jaybyrd

Ioline cutters

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Anybody have any experience with this brand of machine? I see a lot of them come up for sale and have never heard anything about them

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Nobody's used one of these? With all the vinyl gurus out there somebody has to know something. Good or bad just want some knowledge before I consider buying 1

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I was looking for user input because 1 no company is gonna say there product is crap and 2 satisfied customers rarely say anything, only upset people usually make reviews. I did look at the site and have an opportunity to buy 1 locally but compared to Roland or Graphtec do they rank same, better or worse?

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Sorry to drum up a 3 year old thread, but I'm supposed to be buying one at 6pm today so I'll give you a real user opinion if/when I get it home and working. This reads as a bit of an advertisement but it's not meant to be. It's just what I've found out in a day's research...

 

The unit I'm getting is a used cutter but I think the seller is vastly underselling it's value (to my gain). That is, unless it doesn't work or something is faulty which I will soon find out - he says it's working fine and properly though. I'm getting it for $150 CAD (including stand with wide media rollers) and it's the 49" cuttable width unit called SmarTrac I/S130 (52" wide overall). It works with Signblazer Elements (currently free), FlexiSign Pro 8.6+, SignGo Pro 1.20, SignTools 4, CoCut 2015, SignLab 9.1 and many others. It doesn't have a specific driver for SCALP 4 but may be able to be used with a generic HPGL driver. I'll experiment eventually and find out...it can apparently be used with any generic HPGL driver however in case the software you wish to use doesn't have a specific driver.

 

They are servo based units and very quiet and made in the state of Washington, USA. LOTS of cutting force (500g) and can cut paper through to thick sandblast mask or reflective material and even some textile material. The unit can pounce or repeat cut too. It uses a non standard blade and knife holder though but there are plenty of sellers on eBay and Aliexpress for these parts. Cost of these blades and holders isn't that bad but they are more expensive than Roland blades and holders. The interesting carriage arm can use normal pens and felts without using an adapter for plotting.

 

The cutters are dead simple to operate...just dials and buttons. The learning curve is extremely short so anyone can operate them very quickly. Their support on their website is incredible even offering HPGL tutorials and a FULL Service Manual right down to electrical schematics and software development help. The amount of information they have put up there for users/support is fantastic! They offer a small freebie cutting software called 101 Software which will enable users to cut right away but using SignBlazer Elements is obviously a preferred software route since it's now free and much more capable. The ability to tweak and customize the cutter is pretty incredible actually using their free Control Centre software too. The cutter can cut a full 49" width (the cutter can actually take 52" media) or down to 3" in size. It has four pinch rollers actuated by a single rear pull down handle to lock them all in one go.

 

In my research, the USB-Serial drivers are FTDI (Future Technology Devices International) (VCP - Virtual Com Port) chipset based so there is support for up to Windows 10 32/64bit with no end in sight. In fact, I don't even have to uninstall my old cutter because it uses the exact same FTDI drivers. Sweet! Couple this with a Keyspan adapter I already have and I should be in business. It takes an RS-232C Serial cable to connect to the computer or an LPT port so unless my cutter comes with a cable, I'll have to buy another one since my current cutter uses a straight through serial cable. Since I don't have any old equipment nor LPT ports, I am going serial to USB. Later models have real USB ports too. I think the one I'm getting is too old though but I won't know until tonight.

 

Anyhow, the Ioline brand is quite large in the textile industry and they have a variety of machines that are made for cutting fabric.  

 

Ya, that's about all I can think of right now off the top of my head. I'm pretty excited to get this beast. I hope it works well. If it does then I can think about selling my other 24" Copam cutter (or maybe I'll keep it, we'll see...)

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Pretty sure SignCut Pro will run that thing too Chaos if you buy it and have trouble getting it to run. If you end up with this keep us in the loop. I love real world reviews. 

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Thanks for the reply Wildgoose, I'll fill you in on my experience as I get more accustomed to things and actually get it working as I did end up buying the cutter.

 

I got the beast home and put things together today (had to take the stand apart and separate the cutter to get it in the car with the seats down). It's REALLY BIG from endcap to endcap, like 62.25" long (over 5ft anyhow). It's really thin though at 6 3/4" wide.

 

I was concerned at first when seeing the man demo the cutter as it wouldn't turn on properly nor have the carriage track back to it's origin point when in the middle of the track. Turns out there was a problem with the power connector on the back of the unit, but the guy didn't bother to take off the endcap to see why the power socket was loose. There was no screw in the holding mechanism. Putting in a screw to secure it and putting the endcap back on took 3 minutes. Cutter seems to work fine! Moves around fine, does three different types of test cuts depending on how long you press the Test Cut button (square and circle type, more intricate longer type and a really intricate Ioline logo type). The big Ioline logo takes a certain button combination to perform.

