TimpanogosSlim

JSI Cut 24 + Signblazer - looking for some insight

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Apologies for the Tolstoy. I should stress that I have successfully used this setup, but some of it really doesn't make sense to me. 

A while back I bought a gimpy old 24" vinyl cutter off someone for cheap. A JSI 24. I'm a very technical guy and was up for the challenge for the $60 I paid. The guy selling it didn't know what was wrong with it. I think he took it home from work or something. 

It looks exactly, precisely, like a Creation P-Cut 630. And the P-Cut 630 manual includes instructions for driving the control panel on top that exactly match what I see on mine, other than branding and firmware version. The motherboard is branded "King Cut". I've seen people say that this machine is mostly the same as a CoPam 2500? JSI appears to still exist as a company that just sells sign making supplies. 

I discovered that the physical db25 serial port had been very poorly soldered to the ribbon cable that goes to the motherboard, and then abused a bit so that at least one line was broken and some lines were shorted together. That gray ribbon cable isn't meant to be soldered at all so it takes a fair bit of care to do a good job. I was able to fix this. The serial port works now. I am inching toward cobbling together an internal usb converter circuit that will plug into the socket that the MAX232CPE occupies on the motherboard. Already designed and printed the connector plate and have some ch340 modules with full hardware flow control output. I just have to figure out how the serial lines were mapped to the different ins and outs on the max232. 

Initially, I figured I would use InkCut, since it's open-source and I'm an open-source kinda guy, and because I'm just farting around and not running a sign shop or making commercial t-shirts or anything. But it doesn't appear to, ah, work. It has got out of sync with some of the libraries it depends on and the developers are MIA, and I don't have the skills to fix it. It's a shame because i sort of know my way around Inkscape a little bit, and I just wanted something that will take an svg and drive the cutter. But it was not to be. 

This cutter has what appear to be two end-stop switches at either end of the carriage. Coming from my 3d printer and CNC experience, I'd presumed that these would be used to allow the firmware and software to self-home the cutting head. This is not the case. 

After getting tired of hearing the X motor grind the cutter against the right-hand end of the carriage (the end with the control panel) I investigated and found that one of the wires on that switch was broken. 

After repairing that connection, I discovered that pressing either of these apparent end-stop switches causes the motherboard to reset. Investigating a little further, I don't think that is an error because they are physically connected to the reset line on the motherboard's MCU - the left-hand one connected through a multi-pin header it shares with i think the Y motor, and the right-hand one connected to the two pin header clearly marked "RESET". 

Curiously, the "RESET" key on the control panel doesn't do anything. But these wires were hot-glued to their respective connectors and the lay of the wire suggests that they were always there. And there is no obvious place on the motherboard to connect end-stop switches. 

So, fine, I'll just make sure that I try to use the machine in such a way as to not ram the cutting head into either end of the carriage. Maybe I'll figure out how to get the reset key on the control panel working and remove them. 

To be honest, if Inkcut worked, I'd be tempted to remove the original motherboard and install something that runs GRBL. But whatever. 

On to signblazer. 

On the cutter screen of signblazer, it is strongly implied that the origin point is at the start of the material on the right-hand side of the cutter - that is to say, my right hand as i face the front of the cutter. 

And then when it starts moving the cutting head, it goes hard right, and hits the button on the end of the carriage, resetting the machine. Or before i repaired that switch, just grinding the motor. 

OK, fine, the machine and signblazer disagree about what an "origin" is, so i go ahead and start with the cutting head to the far left. But strangely the pattern is not flipped or mirrored in any way - it is cut the way that it is shown in the signblazer gui. 

My final issue is that the first thing it does appears to be to advance the material on the Y axis to approximately 200% of the size of the work and then cut the pattern on the far end of that, wasting as much material as i am actually getting to use. Is that due to something i have done wrong on the main screen of signblazer? 

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Is your question really "is this a pile of junk and I should cut my losses of $60 and move on with my life?"

That's what it sounds like.

