annarface

I'm a new CE7000 owner and this issue is driving me mad. When I print and cut, I am finding my cuts are accurate in the centre of the job but towards the edges of the media, they are cutting inaccurately - the miscut is replicated on both sides of the machine but mirrored which makes me wonder if there's some kind of distance calibration that is off. It happens the most badly at the bottom and top of the sheet. I have reduced the depth and force of my blade to be cutting on the bare minimum so there isn't excess drag, I am cutting on speed 10 with CB09 45 deg blade and have attached photos of how my media is positioned with the pinch rollers. This is loaded evenly to the best of my knowledge. Not sure if pinch roller positioning is off and causing some kind of media drift? It all seems straight but not sure what I am missing. It also seems to warp some of my curved edges on the curved boxes I am cutting. Apologies for all the files - wasn't sure what info to include. I am using Cutting Master 4 AI plug in on Windows Thanks in advance!

Seems to be going a lot better now - had a successful cutting day yesterday with minimal issues. Thanks again for your advice!

No regular sign vinyl unfortunately, I only have printable vinyl but I will order some Oracal for testing. I did get some cleaner test cuts trying again with another new blade. The cuts feel a lot cleaner to peel too - I didn't score the vinyl as firmly when I tested for the initial depth and it still cut the vinyl so I am wondering if perhaps I have been blunting my blades from the get go by smashing them into the vinyl on the table! Do these cuts look more like what you are expecting? You can't see it but the far left square has a slight indentation of the triangle. I cut with these settings for a bit and had no corner rounding like before, but did notice I am having a few incomplete cuts again, mostly at corners but also just where the blade meets to join up the line. General alignment of the cut with the print is improved with my new setting though. Unsure where to go from here, if the blade is looking better. Perhaps still too deep?

I will keep tweaking it for the test cut, thanks so much for your help!

Reduced the blade depth a smidge more, now leaving triangle on force 12 really faintly. These are the test cuts. Tool is CB09-U with offset zero, I'm only making changes from the cutter itself

Vinyl weeds fine on the new blade but I'm having worse corner rounding consistently across the sheet. It's the same 60 deg clean cut blade as the one I replaced. Any ideas? Acceleration is 1, speed 9 I also have some incomplete squares where the end isn't reaching the start again.

New blade using your method I'm finding force 11 leaves a slight impression of the triangle sounds much more like it! I thought I had been careful with this blade too...

Ahhh okay. I probably did break it then. Great lol. Thanks, I have spares - I'll try with that

I guess I could have possibly blunted my blade again, but it doesn't seem to be causing issues like before. I'm using Clean Cut blades. I'll do some testing with lower force again and see if I made an error.

Yeah, I am definitely setting the blade right. I swap between my red and blue blade every sheet as I am contour cutting with blue and perf cutting with red, so it's always being put back in correctly. I was actually on force 22 to see a very faint outline of the triangle in the test cut (think it was in the "setting the blade for CE6000" official Graphtec video where they said that) but backed off as it felt unnecessarily high. Shall I ignore the need for faint mark in backing of the triangle? I do get a clean weed with less force but then there's no triangle visible.

Ahh I see! That explains why it was present before then. My stickers are for use in paper planners and when stuck to the paper you can't tell at all, so that's reassuring.

So I believe I have fixed it... don't want to speak too soon but my cuts are pretty close to perfect now. The tip had snapped off my blade and I noticed my corners weren't closing completely, so Google said to check the holder was free from dust etc which caused me to notice the blade was blunt. Swapped it for a new blade (all I had on hand was a 60 deg for blue) and it's massively reduced the bulging on the media (I didn't realise it was still causing some movement with my blunt blade I guess - I do now I've seen it travel completely flat) and I'm no longer having issues with my cuts aligning with my print. Not sure how long my blade has been like this but seeing as I had been cutting with it too deep and low force probably a while. I'm now cutting with 20 force and can hardly see the blade out of the holder. I've also worked on improving my method for feeding the media straight and that seems to have made a difference. I'm liking the 60 deg blades for kiss cutting so will keep them going forward. I do have slightly "rounded" straight corners - they are within a window of tolerance I'd accept but if I could improve that they'd be absolutely perfect. I did look at my cuts from when I used Silhouette machines and they also have a very slight rounding so I am not sure what is causing it as my boxes in Illustrator are perfect squares. I did also try Graphtec Pro Studio (did the length calibration thing - it was off by about 0.3mm for both directions) but I cannot figure out how to separate my AI layers to cut in GPS so I have just gone back to CM4 in Illustrator until I can take some time off work to try and work it out. Graphtec support have been fairly unhelpful which is a bit disappointing. I could only find a sales number so I have been emailing support and had no reply. But a huge thanks to everyone who helped me out, I appreciate it!

