Cutting eratically

[AnthonyM 0]

Hi, I just recently bought a Copam 2500 and i'm trying to use it to cut sandblast stencil but i'm having a few problems. It took me a little while to get it set up on the computer, but I have it working now with the serial to usb cable and the copy of signblazer essentials that came with it. I'm using the PL-2303 usb-serial driver I found on uscutters website. I tried my first test cuts on some stencil that I was previously using for hand cutting its made by 3M they came out poor to say the least. Rather than cutting a square with a circle in it, they were more like two horizontal lines with a semi circle in the middle. I found out that the 3M stencil was over the maximum thickness of the cutter and that you also need a 60 degree blade to cut it. So i'm now using the 60 blade and stencil rubber mean't for a friction feed plotter made by Anchor. I set it at 10cm/s, 240g of force, and 0.25 mm offset, it cut the test properly. I also made a couple samples in sign blazer and they came out perfect. After using about 1 meter of the stencil only on the right side, I wanted to start cutting on the left side so I wasn't wasting any. I attempted to move the origin over to the left side using the jog tool in signblazer then proceeded to cut 3 lines of text, but it continued to cut it on the right side and it cut the lines of text over top of each other in a mess of letters. Everytime I try to cut text or pictures now they come out horrible, it will start drawing the first letter of the text and before its finished it will draw the weeding box which would usually go around the entire text then it seems to randombly cut the different letters from the text over different parts of the stencil. Also now the tests don't come out right either, sometimes its a rectangle some times its a square, sometimes the circle is in the center and sometimes its only half in side. Seems like everytime you try to cut something it comes out different. It also doesn't feed evenly anymore, the tension seems to be what I would think is right, after all I have only had the cutter for about a week.

I originaly thought the problem was something to do with me trying to move the origin over to the left using the jog tool in sign blazer. But when the cutter is unplugged from the computer and you hold the enter key + left arrow key and its supposed to cut the copam logo, all it does is cuts a horizontal line about 4 or 5 inches long and runs the blade back and forth in it several times. I have also noticed the pause key doesn't always work and when it does come up asking if you want to abort and you press enter it just goes back to cutting sometimes it takes several tries before it stops and sometimes you have to just turn it off.

So in the end not sure if I have a hardware problem and/or software problem.

if anyone has any suggestion they would be much appreciated!

[Guest]

Hmmm ok at first this sounded like it was just an unstable material issue, but the tail end of the post makes it sound like it developed into a hardware issue. Can you please load a pen and some paper into the machine and try to run a simple text cut and tell me how it works out?

[AnthonyM 0]

I actually don't have a pen for it. Well I uninstalled signblazer and the driver and reinstalled them, it seemed to help but the material still wasn't feeding evenly so I tried the 3m stencil I originally bought, and it fed evenly.. maybe because its thicker..?

So far the thick 3m stencil seems to work, i'm gonna attempt to make a couple signs over the next week and hopefully all goes well.

Thanks for the reply.

[Guest]

Please let me know if this problem persists. A PM is usually the best way to get a hold of me.