Connecting Pinch Rollers together

[Racer85 0]

Just recieved my cutter last week and been using it a little.  Well here is the deal I was in the sign business for ten years,  so I have got experience with Roland's, Vinyl Express, and a little bit of graphtec cutters.  I sold out my share of the business and purchased a p-cut to do my little side projects.  I am having a little trouble getting used to the quality of these cutters and I am looking at ways to make it a little more user friendly.  Here are my questions, has any body tried connecting the pinch rollers together with a piece of 1/4" key stock and putting a handle on it so you can engaged and disengage the rollers at the same time?  Does anybody have any suggestions on making the media load and move past the trimming groove any smoother.  And also are these machines normally very noisy while cutting (besides the fan).  Any suggestions or help are appreciated.

[Dano 0]

Welcome,

I'm new here too.  I got my pcut about 1-1/2 months ago and have run a bunch of vinyl through it.  There is no question that it isn't the quality of the Rolands and such, but for the price it's much better than I expected.  A friend of mine has been running his hard (every day) for two years and it keep cutting away.

Noisy?  Yes

Keystock to tie the pinch rollers together seems feasible.  But I don't see a big advantage.  I guess it would help it the initial alignment of the vinyl, but I haven't have any problems yet.  If you go ahead with it, post pictures and tell us how it turned out. 

I found loading the vinyl to be a pain too.  I was using one of those floppy plastic cutting boards for trimming and cutting, and found it works great as a guide for the vinyl.  I just slide it through from the front, and then push the vinyl trough over the floppy cutting board.  That way the edge doesn't catch in the grip roller area.  Slide the board out, flop down the pinch rollers, and you're in business. 

Good luck with your cutter!  At first I was very frustrated with mine. After reading posts on this forum I learned how to work though some of the problems and tweak the cutter.  Now it seems to be cutting great every time with very little adjustment needed.

-Dan