Urabus

New MH721 cutting way off of design

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Newbie just got the 28" new cutter and software and ran a few smaller 8" stickers with no issues.  Blade depth and tracking perfectly.

I tried to run my larger design today and it all went bad very quickly. ( see image )    The design is 12" wide x 62" long.

It started well on the right side of the design, cut the "Scion" logo and the three short stripes on the right after that perfectly.  Then it cut the "86" numbers but they were 2" to the left of where they should be.  Then it cut the "GT" letters on top of the number "8" .  Then when it started the longer stripe cutouts around the letters and numbers it was 5" offset to the left of where they should be.  I aborted the cut.  This just sucks.  I was all excited to run my designs and apply them to my car and now it doesn't seem like it's going to work for some reason.  A local company wanted $250 just to cut my design, so that is why I decided to get the cutter and just do it myself and for friends.

How can the machine be cutting my design so far off what it is in Vinlylmaster Cut?  The more it cut the worse the design alignment got.  The pressure on the rollers is leaving the vinyl with indentations of the wheels and I don't think it is slipping.  I noticed in the VM Cut program that the cut progress bar had stalled.  Is this too big of a design to run on this cutter?  Does the cutting take a ton of PC memory to work successfully?  I have Windows 8 Home with 4 Gigs memory.  The picture is a snapshot in VM Cut.

Thank you for any help. : )

GT Error.jpg

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You say the blade depth is perfect.  so please let us know how you set it and how you know it is perfect.(too much bad info out there on setting blade depth correctly)  This cutter has very limited memory,  and the tracking is pretty bad on it.  It is normal to have grit roller marks in the vinyl.  They will come out when you apply the vinyl.  

Always make sure that you have enough vinyl pulled from the vinyl roll laying slack behind the cutter,  to do the order and it is not pulling from the roll while cutting.If you had come here first we would have advised you to buy a better cutter.  Anything higher up is a better cutter. 

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Thank you.  I did pull the vinyl out 6 feet and scrolled back to let it rest on the floor.  I used a piece of tape with a line on it to get the tracking for the full length perfect.  I've watched all the training videos and many more on YouTube for running longer designs and setup.  The blade is cutting the vinyl and only slightly making a dent on the backer sheet.  I set the depth to cut correctly by hand then installed it in the cutter and set the pressure to 140.  Speed is 20mm per second.  My other smaller stickers cam out flawlessly and weed easily.  It seems the cutter is getting the wrong information on where it should be cutting.  O thought I read it was good for up to 120" long cuts?

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Just so your on the right track, you should just barely see and feel the blade tip out of the blade holder, You only cut with the very tip of the blade.  Ad says "Maximum Cut Length 8 feet.  You pretty much have to prefeed the vinyl to get it straight,  Back and forth.  Make sure the pinch rollers are an equal distance from the edge of the vinyl.  like 1 " in. .  That's all I can help with, it's a bottom of the barrel vinyl cutter, that your just going to have to keep tweeking with to get it to cut right, especially longer cuts.  Your welcome. 

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I am thinking this is a software to machine issue or a memory problem.  I just deleted 1/2 of the design and ran it with the pen on paper and it looks pretty good.  The 1" top stripe on the left end is out of alignment 1/8" with the adjacent small stripe, but I think that may just be a thin paper tracking issue.  Does anyone know the memory limits or file size limits for this MH721 cutter?

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We pretty much tell people who are having problems, to put a value cutter either on a serial cable or a Tripp-Lite Keyspan Adapter.  That is the brand name.  Those cutters have a cheap Chinese chipset in them.  They are not TRUE USB.   The only True USB cutter is starting with the Titan vinyl cutters on up.   The Tripp-Lite controls the data feed more like True USB.  

Example only,  find the best price

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tripp-Lite-Keyspan-High-Speed-USB-to-Serial-Adapter-PC-Mac-USA-19HS/283175913652?hash=item41ee9988b4:g:aX0AAOSwE8Vbp6nd:rk:2:pf:0

 

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Wow seriously.  And I thought I was getting the faster transfer with the "USB".  Never would have imagined going back to a serial connection.  I think I have one of those adapters laying around at work from some older PC equipment.

