in a sign shop so I bought FlexiStarter and hope to upgrade to a more professional version of Flexi in the future. Thanks for the nice comments! Be sure to check out the thread for caster wheels for the CE6000. Hopefully they will be here tomorrow with any luck and I'll get some more pictures up. I'm also going to try a Clean Cut blade pretty soon.
  3. I actually like it measuring the width of the vinyl, I like the way it communicates with Flexi to tell me exactly how much I have to work with... no more guessing games. I still need to set it to cut outside of the pinch rollers though.
  4. Get a usb drive and take the drivers from the computer you are viewing the forums on to the computer the cutter is on. Or burn a disc of the driver to put on that computer. Your cutter computer is not going to be able to find the PCut without the drivers, there's no other way around it.
  5. theishkid

    Caster Wheel for CE6000

    Well I guess they finally put my order in today (Wednesday) and sent me a receipt and charged my card. I was hoping to have them this week but I don't know if that's going to happen now since they waited so long to place the order... I'm very impatient if you can't tell. I'll post some pics when they get here!
  6. theishkid

    Graphtec CE6000 anyone?

    Yes congrats! Hopefully you'll be shocked at how quickly you're up and running.
  7. theishkid

    Graphtec CE6000 anyone?

    I too never touched the 5000 but just got my 6000 a couple of weeks ago. It was literally plug and play on my mac, unlike the hours of setup for my pcut. I don't use any of that stuff uscutter was giving away with the 5000 and I'm the type that will pay a little extra to get the "latest and greatest". Honestly they are probably the same with some cosmetic changes... In fact I'm running the CE5000 drivers out of flexi and it works great.
  8. theishkid

    Caster Wheel for CE6000

    Well I ended up ordering from greatlakescaster.com. Less than $15 dollars shipped to Oklahoma, two wheels plain, two with brakes. If anyone else is interested you have to call because that model with metric is not on their website, it is model: TWUN-60N-M23-GS I spoke with Travis Popma, His direct line is: 616-528-7050
  9. theishkid

    14 - Completed Front

    From the album: Graphtec CE6000

    © Brad Benefield

  10. theishkid

    About to buy new CE6000-60

    I'll check it out when I get back from a short vacation tomorrow.
  11. theishkid

    About to buy new CE6000-60

    You definitely helped! The cut quality is pretty amazing. I was able to weed a design in about 10 seconds that used to take 2 - 3 minutes because it never fully finished cuts on the PCut. Really the only thing I like more about the PCut... and this might even be a setting I just haven't got to yet... Is right now the Graphtec only cuts as wide as the media rollers. So on a 24" roll I'm only getting to cut about 22.75" instead of getting to cut about 23.75 on the PCut. It's not a deal breaker but I definitely want that extra inch back.
  12. Ok I see... thanks for the explanation!
  13. I'm sorry Jay... can you elaborate a little more on what you mean?
  14. Well I wasn't expecting Graphtec to respond so quickly... here is their reply in case anyone else finds this. I'll have to adjust the setting when I get home tonight. "This is what we called initial blade action where the blade orientate itself, what you see if normal, you can change it so it won’t be in the cuts. When ready, press Menu >> Tools >> UP arrow >> initial blade >> Outside >> Enter >> Menu."
  15. theishkid

