Early report this is an awesome cutter - but......

[blake2415 0]

Marcel,

Copam needs to offer better 15" material support.  I have not yet figured out how to reliably do 15" width.  For now,  I'm tricking the plotter with a sheet of 24" paper,  marking the edge as determined by copams size feature, then butting up the 15" material to the far left pinch roller/friction wheel.  Then I'm pulling out the paper and putting in my vinyl.  In any case, I'm allowed only 2 friction points.  There needs to be better detection and support for 15" material. 

The cutter at first impression and I do mean FIRST.. It's very early.. It is an extremely nice machine.  The only dissapointing part for me is the apparently fixed width cut increments.  This includes a pretty big disappointment.. the inability to cut my billions of 4" and 6" strips that are leftovers from bigger jobs.  My cutter will not allow friction rollers on the two leftmost rollers.  So...  Either it's designed that way or there's some glitch on my end.  Is it possible to buy an additionial friction roller and install it on the left side of whatever is blockading the others from sliding to that position?  Would this confict with the firmware?

Please do not get me wrong,  This printer is looking like it will be actually the best I've owned thus far but too bad they spoiled my party by the limited width support or too bad I'm to much of a D... A... to grasp what I'm missing.  I'd love your comments. 

The printer is worth me changing to another width material but I'm loaded here in tons of 15" material.    If your reply confirms my suspicion that 15" width material is marginally supported (see Billy's Photo showing 15" install), I'd like to campaign Copam for a firmware update and an extra friction roller.    The scenero Billy uses in the 15" example probably won't work for me running sometimes 10 feet in lenght jobs such as signage, etc.  I need better grip than two end rollers will allow.  Some thinner materials can actual do a arch up during the cutting if you don't have center pinch rollers in place.

Another note:  Be sure the first question to ask if someone says the parallel port is not working,  ask if they used the factory cable.  it does matter.  The Refine Plotter Parallel cable would not run this Copam.  I spent a few hours trying to get it to move tonight and decided to try your suggestion and use the copam cable and it did work.

A side note from me  regarding USB adapters...  Not referencing anything here with USCUTTER, I have NEVER found the USB adapters to be reliable in plotting for any brand. I didn't try yours so, like I said, present company excluded, but I've either had them not work at all or they would shoot off in a frenzy cut once the complex plotting instructions activates the deep routed and typically uneventful bugs that just don't show up with ordinary inkjet printers.  That's my 2 cents worth.    Anybody not having a parallel port should just go buy one.  If you are running windows 64bit,  look for the NETMOS chipset in a I/O expansion card as they have 64 bit drivers that work.  I'm told that StarCom also now has 64 bit drivers for a few of their cards for anyone running on these new portless pc's and windows 64 bit.

I'll await you reply. 

Bill

[thredz 1]

I'm not understanding the loss of using 4 to 6 inch strips.You can go all the way down to 3" on the cutter.Probably less than that from the frist two set of rollers.And I have plotted a 22 x 28 inch piece of cheap poster board with no buckling,which to me is about the flimsiest stuff tyou can use.I think it will take time for you to get used to the placement of the material.It took me a day or two to figure out how to set it,but I have had no problems cutting 24-15 or even 3 inch strips.I think you're right about the usb installs.I use a com port for R2 and I have the copam running on an lpt port.A lot of people miss the fact that the usb is actually an emulated serial port.I have never had sucess with anything emulated on a computer.When I first started bu,ilding computers was when they went from 386 to 486,then when they changed the memory from 30 pin to 72 pin they came out with a memory stacker that plugged a 72 into a 30.I made lots of money working on computers with those memory emulators!And if you have a computer with a 4 port usb,and you have another 4 port hub running because of all the usb connections you are asking for problems with running a cutter on an emulated port.I've seen people that have bought new laptops with no lpt or com ports and I always ask myself why.You could go to the thrift store and pick up a pentium II computer with 128 megs of memory and be better off running a cutter through it than the new computers with nothing but a usb port.