PM-Performance

First impressions of the Prismcut P28

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So I purchased one of these last week on a whim to try out a more capable machine than I had, but was hard to pull the plug without any reviews or data on these. I asked for this section to be added as it almost steered me away from the purchase of no data being avail. 

I will be creating a play list showing the unboxing and assembly as well as the overview and functionality and how it is working with this thing to my Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/pm-performance ) in the upcoming days/weeks to help the community.  

Initial thoughts are is this thing is pretty slick. The WIFI is a fabulous option and one of the bigger selling points for me! It cuts pretty quick even at default settings and considerably more quiet than my Cameo. It is very precise so far. I cut some pretty tiny detail with my first cut and it took it and smiled. You can have vinyl and htv under the pinch rollers with no press marks. 

Some things I think could be better are the stand and mounting are decent, but not what I expected for the price. I think the LED's are a little gimmicky. I wish it had a ruler at the front for alignment and easy measurement. 

Lastly, I have concluded that this machine is 100% the Skycut machine from China that was just relabeled and a diff skin on the LED screen. 

Overall, pretty happy and excited to work this out a little more and post some more in depth reviews and info. If people start posting, I will try to answers questions as best as I can to help out as I am finding new things each time i tinker with it. 

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I'm interested to know how well the metal etch feature works.

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15 hours ago, haumana said:

I'm interested to know how well the metal etch feature works.

I likely will not be using that feature, atleast not at this time. 

I primarily use it for Adhesive vinyl and HTV. 

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Ive had mine for a few months.. Hubby bought it for me for Xmas... 

I don't use the lights are alarms for anything. To me it's just added hoo-ha. I too wish there was a ruler of some kind. And I wish that there was a 5th pinch roller and a catch bag.

I do a TON of cutting for my business - So these missing items ARE a hassle for me.

I have a few issues that require personal modification. The vinyl bows in-between the pinch rollers and causes the blade to leave scrape marks across ALL vinyl - Ive added cut pieces of wood paint sticks in-between the pinch rollers to prevent this. However, They have to placed & removed every time I change vinyl. Since  there isn't any kind of ruler, Ive had to add marker lines. And there isn't clear markings for the roller bars, except on top with arrows, so I've had to place marker points on these too. 

No catch bag - Ive taken the one from my Titan and rigged it to work. 

OH!!! & the pinch rollers don't have enough pull power. Ive had MANY cuts mess up because the machine didnt have enough power to pull the roll like the Titan did. So I have to unroll the roll behind the machine to make sure it doesnt screw up my cuts.

Its a great machine & MUCH quieter than the Titan 2.... I just wish that there were a few added things that I need.

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 Many of us have Graphtecs,  they don't have rulers and NEVER needed it.  I don't line up to anything.  Measure your wheels equally to the edge of the vinyl and your tracking should be fine, as long you start your vinyl straight.   I just measure about an 1.5 inches  in. You should NEVER be pulling from a vinyl roll while cutting. You should always have enough vinyl slack behind the cutter to do the entire order.  Prefeed your vinyl for the order.   I have a 30" Graphtec, they only come with 2 pinch rollers, can't imagine having 4 pinch rollers. There is no need.   2 Pinch rollers, track perfect. ( Maybe try only using 2 pinch rollers, instead of all of them)  Graphtecs have separated grit rollers.  I don't need to add anything to know where they are. There are markings above on the carriage rail track.. Prisimcut states it has arrows. (Position pinch roller under arrows.) Vinyl does not lift up or blade does not scratch the vinyl.  Maybe?  You have the blade too far exposed out of the blade holder. There is incorrect instructions out there, with setting blade depth with a credit card or post it notes. These are WRONG and way too much blade exposed.   This is the correct way to set your blade depth correctly.

To start with, you should set your blade depth correctly, by taking the blade holder out of the machine, and firmly cut across a piece of scrap vinyl, you will be cutting. You should only be cutting the vinyl and barely a mark on wax paper backing, Adjust blade to get there, Then put the blade holder back in machine, and use the force of the machine to get there, same results, only cutting the vinyl and barely a mark in wax paper backing. You should just barely see and feel your blade tip out of the blade holder.

 

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I just downloaded the PrismCut Quick Start guide to get a better picture of the pinch rollers and why you added marks for the roller. First thing I noticed was a nice image for setting blade depth showing the blade only cutting through the vinyl. Great I think, a good set of instructions for setting blade depth. Then I read the first line...HOLY HELL! it has the stupid 1/2 credit card instructions for setting blade depth. :(

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7 hours ago, DR_O said:

Ive had mine for a few months.. Hubby bought it for me for Xmas... 