    J

    From the album: Graphtec CE6000

  16. theishkid

    About to buy new CE6000-60

    Well I got home and I finished up the install and setup and will go over a few of my first reactions. Here is the completed stand. It took about 20 minutes to setup. And here's the completed cutter on the stand! You can see the PCut in the background. It doesn't matter at all but the Graphtec is two or three inches shorter than the PCut. I'm 6'4" so I wish it was taller, but this is probably a perfect size for everyone else. And here the back of the completed cutter and the one true "flaw" that I have found. The roller bars are not perfectly straight. Spinning vinyl on them is not very smooth. It's like a natural braking mechanism... I don't know if this is a flaw or standard but I know the PCut is more smooth than the graphtec due to its thicker bars. Everything feeds fine and straight, it's just an annoyance that this $1700 machines rollers don't beat a $400 dollar machines. So here are some very VERY initial assessments of the cutter. I'm only up to about page 70 of the manual so I have a lot to go over and learn. Setup with my Mac was ridiculously simple. I plugged it in via USB! No more keyspan! I haven't started using Cutting Master, I didn't like it when I started it up for 2 minutes this afternoon, but in fairness I haven't looked at the instruction manual so I'll leave thoughts on that later. It would be nice not to leave Illustrator just to jump into Flexi so I'm excited about the potential. Starting FlexiStarter, I set up the plotter using the CE-5000 driver (there wasn't any kind of driver on the disc that came), It worked like a champ. I love the poll size and the show me feature! It's going to be so nice to take out all the guess work of how much area you can work with and how much vinyl you're going to use so you can pre-unroll the material. I did some initial cuts... very small stuff. I cut a little biohazard decal that used to take around 1:30 to cut on the PCut, with default Condition 1 on the Graphtec it cut 3 in 1:05. Because of the poor cut and poor closing of gaps on the PCut it used to take me about 2 - 3 minutes to weed each biohazard. With the Graphtec it literally took about 5 - 10 seconds. I might be in heaven. So the only things I don't care for so far and I know it probably doesn't matter... but I was somewhat shocked by the amount of plastic used on the machine. It's good quality hard plastic, but I thought it would be more rubber and metal. I guess it will make parts easier to swap out if ever needed. Then the roller bars wobbling and not being straight. I might call Graphtec about it. It really seems like a mistake. The quietness of this thing is remarkable compared to the PCut when cutting! It's about as loud as a desktop printer (my wife says). The Graphtec fan is about as loud as the PCut fan... maybe a few decibles lower. I love that the fan doesn't stay on all the time on the Graphtec just making it even more quiet! Loading material also goes in way smoother than on the PCut. So far I'm really happy. I think condition 1 is perfect for Oracal 651 but I need to read more and play around to get the right conditions for 631. I'm also going to go get some casters for it. I don't move it often but I think it will be nicer than the plain legs.
  17. theishkid

    15 - Completed Back

    From the album: Graphtec CE6000

    © Brad Benefield

  18. theishkid

    13 - Stand

    From the album: Graphtec CE6000

    © Brad Benefield

  19. theishkid

    About to buy new CE6000-60

    I actually just ran home real quick from work when I saw that it had been delivered and had to come back to work before I could get any further. I'll post more shots later for anyone else interested when I get back home and finish the stand and setup.
  20. theishkid

    About to buy new CE6000-60

    I guess I need to change the thread to... Bought new CE6000-60! Anyway... I thought I would share a few images for those of you who enjoy unboxing shots and didn't figure I should start another thread. FedEx actually delivered to my neighbors house by mistake. It's okay though, they put it right in front of his garage instead of on the porch out of sight for the world. And they didn't ring his doorbell to tell him... I thought that was good of them. This is a shot of the bottom of the box. Graphtec needs to spring for an extra strip of tape on the bottom as this was held together by the tape inside the box holding down the accessories. Everything was taped down pretty well... I was surprised that all the (I don't know the actual name of it) black tray was plastic, I thought it was rubber. I don't think it makes a big deal, just surprised. The PCut almost feels a little more solid in this regard. I love the little shelf on top. Finally a place to store the pen attachment or a little media cutter. More of the plastic I was talking about. Isn't it rubber on the CE5000? This piece was actually out of alignment... I just had to lightly snap it back down into place. Probably happened during shipping. Here's all the accessories that came with it. The box with all the stand parts. Here's a shot of the new media brake system. It's not just a simple sliding back and forth... it's more of a lift and slide, might be a little more cumbersome than it's worth. I doubt I'll use it much anyway since I've used different plotters for over three years and never had a problem with unrolling. And finally a shot of the new machine.
  21. theishkid

    12 - CE6000-60

    From the album: Graphtec CE6000

    © Brad Benefield

  22. theishkid

    11 - New Media Brake System

    From the album: Graphtec CE6000

    © Brad Benefield

  23. theishkid

    10 - Stand

    From the album: Graphtec CE6000

    © Brad Benefield

  24. theishkid

    09 - Accessories

    From the album: Graphtec CE6000

    © Brad Benefield

  25. theishkid

    08 - Rear Bottom

    From the album: Graphtec CE6000

    © Brad Benefield