 

The thing is it is a pretty old unit and only has two types of parallel port connections unfortunately. There is a serial gender changer on the DB-25 Parallel Printer type port and a separate IEEE 1284 parallel printer type port (the kind with little metal hook arm locks that flip out of the way). The guy didn't have any success getting the DB-25 and serial gender changer to work but I don't think he knew what he was doing because he never installed the FTDI drivers to get the computer to recognize the cutter, nor did he have a Keyspan adapter to do the important work converting the now gender changed serial to USB adapter working.  He simply had a very old Windows XP box running the Parallel Printer type cable from the cutter to the back of the old computer. No drivers are needed for that kind of setup  to work apparently. So I'm not exactly sure if I'm going to be able to get this to work with USB on Windows 7 64 bit or not. Seems the converters I have seen so far don't work on 64 bit but only 32 bit. So I have to figure out how I'm going to attack this for the least amount of money. I might end up buying a parallel card for the computer but I think I'm going to try the RS232 serial cable first through the gender changer to my Keyspan adapter and then the FTDI drivers from the Copam should work since the two cutters share the exact same drivers ironically.

 

Anyhow, I have put in a felt pen in the carriage and some paper and ran the three test plots and they all work fine. So if I can get the computer to recognize the cutter, then I can start to do some real evaluation. So far, the unit is VERY SOLIDLY BUILT. It's quite light actually considering how big it is. My 24" Copam (including the stand) is just as heavy as the entire Ioline cutter including it's stand. The stand on the Ioline is solidly built and the most heavy part of the whole setup. The stand doesn't have caster rollers on the bottom but a Teflon plastic like circle type foot. It doesn't move as easily obviously with that setup. I might eventually buy four locking rollers to move it around more easily. Should fit in the screw holes no problem.

 

So far I am quite impressed with the cutter. It's so simple to operate it's quite amazing actually. I haven't setup the software on the computer yet however but I will do that as soon as I can figure out how I'm going to connect it.

 

Apparently you can cut from Coreldraw directly using PLT export file type. But there is a bug with any version of Coreldraw later than version 12 in that the PLT files are all jagged even if you adjust Coreldraw's curve resolution to 0.001" or even smaller. You can not set a resolution of 0 now either in Coreldraw X7. Anyhow Corel seems to refuse to fix this bug and has been an issue since version 12. The good news is that using AI or EPS file exports have MUCH better quality in curved text and all objects. So that's not the cutter's fault but Corel's fault. It's cool that the cutter has this capability however.

 

It is amazingly quiet when plotting. It does have a vacuum hold down capability to aid in tracking so that's the loudest part and it's not very loud at all. It's half (or less) as loud as my Copam CP 2500. The Copam has steppers and is a bit obnoxious. This thing I didn't even think it was on at first and could barely hear the carriage tracking back to its origin point. It's impressive in that capacity.

 

I have attached two images of the connectors on this old cutter. Hopefully I can get it to work with Windows 7 64-bit. Any insight on these types of connectors would be appreciated.

 

So ya, that's enough rambling for now. I'll write more when I get some setup action going. More to follow...

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WOOOOT! Success! I got the beast to connect to my Windows 7 64bit laptop!

OK, so I got crafty and connected the gender changed serial port adapter directly to my Keyspan USB-Serial adapter I have for the Copam (I had to remove the serial port cable screw fasteners on the Keyspan though temporarily) and since I already had the latest FTDI drivers on the laptop for the Copam, it assigned a COM port right away. I put in my SignGo 1.20 dongle into one of my laptop USB ports and the USB cable from the Keyspan adapter and sent some designs over to the cutter. Went flawlessly! On fast mode, it's VERY FAST. I dialed it down to mid range speed and it was still very doable. Slow speed would be perfect for intricate cuts.

So tomorrow I will go buy a longer RS232 serial cable (Male to Female though since I have the female gender adapter attached to the DB-25 port) and I'll be set!

So ya, for $150 CAD ($115 USD), this is the deal of the decade for me! I even did some test fake contour cuts using SignGo's Cut Around (contour cut) and I could use the on-screen arrows to move the cutter carriage no problem. YES! Another day here and I will do some plots and test the contour feature using paper and a pen just to practice.

So if anyone was to come across an Ioline cutter, I'd say go for it without hesitation! I learned how to read the serial number on the back of the unit and it turns out this cutter is from 2001. So it's 15 years old and still keeps on going! Thanks to FTDI's drivers, it will work on Linux, Mac and up to and including Windows 10 32 or 64 bit. So it's a cutter that keeps on ticking and works with all the major cutting software packages with ease.

How can you beat that?

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Second last thing to note on this whole experience is that the serial cable I needed was a Straight Through kind (male to female in my case because of the gender changer). I had to go back to the store AGAIN because I initially bought a Null Modem cable (which DOES NOT WORK!)

 

I should have known better because of the FTDI chipset and drivers required to get Windows to recognize the cutter (and since the Copam used a straight through cable too) but I over thought things and I was wrong. So ya, I wasted my whole morning driving around for the stupid cable. But in the end it all works now.

 

Long story short, buy an Ioline cutter if you can get one (even old ones with scary looking ports) because they're high quality cutters and will last a LONG time in heavy use.

