Newbie in need of help

[JDS RGB 1]

Hi Ive just bought a goldcut jk721 before I bought this, i did all my graphics designs in Ai and printed them on my large format printer. well someone asked me if i can make sheets of stickers and seeing as my printer lets me print on adhesive vinyl matt and gloss I got the plotter. Ive never used inkscape nor signcut pro. I have done a couple of basic designs to test the print and contour cut but failed on several occasions to get them anywhere near cutting in the correct positions. 

 

I really would appreciate any help as ive lost 5 nights sleep trying to get my head around it.

 

Thanks in advance

 

[dcbevins 340]

If your working in Inkscape, can you post the SVG file giving you the problem here or on something like dropbox?  You said,  "Hi Ive just bought a goldcut jk721 before I bought this."  What is this?  Are you using the jk721 or something else.

 

It sounds like your are having problems with contour cutting.  If I am guessing correctly as to the nature of your problem it goes like this:  You are printing the decals.  You then load then onto your cutter and want to cut out the shapes of the decals.  Everything goes to hell in a hand basket.

 

Cutters that do contour cutting well have an optical eye.  When you print, you print special marks, (registration marks,) along with your other artwork.  You have to add these marks to the artwork.  The optical eye reads these marks for alignment and auto aligns everything.  The cutting software has to support this option.

 

Other cutters have a laser pointer.  You still print the registration marks, but you have to manually align the marks with the laser pointer to get correct registration.

 

Cutters with no optical eye or no laser pointer are a bit hard to get to contour cut.  You have to eyeball the knife blade and align it to the right position.  Adding a bleed to your artwork can help.

 

In all the cases above, you have to define as vector the path for the cutting and export this in a format your cutting software can deal with.  This is usually a hairline stroke surrounding the decal.  In Inkscape it would be a Stroke of .003 inches or  0.0762 mm, (Inkscape has no specific option for hairline, Corel does, not sure about Illustrator.)  If you art is raster, then you might have to manually draw this shape around the decal, and give the specified stroke.  The vector image you output for input into your cutting software doesn't need anything other than this vector path.  It would not need the image of the decal itself.  Instead of a hairline outline, you could just export a solid vector "block."  It will probably cut the same.

 

I do not know if your cutter has a laser pointer or not.

 

I have not used a Optical Eye in over a decade.  The Roland Vesa works supported it.  I am not sure SignCut can deal with an optical eye.

 

Watch this SignCut video:

 

 

The 7:45 mark in the video talks about contour cutting with no laser pointer.

[Wildgoose 4,200]

SignCut will definitely do it. They have great tech support, actually they have fantastic tech support, and can help walk you through the process. I have an optical eye cutter but have only rarely used it as I don't print. Every time I decide to do a contour cut I have to spend a half hour re-learning the specific process so I'm sure you will have some trial and error time as well. I recommend getting in touch with SignCut and use AI since you are familiar with it already. The SignCut folks told me that Adobe Illustrator version 8 is the best compatibility with the SignCut program. There is a plug-in for AI but I personally don't use it I prefer to down-save my cut files and use a thumb drive to a different computer from my main design computer to cut from. 

[JDS RGB 1]

Thanks for the replies Im sorry I was on my ipad when I wrote the OP and not sure where "Hi Ive just bought a goldcut jk721 before I bought this." came from, I am actually feeling very frustrated with myself over this as I tend to be able to pick things up quickly. This is the plotter I have bought JK721.

 

For some reason I cant get the registration marks to show unless I physically cut and paste them from another image, Ive gone through all the signcut tutorials and still I can not get the sheet of images Ive printed to line up on the plotter so they have a small border around them.

[Wildgoose 4,200]

You have loaded the SignCut plug-in for AI? If so you can add the registration marks at that point. I'm not at my design computer but I'm pretty sure there is a registration mark tool in the File or Edit menu once you load the plug-in. You should be able to do it manually though by drawing them in where they should be. Pay attention to the recommended clearance from the actual design as well as the size of the mark although size is less important without an optical eye. Most need the registration marks to have like an inch clear space from the inner design. I don't know much about your JK721 but it doesn't appear to have an optical eye. 

[JDS RGB 1]

You have loaded the SignCut plug-in for AI? If so you can add the registration marks at that point. I'm not at my design computer but I'm pretty sure there is a registration mark tool in the File or Edit menu once you load the plug-in. You should be able to do it manually though by drawing them in where they should be. Pay attention to the recommended clearance from the actual design as well as the size of the mark although size is less important without an optical eye. Most need the registration marks to have like an inch clear space from the inner design. I don't know much about your JK721 but it doesn't appear to have an optical eye. 

Yes ive added the plug in, but in truth its hit and miss with that sometimes it sends to signcut other times it sends but locks signcut up

[dcbevins 340]

A sample file might illuminate the issue.

[Wildgoose 4,200]

Yes ive added the plug in, but in truth its hit and miss with that sometimes it sends to signcut other times it sends but locks signcut up

I'm not talking about send to signcut I'm talking about adding registration marks to your work. When I get to my home office I'll look up what I'm talking about and give more details. There is a specific option to add registration marks and it plops them right in there in the right place and size. If you haven't tried contacting the SIgnCut tech support your just losing time. Those people will talk you right through the process (free support) They will be particularly understanding since you are just on the trial too. You can basically rent a subscription if you want to try it longer they sell them as short as a week I think. I ended up buying the lifetime dongle because I want to be able to computer hop from one to the other if I need to. I have it loaded into all of my computers and just plug the dongle into the one I want to use.

 

I too had issues with the send to signcut sometimes and figured out it is just converting them to AI version 8 so I started just doing that on my own and have not had any issues since. 

[dcbevins 340]

More or less in this location - C:\Program Files (x86)\SignCut\Examples\Simple_Contourcut  you should find sample files.  

[Wildgoose 4,200]

JDS -  I was totally wrong about what I was telling you, sorry. Adding the registration marks in AI is in a plug-in from my Summa cutter not SignCut. That's good and bad. Good because in the end SignCut doesn't have specific locations and what-not to worry about as much, bad because there is no easy one push button for you to use in AI. I'm attaching a couple pics. One is a potential contour cut file and the second is an outlines view of what you want to send to your cutter. You can decide where the contour cut should be and it is usually either outside the print slightly or inside the print slightly (bleed) so you don't have a hit-or-miss thing going on. I think in your case you would prefer to cut in the bleed so there is less worry about consistency or accuracy of the registration.