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I'm looking for help on how to get the vinyl to go straight. I've lined it up exactly with the lines, I've made sure the cut was straight across. No matter what the vinyl as it come through starts shifting to the right the further down the roll I go. Im so beyond frustrated and tips could help 

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Ignore the lines, they seldom line up front-to-back.

Place your vinyl against a line on the front that you can see and then have the plotter feed it forward a few feet.   If the vinyl starts to stray, release the pinch rollers and adjust it a little. Repeat until it's feeding straight.  The first hundred times it seems to take forever, but before long it becomes second nature.

A few other useful hints I picked up from others on the board...

- Never, ever, ever put your vinyl all the way to one side or the other, it has to have room to move.

- Use all of your pinch rollers.

- Make sure your pinch rollers are clean, top and bottom. A stray piece of vinyl  (or dog hair, in my case) will dent the vinyl at best. At worst, it throws off the tracking.

- Manually unroll more vinyl than you need and leave it hanging between the back of the plotter and the roll.  If the machine has to pull it off the roll it will make a big old mess.

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you are assuming anything on a value cutter is straight - even with my roland and graphtec I put the roll on and pull the vinyl thru snug then lower the rollers.  I then feed some vinyl thru and see if it goes one way or the other, lift the rollers and adjust until I get it feeding straight.  - any lines on the cutter your are using to line up are not necessarily straight with the roll on the back - the little stick on rulers on many cutters are slapped on by a chinese worker that really doesn't care how straight it is - as adjustments will have to be made anyways.   

quit overthinking it and just jog it and adjust till it feeds straight - practice make it all easier

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I will jog my vinyl back and forth, using the ruler tick mark (or anything else) as a fixed reference point and see if the vinyl strays one way or another, and make adjustments then.

Straight off the roller, and if the design isn't exceptional long, I'm good with just pull so that there is equal tension off the roller and locking it down that way.

If it's a small(ish) design and you don't have to be that critical with the design cutting off the vinyl, it's not worth the stress of getting the cutter to feed ram rod straight.

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Also best to have the outside pinch rollers the same distance from the edge of the vinyl. It's like tires on a car, they have to be equal distance or it will throw you off.  I even use a tape measure at times, when I have a big checkered pattern or such, that is really noticeable and must be perfect match. 

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Also, it's not absolutely critical it all goes straight. If your design doesn't use up the whole width, and is not too long a little drift won't matter. The tracking for the design will still be good just not aligned to the edges, not really a big deal.

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