JerryStem

Large cuts are out of alignment

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I just tried to cut two 59" long stripes for my friend's car.  Each piece is a thick stripe and a thin stripe.  One piece came out fine.  The other piece, the thin stripe is overlapping the thick stripe.  The pair were one image, my friend just mirrored the stripe and made it easy to cut one 10.5" wide pass.  I don't think the rollers are the issue, I think somewhere between the image and the processing to the cutter is the issue.  MH365-MK2 with Vinyl Cutter 4 on a W10 desktop.

stripes.jpg

stripes2.jpg

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Those cutters have known tracking problems, which is why we tell potential buyers to purchase the next cutter up, the SC2.   But You can keep trying, it takes patience to dial in settings on a value cutter.  Always have enough vinyl slack to do the entire order. Never be pulling from the roll while cutting.  Make sure your blade depth is set correctly so that the blade is not pushing the vinyl in a different direction by the blade being too deep.   You could experiment with using the pen tool on the back of the vinyl.  Make sure the pinch rollers are equal distance from the vinyl edge.  Some softwares have step by step cutting or optimize cutting order, where it will for example cut everything in the first 12" then advance and cut the next 12" all the way down the design, to the end, instead of the total back and forth of the cutting from one end to the other.  Not sure about VinylMaster having that.  

 

This is correct way to set your blade depth.

To start with, you should set your blade depth correctly, by taking the blade holder out of the machine, and in your hand, firmly cut across a piece of scrap vinyl, you will be cutting. You should only be cutting the vinyl and barely a mark on wax paper backing, Adjust blade to get there, Then put the blade holder back in machine, and use the force of the machine to get there, same results, only cutting the vinyl and barely a mark in wax paper backing. You should just barely see and feel your blade tip out of the blade holder.

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I'm leaning software and he used a white stripe to separate them instead of leaving the space between transparent - the bottom image got shifted up on the thin strip.

if you notice the letters are not in the middle on that one too about the same amount the big red stripe appears to be shifted up

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Yeah, I bought it used from a car forum member with extra tools, knives, rolls of vinyl etc for $300 shipped last November...  I did a 3' Toyota for  friend's truck but that was pretty simple.  This was the first time I've cut this long, pretty sure the second stripe is what goofed.  A local friend with more knowledge said it's likely the tracking with it going back and forth 4 times.

I ordered two more rolls and plan to 180 the image in hopes of getting the other stripe complete.  I mostly do stuff up to 12" long, if I do more longer stuff I'll likely upgrade to a better cutter.

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You should be able to get this to cut properly with the MH, it's not especially long (5' is not unreasonable for the MH).

You might want to just adjust the pressure VERY SLIGHTLY on the roller clampdowns, I mean like only rotate the knurled nuts 1/4-turn downwards force. Usually, it's not suggested to mess with those rollers, but in some circumstances you have to in order to even out the tracking, and this may be one of those times.

Always pre-feed (manually Offine run the vinyl through the full length you'll be cutting and verify it doesn't shift).

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You have something else going on also. Probably a white colored object in there messing with things. In some cases your cutter will make additional passes.  The chunk taken out of the smaller line shown in this screenshot should not be happening. Check your file or cut by color (or perhaps you have not divided the two parts of the red) something not right because it's not the same as the other one. 

Screen Shot 2020-08-14 at 4.39.32 PM.png

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The chunk taken out, appears to be due to the large red shape being shifted upwards. It's possible that was a cutter glitch but that seems unlikely. Software does seem more likely, although I'm not sure how this could happen if he truly just mirrored the original stripe.

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I'd say post a screen shot of the cut screen, as well as post the file (if you don't mind sharing) so we can help troubleshoot.

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