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I just had a very informative and generous phone call (time wise) from Ioline themselves to discuss my "new to me" cutter purchase and welcome me to their brand. I was pleasantly surprised and happy to have had this conversation and I felt it worthy to post about my experience here on this thread for I don't know of any cutter manufacturers who will take time out of their day to talk to a random customer (essentially a complete stranger) about their products and remind me that since I'm a new customer, that they'll take care of me support wise as long as they're in business and as long as I own their product.

 

Mr Armstrong shared with me the history of Ioline and how their products were ranked right up there with/or better than Roland and Gerber at one time and if one dug through the old reviews in magazines of cutters "of the time" that I would see plenty of praise for Ioline machines. It turns out many of the high end names you and I would think of in the sign industry (the two I've just mentioned and one I haven't, Graphtec) now outsource their manufacturing to China to save costs and the quality of parts and products, as expected, has deteriorated as a result as compared to earlier times of manufacturing. Ioline is still made and manufactured in the USA with as many parts as possible sourced from US companies. They also employ Americans and feel that's an essential part of their business process to actively do their part for the US economy rather than outsourcing support overseas. I could appreciate this point, even though that I'm Canadian, for I would rather buy American products myself (unless I could buy them in Canada) just to keep our economies going - we all should! Speaking of support, I was told that Ioline will offer support, parts and information to their customers for life and are proud of their industry leading level of customer service.

 

It turns out companies like Boeing, Nike and other large apparel companies use Ioline first and foremost because to them, they can't afford to be down in production due to broken, defective or misbehaving machines. They're more concerned with reliability and they can afford a higher costing, yet much higher quality product in their processes. Obviously, high quality does come with a higher monetary cost however (as it should) and I was reminded that Ioline products will typically cost more than the cheap Chinese cutters but will outlast them as I've already noted earlier (my cutter is 15 years old and still running like new). 

 

These days, Ioline has targeted a different segment of the industry (specialty plotters and apparel primarily) and will most likely not be returning in full-scale to sign cutters simply to the fact that it's not able to compete on a cost level with the outsourcing to Chinese manufacturers and their cheap labor costs. Customers are too focused on saving money initially, at the expense of quality, and it's difficult to explain to them that they'll pay for that choice in the long run in job re-do's or outright failure of their equipment. As such, Ioline doesn't often go to the sign trade shows any longer as a result. Though Ioline has discontinued sales of their larger swath cutters a few years ago (because of this Chinese cost undercutting), they still offer a smaller 28" unit the Smartrac I/S 60. http://ioline.com/prod/st_is_feat.html and still has a very high level of tracking and reliability as has come to be expected from their products.

 

So, again, I feel it necessary to say this but if you can find a used (or new) Ioline cutter in your travels, buy it with confidence! It will not disappoint you. If today's phone call from Ioline demonstrated to me, that I still matter to them as a customer even though I'm using a second hand machine from 2001. Pretty awesome stuff!

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im digging up an old thread. but I just ran across 1 of these. not sure what yr it would be. he says  its an ioline I/S 130 smartrac   so you say this is an old 1 worth picking up. going to check it out then. 

I have an older dell laptop Vostro with windows xp and has atleast 1serial port. havent looked at it n a long time is y I say that.  but u said could use windows 10, so I guess I could get a keyspan 

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just checked since no response and looks like its been awhile since  @PixelPusher has logged on  maybe tagging u will get u on here. lol   Wanna chat a lil bit about getting this cutter up and running after i get it. going b a lil while because of this hurricane were dealing with right now. but your post, especially the 1 about the co. def has my interest sparked more in this cutter. I have 2 stepper motor cutters now and wanting to pik up a servo cutter. im relying on the vinyl to pay for all the upgrades. that's y im staying with used for the time being. plus sooner or later my plan is setting up an enclosed trailer to take to events to do both vinyl and shirts. this 1 is bigger than I what I really want. mainly was looking for something in the 28-30" range for my space up ft at the shop. but from the info u posted i will put this 1 somewhere. lol.

 

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The user manual is online, look it up.  These cutters are not rocket science.  They pretty much all set up a like.   Those are pretty expensive cuttters when sold new.   Just make sure you see it operate before buying it.  Have them cut some detailed jobs. 

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already dn loaded the manual. haven't dn loaded any software since i figured it would b similar to setting up 1 of the others and use the cutting software i now use.   looked up all I could online , even had a lil help.  found this thread from the google search. since he has 1 ,  just would like to talk to him now since his last post on this is 2 yrs old. anything break/tear up?  any issue where he needed the co that told  him they would always offer support? stuff like that. thought some of that would b nice to kno. and im 1 of those that no matter how much i learn doing anything, i never think of myself as an expert. to me u can always learn something new.

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I know this is a really old thread.   I have an IOLine I'm about to sell and I was noodling around to see what the current prices are.   I think $150CA is definitely a steal, as pixelpusher said he got.  

I have had my SmarTrac 60 for a long while and it has been super.  One of the best made and I just wanted all you guys to now that.  Not trying to peddle it here, just can't say enough nice things about it.

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