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Yes seriously,   Value cutters do not have TRUE USB.  The Tripp-lite Keyspan Adapter brand is the only brand guaranteed to work with a vinyl cutter.    You can do searches on this forum for Tripp-lite Keyspan Adapter.  The SC2  or the Laser Pointer 3 vinyl cutters were recently upgraded and much better cutters than the MH series will ever be.. That cutter has been a known problem cutter for years.  Some people can get them to work fine with USB,  while others just fight with them. It is true with vinyl cutters,  every level up is a better cutter.  

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You probably have reached beyond the memory capability of the MH. There will be off tracking on all the budget models the MH being the worst but not as much as your cut shows. Recurring the file size is probably the best first step. 

I know you probably have watched a boatload of set up videos and all that but I would look back at your blade depth. I noticed your comment about it cutting through and barely scratching the carrier which is right BUT that is how you check your down force not your blade depth. There is a to of references to half a credit card depth and so on which are all totally wrong by 10 times too much. Its important to set the blade depth first. Skeeter usually posts the best method and has done so probably a thousand times but still people miss this. 

Take your blade holder out of the machine. Using hand pressure cut across a piece of scrap vinyl (preferably over a cutting mat in case you cut through. You should be able by hand to cut through the vinyl and into but not through the carrier. If you cut through then reduce the amount of blade exposed. Most new people leave way more blade out than they need to and it adversely effects the cut quality. Seems silly but it is the NO#1 thing new owners get wrong and it really does make for a better cut. Once it's set then you dial in on the downforce which it sounds like you have about right. I have always heard you should cut through the vinyl and slightly into the backing but not be able to feel the cut line from the back side of the paper. 

Dialing in the blade depth will not fix your tracking issues much but it will definitely help get you the cleanest cut you are going to get from the MH. Don't cut too fast is either. I recommend about 25% of your cutters max speed to start with. I have a $3500 cutter and still only cut at 200mm/sec. 

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If you make that exact same design only smaller, say 8", does it work? If so, then file size is NOT your problem. Yes, these cutters have limited memory, but it's not the physical size of the design being cut, it's the number of nodes in the design. I've cut some designs on mine with tons of nodes.

the 1/8" tacking error you saw with the paper can be expected on long runs. I did a 6' stripe one and the start and stop points were off by about an 1/8, maybe even a 1/4". Since it was a simple stripe I just used a knife to even out the difference and unless you look really close you'd never notice it.

You have something more than just tracking causing your problem, the GT and the 86 shouldn't be overlapping that bad even with bad tracking.

On 10/13/2018 at 7:06 PM, Urabus said:

Wow seriously.  And I thought I was getting the faster transfer with the "USB".  Never would have imagined going back to a serial connection.  I think I have one of those adapters laying around at work from some older PC equipment.

Transfer speeds for plotters don't need to be fast. You're sending typically on a few hundred Kb of memory. Don't underestimate a good serial connection. They are old, but they're still around for a reason. They are extremely reliable and cheap to implement. The main draw back to them is transfer speed, but as I said, that is not much of an issue with the file sizes typical with vinyl cutters. A big advantage of serial is range, you easily run a 50' serial cable with no problems. USB, anything over 6' and you can start to have issues with the cheaper chipsets and 16'5" is the max length per the USB specifications.

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Thank you all for the help and suggestions.  The blade depth is not really an issue for me.  I do the depth test by hand out of the machine first and then set the force. I have force set to 120 and I dialed the speed down to 10 mm. per second.  I'm in no hurry...yet : )  I got my project run successfully by doing one side at a time.  Tracking came out seriously perfect on the 5 foot stripes.  I think the 1/8" tracking miss was the fault of the cheap thin paper I was using to pen test originally.  I have since bought a better quality paper roll for my testing and the pen tracked perfectly.  So I ran the cuts and very happy.  Nothing is off at all.

There really aren't that many nodes to my large stripe design.  I ran very curve intensive lettering decals several at a time with no issues.  I will try running the multi-stripe job in smaller scale though because I am very curious about that. 

I am actually very happy with the MH710 now. The tracking is dead on for me as long as I have clean, good quality art work.  I realize it's a learned skill that I will get more efficient with in time.  It's very interesting what the base MC software can do and I'm thinking of upgrading soon to Pro. 

The only little problem I had was with the transfer tape.  They sold me the "High Tack" Oracal 651 tape and it seems way to hard to pull off once applied.  Seriously, it was like pulling off Duct Tape!  In some simple tests I did before putting the stripes on the car, it would actually lift tiny air pockets in the vinyl.  I pulled at a snails pace at a very acute angle on the actual stripes and had a couple of 1/16" bubbles still. 

 

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