Ah I understand now, sorry. I will look for the proper calibration in the software but most of my stickers are sized to have a width of 1.5 and they all measure the right size across the entire sheet so it would seem to be correct. I see - yes I did get Graphtec Pro Studio with the cutter. Will download it now. I am only really using Illustrator due to familiarity with the Adobe suite.

The scale on the cutter is set to 1 and the only calibration I could find is the offset sensor adjust which is perfectly set. Just did mark scan test, results are perfect too. I haven't tried another software no, I think I do have Graphtec Pro Studio. I make my files on my Mac and cut on Windows but looks like GPS is available for Mac too.

No reply from Graphtec themselves yet but I have been cutting smaller lengths of media today (27inches in length) and have noticed the cut is always too far to the right on the left side of the sheet - consistently. The right side is cutting perfectly, however it always starts cutting on the right first and does left second. I can actually fix it by moving all of my cut lines in Illustrator to the left by 2mm to compensate. So it's a temporary fix but does seem like there is some fault. I checked the scale of my printer and it's 100%, so out of ideas. I messed around with distance adjustment but don't think it's related.

I see. No, the vinyl seems to be feeding fine in that respect - better now I have adjusted the blade settings. It used to buldge a little before. Fingers crossed for an easy solution!

I'll give that a shot, thank you!

Annoyingly I don't have pressure options for my rollers on this model, the 60cm. Should have specified. What does pre-feeding mean with sheet media? Do you just hold the arrows back and forth? Sorry - feels like a stupid question! I thought it was more to do with vinyl on a roll to make sure it isn't wound wonky etc.

I'm not I don't think, I just line it up so it's straight against one of the lines on the front, try and hold it flat so it's tight across the machine when I clamp it down (was having issues previously with it bulging in the middle), then select "sheet" as my media and then it does it's scan to see how big the sheet is. The distance from the edge was another thing I had been experimenting with and found the distance I am using works better than putting them further in, but if I'm feeding it wonky that probably skewed (lol) my results. My pinch rollers are even but I have better results when the edge of the holder lines up exactly with where my media ends, compared to how they were in the pic I posted.

Hmm. I feel if it were loading straight it would probably cut perfectly as the accuracy issues are consistent with where it's becoming misaligned. I'll cut some more sheets and triple check it's not me loading it incorrectly, otherwise I'll drop them a line tomorrow. Thanks for your help everybody. Appreciate the heads up re: blade too as it has improved my cuts! Will let you know how I get on and would love to hear if you think of anything else

I did consider hand cutting but I want the sheets to be exactly the same size so opted for perf cutting, also to save labour time. That's why I've gone for a separate blade to try and preserve the contour cut blade too - and is the reason I got the CE7000 over other models haha! I've re-set the blade and seems to be cutting a lot cleaner on the corners but accuracy still not 100% across the whole job. It is a lot better though and it looks like there is a lot less strain on the media as it's cutting (this was due to drag before with blade too deep?). I'm now cutting on force 12. I did twizzle the blade up ever so slightly and even force 38 would not cut so I'm confident this is the lowest the blade can be and still cut now. Blade off set is set to zero too. I did notice when it is fed back and forth it's not feeding straight - it was perfectly aligned when I began the job but you can see against the lines on the front of the machine it isn't staying in the same spot. Is this the pinch roller issue from the other thread? Perhaps this explains why my longer jobs are worse.

Oooh okay interesting, I will try to set it again. What force do you usually use a rough ballpark? My vinyl is 80 micron but not sure how it translates to mils. I did read about the defected CE7000s a while ago but thought mine seemed fine for the most part until this recent long cut. I'll adjust the blade a bit and see how it goes from there. Thank you! I thought I had an offset issue but assumed that was just "the way it cuts" as I meddled with the offset +1 and +2 and it got worse. I will def re-set the blade now and see how that improves. Thanks for the heads up. Re: perf cut... I honestly don't know, but it took me about 2 weeks to come up with a setting that "worked" so it's very likely my perf cut is not ideal. Once I dust it away the lines are straight, what you see on the surface is all dust. I did just think my vinyl was particularly dusty!

Sorry for the confusion, the red was in there as I use it for the perf cut because I have a 60 deg blade for that and it perf cuts the sheets at the end of the job, so was still in there for the final photos. For the contour cut job, I was using the blue cb09 and the 45 deg blade that came with the cutter. I do have a 60 deg clean cut blade for blue I can try. When I cut much smaller jobs, I don't really have any issues with accuracy but once I start to go bigger (I know this is still quite a small job in the grand scheme of things but I used to use Silhouette portraits and cut A4 media so it's big to me haha) it seems to have issues. That's why I have so many segmented reg marks, thinking it would help. It cut almost perfectly on a job half the size right after I made this forum post but I'm pretty sure this job (52 inches) should still be possible with accuracy on the CE7000. I think my blade depth is set accurately, that is how I set the blade initially - I'm on force 7 with it.