How sharp and precise should corners be? Still having issues ce600

[skarekrow 1,842]

I gotta be honest and say that little bump on the arc would bother me some but, that cut on the T is definately sub par.

 

I would definately be more concerned with the poor finish at the bottom of the T.

 

Your machine should perform better in my opinion.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have the answer to your problem..  Sorry.

[MZ SKEETER 4,708]

I agree with Scarekrow,  you should get better cuts than that with a Graphtec..  But I am out of ideas also.  Contact tech support  tomorrow.,

[efimage 42]

It has been a frustrating week with this cutter.  I will follow up once this is resolved.  I work full time during the day and right now this is side work for me but Graphtec is in California and I am on the east cost so at least I have a 3 hour window for tech support when I get home from work.

 

Thanks everybody for all the help

[efimage 42]

Talked to Graphtec and he gave me a few things to try when I get home but he basically said I have done everything he would suggest. He is also going to send me a clean test file.  But he basically said that I should not have to use any offset. It should pretty much be set the blade depth and go cut.

I am getting a little worried that I am not going to be able to resolve this

[MZ SKEETER 4,708]

Talked to Graphtec and he gave me a few things to try when I get home but he basically said I have done everything he would suggest. He is also going to send me a clean test file.  But he basically said that I should not have to use any offset. It should pretty much be set the blade depth and go cut.

I am getting a little worried that I am not going to be able to resolve this

And he is right.....I have not had to change anything in 6 years.. Only speed and force over the years..   Set and cut..   What did he say try?   Have you checked the new blade tip again?  It don't take much to break one.

[efimage 42]

I tried 3 different blades and I did check them with a loop

 

He first suggested I have my vender come over with a known working laptop and test the cutter. That’s pretty much not going to happen so I am bringing a laptop home from work and will load Graphtec studio on it and try that. 

 

He said to use the pen and plot out my file. I should be able to see the “tail” if it is a software issue or if something wrong with the carriage. What I was seeing before was just the Pen going up and down on the paper

 

He also suggested using some bearing grease (not oil) on the fat part of the blade. But since the cutter is so new he did not think that was the issue

 

He was also going to talk to a few of the senior techs and get back to me.

 

Could two blade holders in a row be bad?

[MZ SKEETER 4,708]

I would not think 2 blade holders could be bad, unless, they are not seated correctly in the carriage.  Nice and straight, and tight   I have not seen up close how the holder is held on the CE6000,   but mine has a flange that fits over the lip on the blade holder., then tightened down with a thumb screw.

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

the ce6000 uses the same flange hold down system for the blade holder - really not sure what is going on but to me even the top of the "t" on the left side doesn't look right to me. like something is moving - we had someone on here a while back that wasn't getting the flange under the hold down - but that one wasn't cutting even either not just nubs issues.   I had some issues with the OLD cleancut blades from over a year ago with the ce6000 blade holder (since fixed by cleancut on new blades) and cleared that up using a cheap Chinese graphtec blade holder with MORE slack in it - new blade holders are really really tight tolerances.  seems on the older blades when the shaft was pressed into the top wider portion it was actually bulging ever so slightly causing a bind.  like I said the newest blades doesn't do that and the original graphtec blades shouldn't do that at all.   I would keep on graphtec support but if I wanted to try something different I would load a pc (I see you are using a mac somewhere) with signblazer and just test with that - also I personally like the Chinese holder I got off ebay.

[efimage 42]

I think I have tried everything.  I am running on a windows 7 pro Laptop. My wife has a Mac and the blade holder is seated properly in the flang

 

I brought an extra Laptop home from work which I just reformatted and loaded Win 7 pro on a few weeks ago .There is nothing on it except Symantec endpoint protection which I disabled for testing tonight.

 

Here is what I did.

 

Reset  the CE6000 back to factory default. Put in the stock blade and adjusted until it was set. I then downloaded just the drivers and Graphtec Studio to the fresh laptop and made a new test file and tried it.Nothing changed still getting tails/hang nails.

 

Downloaded Sign Blazer to the new laptop and gave that a shot same thing .

 

Tried to put a tiny tiny bit of grease on the fat part of the blade. it actually made it worse. cleaned everything and was back to where i was at the beginning of the night.

