jd_design

I would say 12 to 16 ga. wire would be fine. I think speaker or antenne wire would work. It doesn't have to conduct a lot of amperage, just high voltage to discharge the static.

Excellent! That worked. I had it set to zero, then tried +1. The edges of the text was distorted so I tried +0.5 and it worked great. +0.5 offset, 70g of force, 16/in sec. Thanks!

Has anyone had problems weeding small text that has been cut on a Refine series cutter? Seems the cutter isn't finishing the path completely (see pic below.) So when weeding the punctuation marks and edges on certain letters wants to pull up off the backing paper. Maybe it's a design issue, the machine having stepper motors instead of servo. I know my little Roland Stika machine can cut small letters perfectly. The text size is 48 pt on screen, measures about 3/8" tall when cut. I'm using Oracal 651 intermediate cal. I know calendared isn't always the easiest to work with, but I imagine I'd be having the same issue with cast. Oh, also I did check the blade distance inside the holder, it's where it should be. I also ran three tests on cutting force, 100-300 and the same issue on all settings.

The motherboard on my MH-871 was zapped the first time I tried using it while on the stand. I found out the hard way it's not a good idea to pull new vinyl off the roll, load it into the machine, and attempt cutting without a having a ground wire hooked up! Not only that, my stand was sitting on carpet which is also a no no (the wheels are now sitting on some ceramic tiles). I did get a new motherboard and while waiting for it to arrive, had some time to figure out a way to ground the cutting blade itself. The metal feed rollers are grounded to the chassis of the unit (but never really touch the vinyl). The carriage however, doesn't seem to be grounded. I figured if static is built up on the face of the vinyl, the cutting blade could possibly send it through to the circuitry inside. Which doesn't make sense, since the blade holder isn't really connected to any metal. It shouldn't be able to arc all the way into the carriage unit, then down to the motherboard. All I know is, after I put my machine on what was the ungrounded stand, I loaded the vinyl, clicked "cut" and when I turned to look at the machine as soon as the blade hit the surface of the vinyl I saw a blue flash/spark down near the bottom right side of the unit. That's when the motherboard was zapped, the LCD screen when black and the carriage would no longer lift. So I did a crazy mod on my machine and hooked up a ground for the blade holder. It goes from the blade holder up to the top of the carriage unit, hooks to the piece of metal measuring tape (what a great cost saving design), then a jumper wire from the screw on the other side of metal tape to a chassis ground. That's the only way I could get a good ground all the way back to the chassis due to the movement of the carriage. I used a multimeter and tested continuity, the tip of the blade is now grounded. Maybe I'm being paranoid about static. I just don't want to spend $80 on another motherboard down the road! I've ran about 50 yards of vinyl so far with no problems. First pic is the blade holder ground wire, the other is the stand to chassis ground.

Any luck with those settings? Seems like I've had similar problems trying to run some letters for a 6' banner once. I had to go back and cut it as two tiles. Just testing the maximum position before cutting, the machine would start feeding and then eventually the carriage would hit the left side of the machine, like it was out of range, even though on the screen my workspace was fine and the material size was set correctly.

Good looking sign. Congrats on the MH-871. Just a word of caution though. If you put it on the metal stand, be sure to ground the stand to the unit. I don't think they're shipping ground cables with those machines. I bought one a few months back and have been using it sitting on a table, no problems. I decided to re-arrange and move it onto the stand and the first time I used it on there, ZAP! The static discharge from a new roll of vinyl jumped all the way to the motherboard and the carriage stopped moving up and down. The US Cutter tech support did some diagnostics over the phone and sent out a new motherboard. I replaced it and the machine works fine again.

I'm working on the same issue with my MH-871 right now. I have a new motherboard on the way from US Cutter at the moment. I made the mistake of moving my cutter over from a standard 6' table to it's metal stand. The first time I attempted to run a design through, I clicked the mouse button to start, looked over at the machine and saw a blue spark from down inside the unit on the lower right hand side. After that, the blade/carriage will not drop. The US Cutter tech support guys were able to run through some diagnostics, like using a 9V battery to test the coil on the carriage. That tested out fine, so hopefully the static just zapped something on the motherboard. All the other functions work just fine. I have about 50-60% humidity in my house right now but when the vinyl starts moving off the roll on the back of the stand it builds up a static charge. I added a ground wire from the stand to a grounded screw on the machine. Using a volt meter helps with this task, just to make sure you have continuity all the way to the chassis ground. I can tell it's working as a ground now because I saw tiny little blue sparks in between the roller bearings and the metal of the stand when I tested running the material forward and backward on the machine. The two metal rollers on the unit itself (below the pinch rollers) are connected to the chassis ground. The only other metal part that touches the vinyl is the cutting blade itself. My guess is it arced over from the carriage, down to the motherboard.