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signmike

Incomplete cuts despite changes....white greenstar vinyl

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Using white greenstar outdoor vinyl from the startup kit on my LPII and despite lowering the blade more, increasing pressure to 104 and speed to 600, still not able to weed the lettering in a design without it almost all sticking and not cutting thru well. Any suggestions with this material?

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It seems counterintuitive but you most likely have way too much blade out which will cause what you describe. Skeeter will probably happen by and give you the tried and true blade depth set up. In a nutshell you are best off to take the blade holder off the machine and adjust it so there is almost no blade showing. You should have to find some light to get a glint off the blade to even tell it's out. Then take a piece of that GS vinyl and carefully drag your blade over it as if it was you cutter. You should be able to cut through the vinyl but not the paper backing. Once you are at this point then stick it back in the machine and try a cut. I like to get down to blade level and see if I can see just the tiniest bit of light between the holder and the vinyl. Ideally you should cut through the vinyl and scrape the paper but not be able to feel the blade mark from the back side. I would work up from 80 in 5 or 10 gr increments until you go a little past the right pressure and start feeling the mark from the back then back off a little till it's perfect. 

 

Once your blade is set to the right depth (and pressure) you shouldn't have to adjust it unless you change to something way thick. Then if you are still having non completely cuts you can look at your offset settings and your overcut settings.

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ok, so it's at 100g pressure now and i'm not seeing or feeling any marks on the backing paper. I also backed off how much blade is showing quite a bit. Should I increase the pressure?

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so in reading another thread, the LP2 requires higher-than-normal pressure compared to other machines. Increased pressure to over 150g and the cuts weeded MUCH better. still getting a feel for it.

Love this machine! Still a newbie at the whole thing but doing well.

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:thumbsup:  You'll get it down soon. Each make and model is a little different and even machine to machine can be different for pressure settings. Your blade will wear and get dull and you'll have to increase pressure a little as that happens. I usually check my pressure before any important cut. You will find different pressure necessary for different media although usually I bump between a couple settings depending on new or old blade and cast or calendared vinyl. My old cutter was a P-Cut (similar to your LP2) and it ran fairly pressures like in the 118 range for a lot of cutting. I don't think it's actually more pressure it's more likely the reading is off. I never recommend cutting too fast either. I would recommend cutting about 25-30% of your fastest setting to start out with. So if it can cut up to say 800 then start out at 200 to 300 and see how it goes. You will get less accurate especially with budget models the faster you try to run. Conversely it won't cut any better after a certain point going slow so WAY slow is too slow for any kind of production. It is recommended  to slow down for small stuff a little below what you would cut normal sized letters at. Too fast will have a tendency to flip up parts of the letters. 

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Hey Mike I just checked back on my notes, I started at 275g with a new blade when cutting greenstar vinyl (all colors)and the last setting I had wrote down was 305g as the blade was dull. Hope that helps. Oh and I seam to stay right around 4 to 500 as the fastest I like to cut but as goose said slower is better on small letters and such.

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Sorry duplicate post

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