 

Changed the USB cable still no luck

 

Put the pen in and ran my test file. I could not see any tails/hang nails on the pen plot. if it is plotting correctly with the pen it has to be the blade holder right?

 

Honestly I am at my wits end. I have spent the last 10 days working on this issue . I should be making money with this cutter and not stressing that I wasted money. The whole point in buying the Graphtec was to avoid any issues dealing with a value cutter and it seems I am having nothing but issues.

 

I have to email Graphtec a bunch of pictures tomorrow. I am not sure what else to try except another blade holder.

 

The picture of the vinyl came out pretty bad but but if you look at it at 100% you will see the tails/hang nails Also the corners of the "T" and "I" have little nubs.

 

I also added a pic of the blade holder in the carriage and how much blade I have out

[mfatty500 454]

Is the blade holder carriage tight?

[efimage 42]

The carriage is tight. 

 

I also noticed that there are little nubs/tails on all the corners of the text also they do go away with -2 offset but at that off set the text does not look correct.

 

I will be calling them when I get home from work this afternoon. One of the techs still has me ruling out a few things that could be computer issues. I honestly doubt it is a computer software/hardware issue at this point.

[jarrotto 78]

I had a very similar issue before with my ce6000-60.  Every circle or letter "O" that i cut always had a hangnail in it.  It was driving me crazy!  Business was slow around that time and i forgot about the issue.   I thought that part of the problem was the crap Chinese blade holders i had, but, i still had the issue with the Graphtec blade holder as well.

 

I thought also maybe the issue was from the two times when i first was learning how to use my cutter and accidentally scored the cutting strip with the blade... thats a horrible feeling. lol

 

I just did some test cuts just now to verify the issue is completely gone.  It has somehow been resolved from the time that i have installed the Illustrator CC 2014 release and re-installed the Cutting Master 3 plugin.

 

I know you have tried using fresh software.  I wish i could tell you what fixed my issue, but i am honestly not sure.  Here are the settings i use in Cutting Master 3 on OSX. 

 

Good luck,  hope you get it fixed soon!

[efimage 42]

Jarrotto thanks for the info.  The only thing I am wondering about is the offset angle you have yours set for 0. I am pretty sure with the 45 degree blade it should be 30.  I tried my test file this morning with offset angle set at 0. And it cut sooooo slow my issue was minimized but if you look under a loop it is still there.  I wonder if you change your offset angle back to 30 if you would still get the tails/hangnails.

 

With the correct settings even my corners are not correct.  There is a little “nub” that makes smaller stuff difficult to weed.  I attached an example I did in Illustrator.  I do not have a macro lens for my camera so it is difficult to capture the corner detail

 

I also feel as though Graphtec support does not believe me. I honestly doubt it myself that I could have 2 bad cutters but I have no other explanation. I think I have tried pretty much everything a few times .They keep having me chase down a computer issue which I feel is just wasting time at this point

 

I have tried 2 different PC’s I  brought another think Pad home last night run the factory Lenovo recovery image and just loaded the drivers and the Graphtec studio and left the computer off of the network. Same issue .I tried a Macbook Pro again same issue.  They had me use the send utility and there supplied test file to bypass the software and had the same issue.  He had me run the test Cutting Pro File and of course there where not any tails in the “O”. I tried to explain it is only visible when the cut starts and stops in an arc or curve and that font is a block letter. But the corners of the letters have the nubs when checked under a loop

 

It seems like all I am doing is taking pictures of wasted vinyl and emailing it to them. I wish I went with the Roland at this point.

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

Jarrotto thanks for the info.  The only thing I am wondering about is the offset angle you have yours set for 0. I am pretty sure with the 45 degree blade it should be 30.  I tried my test file this morning with offset angle set at 0. And it cut sooooo slow my issue was minimized but if you look under a loop it is still there.  I wonder if you change your offset angle back to 30 if you would still get the tails/hangnails.

 

I have to wonder about that statement - every other graphtec owner on here runs their offset at 0 and in other software there is not even a option for "offset angle" so guessing we are all set at 0.   somewhere your offset is getting changed either in the software or the cutter to be different than every other person on the forum.   I doubt you have had 2 bad cutters either - did you ever just try cutting from signblazer to see if it still did it?

could you have different settings in your graphtec controller and cut master if both installed that are fighting each other.

 

 

I have not done the research so can you please describe what "offset angle" is to me?