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1 hour ago, slice&dice said:

Is your question really "is this a pile of junk and I should cut my losses of $60 and move on with my life?"

That's what it sounds like.

No. It cuts quite well. It's doing exactly what the commands it gets from signblazer tell it to do. 

I just want to understand it and signblazer a little better. 

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17 minutes ago, TimpanogosSlim said:

No. It cuts quite well. It's doing exactly what the commands it gets from signblazer tell it to do. 

I just want to understand it and signblazer a little better. 

Um, if it's acting all wonky, then it's it not cutting fine. For $60, it's just time to get a new(er) cutter. Unless you really enjoy going through all this troubleshooting.

We're just a bunch of volunteers, but even we will have a tipping point of knowledge, when the recommendation is just to move on to a different machine.

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20 minutes ago, haumana said:

Um, if it's acting all wonky, then it's it not cutting fine. For $60, it's just time to get a new(er) cutter. Unless you really enjoy going through all this troubleshooting.

We're just a bunch of volunteers, but even we will have a tipping point of knowledge, when the recommendation is just to move on to a different machine.

Yeah no. Just because it and signblazer both have some odd design decisions in them doesn't mean they are acting all wonky

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TimpangosSlim, if you have specific questions, then ask them.  We are not going to play this game with you of catering to troubleshooting this FrankenCutter.

The cutting head does not start at the far left. It starts at the right (or at a point you manually shift it to with the keypad while offline, then click it back online, and that's the designated origin point now).

Every one of us here uses a machine that is functioning the way it was built to function at the factory.

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2 minutes ago, TimpanogosSlim said:

Yeah no. Just because it and signblazer both have some odd design decisions in them doesn't mean they are acting all wonky

Clearly my definition of cutting fine is completely skewed. Cutting fine means no issues, no alignment issues, no point of origin issues, no scaling issues, no media handling issues. Cutting fine means, what I send to the cutter is what I get out of the cutter.

Have you tried contacting JSI for support?

Point of origin is something that is designated on the machine, via the machine's control panel. Have you checked all the different features in SB, with scaling and such? You can tell us that it's doing strange things, but if you want us to assist, you need to tell us all of the options that you have tried to successfully and unsuccessfully tried.

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Kind of sounds like you might have absolute positioning turned on and your design is not at the origin of the drawing space.

You can use Inkscape if you like, there is a built in option to plot in the newer version, Under Extensions->Export->Plot

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darcshadow, I just discovered something interesting in SignBlazer due to your posting about "absolute positioning" -------

In SB that is called "Fit To Origin" (checkbox within the setup dialogue). Deselecting that checkbox would be considered WYSIWYG and the cut will commence from wherever the design is located within your workspace (absolute position).

However, I found out that if you also have the two checkboxes selected in SaveSpace tab "save space horizontally/vertically" then it does NOT place the design into absolute position.

Never noticed this because I have not been in the habit of cutting with anything other than Fit To Orgin.

Not sure if this is information that can help correct the weird behavior of this JSI machine, but with the lack of details forthcoming from the OP, anything is possible.

----------------------------------

By the way, you might want to start a new thread with that Inkscape news. How it works, what settings are required, etc.

I don't use Inkscape, but generally it's worthwhile to make the news available to the Forum as a matter of interest.

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17 minutes ago, darcshadow said:

Kind of sounds like you might have absolute positioning turned on and your design is not at the origin of the drawing space.

You can use Inkscape if you like, there is a built in option to plot in the newer version, Under Extensions->Export->Plot

I've contacted JSI asking if they have a manual for the JSI CUT 24 and so far they just asked what kind of manual I am looking for. 

The resemblance to the Creation PCUT CT630 is remarkable, and I note now that the CT series manual does specify that the button at the right end of the carriage, where I'd expect an end-stop switch, is the reset button. I can only speculate why they would have made that design decision. They don't list a function for the one at the left end. The legend calls the reset button on the control panel "Host Reset" but doesn't mention how their use differs. 

