CES

I think you can buy another pinch roller off the website. Might be worth looking into.

I don't come from a vinyl cutting background, so I could be doing something the hard way, but to keep things lined up, when I put a roll of material in, I pull it out the front of the machine several feet, enough to go back down and touch the roll. I pull it tight and line it up with the roll. I move the roll to make it line up. When the match perfectly, I clamp the pinch rollers down. Then I let it measure. I find that this keeps the tracking pretty darn good. I haven't done 12 feet yet, but I have done 8 or 9 feet several times and it's worked well. Hope that makes sense or helps. Maybe someone else has a better method of lining it all up correctly.

Nesting is not the same as stacking and the answer is no, it won't nest. It will stack, meaning it'll do multiples and fit them to the material, but it'll fit them as sent to the machine. True nesting will look at shapes and optimize any small spaces and orient the items as it makes it fit best. I don't believe stacking will ever automatically rotate any image to fit into a space.

Are you using the USB or the other cable? If it's the parallel cable, then is it the original or have you installed a longer one? I had a similiar problem. Some jobs would go over fine, with a longer cable, and others would not. In every case, when I have re-installed the shorter cable, it's gone over and cut. Very frustrating, since it's damn near impossible to have multiple pieces of equipment in a shop and all of it has to be within 6 feet of the computer. Might not be your issue, but thought I would mention it.

I'm getting some sort of vibration while cutting and that vibration causes the blade to skip cutting all the way through. It mainly happens when it's cutting in both axis, like on a "W" or "Y". I've tried a brand new blade, slowed the speed all the way down, and increased and decreased cutting pressure. Nothing seems to make the vibration go away. It's a loud noise when it happens, so it's not a silent vibration. It's a very loud chattering sound that happens. When the noise happens, the vinyl cut quality immediately reflects it, telling me it's some sort of vibration. Any tips? I'm in a jam right now with a fair amount of vinyl work to do.

Well, I wouldn't say it's "brand new", but it's probably cut for about 15 minutes total. I'll try a brand new one. I don't do a lot of it and I just managed to get around it by cutting a series of extra letters that I had problems with. I got a couple clean ones, removed them and replaced the bad ones. Lukily I don't do much of it. Having said that, about 5 minutes ago, I got another order for a sign made with it. Rats!

I think it's 352, that number might be wrong, but you get the point. It's very thin material and I'm having trouble cutting it on my Copam 2500. It keeps popping the edge of certain letters up, like when it has to change directions. I've set the blade shallow and deep, I've changed the speeds from fast to slow, I've changed the pressure from 80g down 1 step at a time, and darned if I can get the stuff to cut predictable and clean. Perhaps something I'm missing? Any tips on cutting these thin films without the letters popping up?

Couldn't get the thing to work. Every time I got it to work and turned the computer off and back on, I'd lose all USB ports, meaning keyboard, mouse, etc. I went and bought a NIC card for another need I have, plugged that in and got the same problem. Anytime something gets plugged into the PCI slot, all USB goes dead when rebooted. Called the manufacturer, they said the motherboard was bad, overnighted one in here and sent a tech out and it was replaced this morning. Plugged the parallel card in, installed fine and everything works. Plotter is running fine! One quick question- is the parallel cable just a straight through connection? I need to put about a 25ft cable on it. That shouldn't be a problem, should it? Just a standard 25' parallel cable?

Wow, what a long day. One thing I noticed is that all the documentation for the USB/serial adapter is for a specific model, which is different than what came with the cutter. Might be the same driver, but it's clearly a different brand than the drivers listed on this support forum. I couldn't get it to work. Finally went and bought a PCI card for the parallel port. Installed it, it defaulted to LPT3. Rebooted computer- no mouse. Moved USB mouse from port to port. No mouse. Printer doesn't work either. Moved the board to a different slot on the motherboard. Still no mouse. disconnected the mouse, put a USB to serial connector on mouse, plugged that into serial mouse port, mouse works, keyboard doesn't. Moved that plug all around, couldn't get keyboard to work. Changed port to LPT1 instead of LPT3. Mouse works, keyboard works, plotter works. Haven't checked printer yet, but at least the plotter is working.

Where did you get your other one? What brand, etc. is it?

Can't change the others, as what they are hooked to are fussy too. We tried when the people came to install it and after a hour of trying to make it work on other ports, it was changed to the ports we use now to make it work. It's also the bread and butter of our business, so fiddling with that is a no-no.

Got the cutter today, can't get connected. I do not have a parallel port, so I have to use the USB to serial adapter. Plug that in, installed the driver, the latest driver from Marcus' sticky post in this area, and it appears to be installed at COM2. When I go into SignCut and into the machine settings, it shows COM1 and COM3, but no COM2 or nothing that appears to be the right device for the plotter. I have things using COM1 and COM3, which are critical, and they are being used due to the fact that every other method failed for those items. I also tried using the parallel cable with a 25pin to 9 pin converter on it, trying to force it to use LPT1. However, can't find LPT1 on any lists either. All I have are USB and one serial connection. How do I get this thing running? Service guy is out today, so I can't seem to get an answer from USCutter. Anyone got any tips?