Hangfire

As an update, I've been discussing the issues with USCutter staff/support. I'll post something after this is resolved but I do have to say the support so far has been good.

As an update, support sent me another blade holder for the machine, this one marked as a Titan blade holder replacement for some reason, which also did not fit. It is even wider than the other two. Titan: 11.89mm wide, MH Cutter: 11.63mm and the one that came with the MH200: 11.36mm. While the older machines may allow a variance in size due to it's pinch design, this new machine has a cast metal mount that prevents these other holders from being slotted in. After redesigning the MH cutter either noone realized they were making their machine incompatible with the standard blade holders of they forgot to update the website description for the MH Blade Holder. That, along with with the stand issues is making me concerned about the rest of the redesign. To anyone considering upgrading from the older cutter to this one, I don't think I'd recommend it at this point.

Cool, hopefully some of this helps, the cutter itself does seem to be working properly once you get past any needed alterations. Will be interesting to see if you have the same roller alignment issue. you likely will as the sides of the machines and stands are probably identical with only longer crossmembers the difference. If you have an MH871 you could also see the blade holder difference.

The redesigned the cutter but not the stand idea is most likely. The stand is assembled correctly, in fact it can only go together one way. The plates the cutter sit on both have to face inwards or the feet won't reach the holes and the side plates have 3 holes that only line up one direction so they can't be reversed or put on the wrong side. You could put them on the inside but then they would be too close together for the rollers to slot in, etc. As for rotating the cutter that would force the rollers to be in front and the cutter feeds only from the back direction. Much like changing the blade mount to no longer be compatible with the blade holders they sell for it, it just wasn't fully thought out.

Here's a top down shot after the roller mod with the vinyl where it needs to be to line up with the useable space. You can see the rollers arent even really the issue, though that's how I fixed it for me. Where the holes are to mount the cutter to the stand are too far over so the useable area of the cutter does not line up with the useable area of the rollers. It's probably due to the fact that the MH200 moved the blade holder to the right of the carriage while the older cutters had it to the left but they didn't account for the shift with the stand design.

Sure, the flimsiness of it isn't the biggest issue and is hard to show in pictures but the roller alignment is pretty easy to show. Here's a pic of the lip on the roller. It is not moveable and the roller rod is pressed into the roller so there is no adjustment there. Once in place the lip is where it is. I did also try reversing the bushing in there to move it more to the left but it didn't gain it enough to line up. Here's what that does to the vinyl alignment. Here's a shot of the far right carriage travel right before it hits the limit switch. And the left side travel of the carriage right before it hits the limit switch. You can see the issue, that is a pretty large amount of skew if you tryied to force it over and if you tried to put the vinyl up over the lip it doesn't roll even or straight. Below is what I did to fix it to allow the vinyl to slide over far enough to line up with the useable space. If any of the photos look fisheyed its due to camera angles, these shots were taken with the frame perfectly level and square to the machine. I fixed the problems with the rollers, nothing I can do about the gauge of the material it's made out of and the feets wobbliness doesn't affect use so it's functional now for the most part. Support is looking into the blade holder issues.

I don't have a 871 so I can't speak to a comparison but I do own a MH200, it was delivered a couple weeks ago so I might be able to answer some questions. There are definitely some changes from the first MH cutters, a lot of what I looked into online for the MH did not apply when I got this one. The machine works but it is full of minor annoyances, whether these are common to all the MH products or this one I can't say. If coming from an 871 you should be aware the controls are different than what I found online, there is no Offline button, you do not set Origin, etc. It does an auto-origin thing where it assumes wherever the head is sitting when you start the program is the origin. This is not explained except for an tacked on comment in the manual that says "Note: The cutter has an auto-origin-set feature so there is no need for an Origin button." That's the only reference to it, no explanation of how it operates. Once you know how the Origin works you also need to remember it is shifted by the test cuts. So if you hit test, it moves and cuts out the test spot, it then advances forward for you to weed it. You then have to hit test again to go back to the "origin", but then it automaticaaly shifts over by about 3/4 of an inch to allow another test automatically. That also shifts the auto origin though so you have to manually move it back if you actually wanted the origin to be where you had it to being with. If you don't move it back manually and you are using the full width you'll Left Error when it runs and crash the cut. A minor step once you build it into your process but something to know that I found out the hard way. The blade holders look similar but are different, there are currently no blade holders for sale on the website that actually work for it. The Blade Holder for MH listed on the website that says it works for all MH cutters doesn't fit. there's about a .2 mm diameter change and the new holder has the stop ring at a different height than the one listed for MH on the website. They are not compatible with eachother, the old MH holder won't even drop into the bracket. I'm currently waiting for a response from support and sales as to whether they have proper blade holders for it. The USB port on the side works to load cut files. It's important to note that the USB has to be formated to fat32, NTFS formated drives wont read and will lock up the cutter. Not too surprising but something to know that was not documented in the manual. The stand it ships with is cheap, I'll probably make a new one. It's fairly flimsy and it is poorly designed for the MH200. The rollers it come with have caps on them with a tall lip which stops your material from sliding off the roller, the issue is the rollers do not align with the cutters working area. If for example you are using 24" wide material in the mh200-28 , which has a maximum width of 24", you can't slide the vinyl over far enough to actually line up with the 24" useable cutting area. It's off by over half an inch. If you force it over it will skew, etc. I resolved the issue by modifiying the rollers and removing the lips then filing down the rough edges but I shouldn't have needed to. The stand also twists easily, it's thin gauge, if you roll or slide it and one of the legs bumps into anything even slightly it will twist the leg. It also came with two sets of hardware that were different, only one works, the other was likely for another model of stand. One of the 3 pinch rollers it comes with is off kilter, no matter how much I adjust it it only rolls on one edge of the wheel resulting in either very little downforce or a groove in the vinyl. I've reached out to support about it, we'll see what comes from it. Apart from all that it did successfully cut a few sheets of stencils for me, multicam and kryptek, and they came out fine. No idea how much I trust the build quality and I expect to end up needing to tinker with it a bunch, but it works I quess. I'm no stranger to tinkering with hardware or devices like this and I have no doubt I can keep it running but I am somewhat regretting not just pulling the trigger on a Graphtec. Hopefully it will win me over in time but the initial impression is a little rough, for the price point it may just be what it is. I haven't used the contour cut feature yet so can't really comment on it. If you have any specific questions feel free to ask.