This is my first vinyl cutter. I'm aware that different industries built around similar technologies often have different nomenclature and different design expectations. For example, as an electronics guy, I understand transformers in a completely different way than my friend who is a lineman and we're both right, in context. 

About absolute rather than relative positioning, the PCUT CT manual pdf i have says "To save the present origin please refer to chapter “ saving and using relative origin”" but no such chapter exists in the pdf. 

When i use the keypad to move the cutting head to the left, the X position increases on the display, so clearly the far right is the origin. So it's pretty frustrating that the first move signblazer sends on the X axis is to move to the right. 

So, specific question: Does Signblazer have a setting related to this? I haven't found it if it does. 

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Two quick things -- 1. The cutting head starts at the right, not the left. Nothing in SignBlazer is going to alter this simple fact. Every cutter made operates this way.

2. Setting the origin on the keypad is a matter of taking the cutter offline, moving the cutter head, and then pushing the button that says ORIGIN on the keypad. Can you show us your keypad?

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14 minutes ago, slice&dice said:

Two quick things -- 1. The cutting head starts at the right, not the left. Nothing in SignBlazer is going to alter this simple fact. Every cutter made operates this way.

2. Setting the origin on the keypad is a matter of taking the cutter offline, moving the cutter head, and then pushing the button that says ORIGIN on the keypad. Can you show us your keypad?

1: That was what I expected.Which was why it strikes me as odd that it advances the material and then goes right. 

2: Yeah I'm familiar with that procedure. Here's a picture of the control panel after moving the cutting head to the far right and pressing the origin button. 

fwiw, JSI sent me a poorly scanned copy of a copam cp2500 manual, which does not seem to match my machine at all.

20211101_124502.jpg

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Go back to getting the machine to perform a self-test and leaving the cutting head at the Zero position. Until you accomplish that, I cannot see anything to be achieved. Get the machine to operate as it should, and you'll be fine. If the wiring is messed-up, then anything we tell you is a waste of breath.

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1 hour ago, slice&dice said:

Go back to getting the machine to perform a self-test and leaving the cutting head at the Zero position. Until you accomplish that, I cannot see anything to be achieved. Get the machine to operate as it should, and you'll be fine. If the wiring is messed-up, then anything we tell you is a waste of breath.

You mean the deal where you press pause twice and it cuts out a square? It does that correctly. 

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Nope, that's a TEST function.

I'm talking about the Reset button. If it doesn't return the carriage back to the home position (right side), then you can't proceed with a proper cut.

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27 minutes ago, slice&dice said:

Nope, that's a TEST function.

I'm talking about the Reset button. If it doesn't return the carriage back to the home position (right side), then you can't proceed with a proper cut.

According to every manual i can find, that is not what the reset button does on pcut type machines. 

When i told the JSI contact that my machine looks a lot more like a pcut, they sent me a different version of the pcut ct series manual i already found. You can see from my photo that the control panel and cutting head look like a PCUT. 

The reset button on my control panel doesn't appear to do anything, but all of these manuals, in their simulated control panel images, show a 4.xx firmware version, where i have a 2.xx firmware. 

Anyhow, the pcut manual JSI sent me says "Press RESET button, the machine will reinitialize, the present position of knife top will be set as new starting origin, all data in buffer memory will be cleared."

Which sounds like what I'd expect a reset button to do. 

The other two versions i have - one from manualslib and one from uscutter - don't list any function for that button. 

But if i use the arrow buttons to jog the cutting head around and don't press the origin button, it does return to the previous position when i go back online. 

Also the test mode where it cuts a bunch of short lines and then starts slicing up a pie chart and maybe does some other stuff seems to work too, but i had fed the machine with cheap shelf paper and neglected to set the knife pressure substantially lower so it was cutting all the way through, which eventually started to jam stuff up. 

I think this is really just a pretty early version pcut ct630. the motherboard is mostly through-hole parts with no surface mount chips but has all the same connectors and most of the same layout as the ct series motherboard pictures i've seen. I have an eprom programmer and wonder if the 4.30 firmware would work on it if i could get my hands on a copy. 

