Thinking of going to a Roland.....Questions

[budracer1 0]

Ok I currently own 2 summa D60/U machines and 1 older Summa D610, and im possibly looking to sell all three to purchase a Roland GX-24. The main reason being the auto contour cut feature. I can contour cut through flexi with my machines, but I have to manually digitize the points, which isnt a great big deal, but when your doing 20 to 30 tshirt tranfers it sure does hurt production time.

My question is this, With the GX24 how does the contour cutting work with flexi. With the Summa, i create my contour lines, then go to rip and print and after I have my printed image i load it in the cutter and send to cutter and it will have me digitize my points...will the GX24 automatically do this then or is that only through cut studio? I really like flexi and I hate to move from one software to another to design , cut etc.

PS. if anyone would be interested in any of my cutters in NC let me know.

Thanks JB

[MZ SKEETER 4,709]

Have you thought about just getting a copy of Flexistarter8.6 with contour cutting ?  and keep your 3 machines. 

only $130.00

http://cgi.ebay.com/FlexiStarter-Contour-Cutting-Vinyl-Cutter-flexi-starter-/270637335729?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f033e04b1

[budracer1 0]

I have flexi 8.1 pro and it contour cuts fine, I just have to manually line up all the registration marks.

JB

[MZ SKEETER 4,709]

Ok,  I understand.     check out a Roland user manual.   My Graphtec, although it comes with Cutting Master,  a sister to Cutstudio.  works great with Flexistarter. 

[rrc1962 0]

I have flexi 8.1 pro and it contour cuts fine, I just have to manually line up all the registration marks.

JB

How do you line up the registration marks on cutter that doesn't have a laser?  Can you walk me through the procedure.  I'd like to experiment with that.  I'm also using 8.1 Pro.

[budracer1 0]

I have flexi 8.1 pro and it contour cuts fine, I just have to manually line up all the registration marks.

JB

How do you line up the registration marks on cutter that doesn't have a laser?  Can you walk me through the procedure.  I'd like to experiment with that.  I'm also using 8.1 Pro.

What cutter do you have?

[rrc1962 0]

I have flexi 8.1 pro and it contour cuts fine, I just have to manually line up all the registration marks.

JB

How do you line up the registration marks on cutter that doesn't have a laser?  Can you walk me through the procedure.  I'd like to experiment with that.  I'm also using 8.1 Pro.

What cutter do you have?

It's a Refine MH781.

[budracer1 0]

In Flexi with your graphic selected click on the contour cut tool. It will give you options as to how far out or ib you want to cut. After you have done all that, click on Rip and Print. This will bring up your work screen. Go to the advanced tab, then choose contour, then make sure that send as seperate jobs is checked. Next you will click send.  When you hit send, it will send the job to your printer. After you have the sheet form your printer, load it in the cutter and go to Production manager on your pc. In PM look for your cutter in the set up list on the left, it should have a plus sign beside it letting you know that there is a job waiting. Click the plus sign and the job will show up in the right, click on the job and then click send. You will then get a pop up that ask you how you want to align the marks. For your cutter you will have to choose manual because its not able to digitize. Choose manual and you will get a screen that says align mark 1 and there will be directional arrows on your screen. Use the arrow to move the head a paper til the knife is directly over point 1, do this for the 2 or 4 points whichever you set it up to do then it will tell you to click ok to start cutting.

I know that's probably confusing and I could probably walk you through it better on the phone so if you don't get it feel free to pm me your number and ill call you.

JB

[rrc1962 0]

In Flexi with your graphic selected click on the contour cut tool. It will give you options as to how far out or ib you want to cut. After you have done all that, click on Rip and Print. This will bring up your work screen. Go to the advanced tab, then choose contour, then make sure that send as seperate jobs is checked. Next you will click send.  When you hit send, it will send the job to your printer. After you have the sheet form your printer, load it in the cutter and go to Production manager on your pc. In PM look for your cutter in the set up list on the left, it should have a plus sign beside it letting you know that there is a job waiting. Click the plus sign and the job will show up in the right, click on the job and then click send. You will then get a pop up that ask you how you want to align the marks. For your cutter you will have to choose manual because its not able to digitize. Choose manual and you will get a screen that says align mark 1 and there will be directional arrows on your screen. Use the arrow to move the head a paper til the knife is directly over point 1, do this for the 2 or 4 points whichever you set it up to do then it will tell you to click ok to start cutting.

I know that's probably confusing and I could probably walk you through it better on the phone so if you don't get it feel free to pm me your number and ill call you.

JB

Thanks...This may not work as I'm not doing the printing.  I had some limited success doing this a couple years ago.  What I did was draw a bounding box and place the design(s) inside the box, then export that as an EPS and send it to the printer who printed it on 8.5x11 sheets (offset printing).  I then took the same file and saved it under a different name and outlined the designs, separated the outline and deleted the original designs leaving only the solid outline and the bounding box.  I then loaded the 8.5x11 printed decal sheet into the plotter and lined the knife up the front right corner of the box and hit send.  The plotter cut the outline or contour and the box.  To make this work you have to set all margins in Flexi to 0.  Also a good idea to plot the contour file to paper first and make sure that plotter scaling and printer scaling matches.  My plotter cuts slighty larger than real world.  IE: 6" = about 6.125" on the plotter.  It's not something that mattered until I started trying to match contour cuts to printed designs.  If the scaling is a little off, I just scale up or down by a very small amount in production manager.

The process worked quite well but when I saw your post I was hoping for a simpler solution through Flexi.  I looks like in order to make it work through Flexi, I have to do the printing, which isn't an option.  I'm thinking of doing the same thing, but using a different printer who will print larger sheets and print on Orajet vinyl rather than offset printing.