[MZ SKEETER 4,708]

Here it is copied from my Graphtec cutting controller   It is in advanced settings...  By default mine is at 30 degrees.....In the Cutting controller and on my machine...

 

Offset Angle
Specifies the reference angle that determines whether or not blade tip angle control is applied. Blade tip offset control is performed for angles larger than the specified value. Specifying a large reference angle will shorten the overall cutting time by reducing the time required for blade tip control, but specifying an excessively large angle may produce cutting results that fail to reproduce the intended image.

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

wow I need more coffee - first read that is clear as mud . . . .

[efimage 42]

I did try Sign Blazer and VinylMaster Pro on 2 different machines. Same issue. I think I have tried pretty much everything at this point.  I have used US cutters generic blades, clean cut blades and the stock Graphtec blade.

 

My day job is in commercial printing and I deal with large production laser printers and high speed inkjets (for addressing) every day.  I have done my fair share of troubleshooting with our rips and equipment. This cutter is not any different and I think I exhausted all my options.

 

It can only be a few things at this point.  I am not setting the blade correctly,  the blade holder is bad,  the equipment is bad or maybe this is just the way it is supposed to work.

 

There is an authorized Graphtec repair center about 35 miles away.  I am trying to arrange it so I can bring it there and have them check it out.

[MZ SKEETER 4,708]

 

There is an authorized Graphtec repair center about 35 miles away.  I am trying to arrange it so I can bring it there and have them check it out.

Sounds like the best way to go.  

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

sounds right to me - let them troubleshoot it - on the machines with signblazer you did NOT have the cutting controller installed right? - 

[efimage 42]

sounds right to me - let them troubleshoot it - on the machines with signblazer you did NOT have the cutting controller installed right? - 

I tried it on both my pc that I use everyday and the clean install that just had the 64bit driver and Graphtec Studio installed.

[MZ SKEETER 4,708]

Every screen shot posted was using Condition 1. that I can see.  Whether or not it makes a difference,  When you use the Graphtec Cutting Controller ONLY, to make your adjustments.with a HP-GL cutting software like Vinyl Pro or Signblazer you are using Condition 9,  which is not a Preset condition on your cutter....Your cutter is pre programmed with 8 conditions set up when you get it..(At least mine has 4 buttons to change 8 conditions)..Did you ever try Condition 9? I tried to get you to do that, by downloading the Graphtec Cutting Controller.   That is the only Condition that I use and have used for 6 years......  And it will show  Condition 9 on your cutter screen....  Then everything is controlled by the Graphtec Cutting Controller.....  Not by your cutting software or cutter.... And run the cutter from the  controller setting.

 

We also run a CE5000-60 on Condition  9  From Graphtec Cutting Controller

[efimage 42]

I have not used condition 9.  It sounds like a pretty cool feature though. I will give it a try tonight you never know.   I also have to give him my lot number on my blade holder when I get home.  He said there have been a few bad blade holders out there.

[MZ SKEETER 4,708]

Yes, when you download the Graphtec Cutting Controller, at the upper left is USE Plotter or Controller, You check Controller, and your cutter must already be on and ready to cut first.... Use vinyl outdoor, There is a drop down box.(.I have indoor right now.)....When you check controller, your cutter screen should change to Condition 9 with your Speed , Force,Quality and Blade CB09UX 0 . If your cutter screen does not change, then click the USE PLOTTER , then back to Controller... You will hear your cutter kick in.. I control everything right there.. All I do on my cutter is turn it on, prefeed the vinyl and hit Origin. On the advanced settings I don't even mess with those settings.They actually say off....

[MZ SKEETER 4,708]

I also only cut with HP-GL, because I use Flexistarter...   My son has the Graphtec CE5000-60  he also uses Condition 9,  Graphtec Cutting Controller and Flexistarter

[efimage 42]

Gaphtec is sending me out a different blade and blade holder to try first before we have a tech check out the cutter.  I do not have high hopes because that did not fix the Issue for the other person that Mz SKEETER was helping.  

 

I also found this person on signs101 who had the same issue with a ce5000-60.  His pictures look exactly like mine. Of course he never followed up if it was fixed or not

 

http://www.signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?111992-Graphtec-not-cutting-precisely

 

I just noticed the person from the above link also posted here about the same problem