 

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"The machine will reinitialize" (RESET)  -- that means, in everyone's understanding, that it goes back to the right (x axis reset), the z axis pops once (blade lifts), and the grit rollers spin back and forth a single time (y axis). I normally do that while the machine has no vinyl loaded -- Once it performs that maneuver, you are ready to start loading the material & start cutting. If you choose to at that point, a manual adjustment of the loaded vinyl can be accomplished, going offline and using the up/down arrow keys to jog it back & forth (y) to make sure it tracks properly, and then setting the carriage (x) where you desire the beginning cut (known as the ORIGIN), normally right along the right side, as close to the corner as you feel comfortable with (I'm routinely at 1/2" up and in from that leading corner).

Everything else is just commentary.

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The machine was $60, you've gotten way more than $60 in support out of this volunteer driven forum. I would just move on to a better machine.

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9 minutes ago, slice&dice said:

"The machine will reinitialize" (RESET)  -- that means, in everyone's understanding, that it goes back to the right (x axis reset), the z axis pops once (blade lifts), and the grit rollers spin back and forth a single time (y axis). I normally do that while the machine has no vinyl loaded -- Once it performs that maneuver, you are ready to start loading the material & start cutting. If you choose to at that point, a manual adjustment of the loaded vinyl can be accomplished, going offline and using the up/down arrow keys to jog it back & forth (y) to make sure it tracks properly, and then setting the carriage (x) where you desire the beginning cut (known as the ORIGIN), normally right along the right side, as close to the corner as you feel comfortable with (I'm routinely at 1/2" up and in from that leading corner).

Everything else is just commentary.

 

Really, "the present position of knife top will be set as new starting origin" is just commentary? 

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I think this doesn't do the initial turn-on opening ceremonies because it lacks end-stop sensing for reasons only Creation can explain. 

Anyway, looks like I need to tweak the blade offset slightly and i haven't really nailed the correct pressure setting for Con-Tact brand shelf paper, but here's the interesting part of the test demo weeded out. I have some orcal sign vinyl and have successfully made a t-shirt with heat transfer vinyl - I just figured this roll of blue con-tact I got at the freight salvage dealer for cheap might be handy for single-use stencils. 

I'm just trying to understand the behavior with signblazer better. Maybe JSI sold a few pcut machines and then a whole bunch of copam machines? that would explain the confusion on their end. I'll try telling signblazer i have a pcut ct630 instead of a "JSI 24". 

20211101_164903.jpg

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Yeah, that's got it. Must be some strange idiosyncrasy in the way the different machines process hpgl. Or the lack of a self-homed origin on this machine vs. some others. 

Probably no such thing as an ideal pressure setting for shelf paper. on the scale of 0-255 65 doesn't cut the vinyl, 75 cuts most of the vinyl, 85 cuts through the paper sometimes. Plus there's a defect near the kitty's foot where i didn't have the pinch roller close enough to the edge of the material so the knife dragged the paper up. 

20211101_172254.jpg

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3 hours ago, haumana said:

The machine was $60, you've gotten way more than $60 in support out of this volunteer driven forum. I would just move on to a better machine.

I should have been sent a check for $60 just for reading their opening post!

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13 hours ago, TimpanogosSlim said:

Probably no such thing as an ideal pressure setting for shelf paper. on the scale of 0-255 65 doesn't cut the vinyl, 75 cuts most of the vinyl, 85 cuts through the paper sometimes. Plus 

Read Mz. Skeeter's post on setting blade depth. If you're able to cut through the paper you have too much blade exposed.

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4 hours ago, darcshadow said:

Read Mz. Skeeter's post on setting blade depth. If you're able to cut through the paper you have too much blade exposed.

I'll look for it. I'm familiar with the concept but have been winging it. I guess it's obvious that different materials have different thicknesses and thus require blade adjustments. What I've got exposed now works great for orcal 651 and the HTV I was using the other day. 

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