I don't use the lights are alarms for anything. To me it's just added hoo-ha. I too wish there was a ruler of some kind. And I wish that there was a 5th pinch roller and a catch bag.

I do a TON of cutting for my business - So these missing items ARE a hassle for me.

I have a few issues that require personal modification. The vinyl bows in-between the pinch rollers and causes the blade to leave scrape marks across ALL vinyl - Ive added cut pieces of wood paint sticks in-between the pinch rollers to prevent this. However, They have to placed & removed every time I change vinyl. Since  there isn't any kind of ruler, Ive had to add marker lines. And there isn't clear markings for the roller bars, except on top with arrows, so I've had to place marker points on these too. 

No catch bag - Ive taken the one from my Titan and rigged it to work. 

OH!!! & the pinch rollers don't have enough pull power. Ive had MANY cuts mess up because the machine didnt have enough power to pull the roll like the Titan did. So I have to unroll the roll behind the machine to make sure it doesnt screw up my cuts.

Its a great machine & MUCH quieter than the Titan 2.... I just wish that there were a few added things that I need.

Nice Christmas present!

I have a ruler on my LP, do use it except the tick marks, when I jog the vinyl back to front, front to back, I can see how it drifts and make adjusts accordingly. You don't need a ruler for that, you could simply add a piece of blue painters tape and put a few pen mark dots or tick marks, or whatever.

Sounds like you have a stand, so it shouldn't be that hard to fab a stand for it, having the stand is 85% of the battle IMHO. A spare bed sheet cut to size, and a few clips in key places, maybe a few rods pinched between the machine and stand in the front, etc. There's a way to make it work. If you need some assistance, I have a laser machine that can cut acrylic, and a 3D printer, I might be able to help fab something for you.

Weak pinch/grit roller, and tenting of the vinyl. How much vinyl are your pulling through for slack? Vinyl should never be pulled directly from the roll. If you're doing a run of 6 feet, you should pre-feed at least 6-feet in slack.

If I'm cutting off of a roll, it's rolled on pretty straight, so I put some tension on the vinyl, then drop the pinch rollers. I will pull a few inches of slack and check for drift, and make any corrections necessary (but usually from a roll, I don't require drift corrections). Then I will manually pre-feed whatever necessary slack to run the job.

I will fully admit that there some improvements that could've been made with the LP, and I have no idea if they implemented any design changes in the newer versions, but it doesn't really matter because I made my workaround and it works like a charm. I got a lot of mileage out of it and made more than enough to buy myself a Graphtec as an upgrade. The LP is currently finding a second life in a friend's office where they are cutting stupid decals and vandalizing each other's work spaces and cars, putting stealthy stickers everywhere.

 

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So in regards to the pinch rollers, I specifically wanted more options for moving them around. I have a hell of a time with HTV with no cutting mat. I have found there is a very fine line to pinchroller placement to get it to feed without having the blade move it around and messing up the cut. I have been feeding with no slack a couple times from the rollers and it has been pulling with ease. I have found though you need to bend the brackets a little that hold the rollers to get them to spin free since they are not on bearings. I will outline this on the video once I post this weekend as well. 

I had my first few HTV cuts perfect and then the next few I wasted some product the hard way. I think feeding the HTV from the middle of the cutter instead of from the right side may help this. I use 15" rolls of HTV so maybe that is part of it as well. I still have hobbyist sized rolls. 

I really wish this came with a vinyl catcher as well. I was a little peaved about that. I may rig something up at some point when I do bigger jobs. 

I did have my blade set perfectly and somehow it must have pushed the blade back in and again ruined some cuts before I realized what happened. I have readjusted and relocked the blade carrier again so fingers crossed

 

Over all, this thing seems to cut some pretty good detail though. The main thing I wanted though was easier dealing with HTV without a cutting mat. I want to be able to just feed HTV with ease and cut a few shirts at once if I want and walk away and come back with a perfect cut. It may take a little bit of work to get there. 

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Being a new model the forum has no specific idea what you should expect. Your video will be VERY helpful to other new users and also to the forum regulars. It sounds like the machine must not have a hold down fan (vacuum) like many of the higher end cutters. I cut a lot of HTV, are you having trouble with it bunching up at the blade? Or is it something else?  The softer carrier of many HTV products can definitely cause unusual circumstances. If you are having bunching you might double check that your blade is nice and sharp and that you aren't using any more pressure than you need to. Many people switch over to Clean Cut Blades that cut with about half the pressure of the cheap Chinese ones they ship with a lot of the budget cutters. They are especially helpful when dealing with HTV. 

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2 hours ago, Wildgoose said:

Being a new model the forum has no specific idea what you should expect. Your video will be VERY helpful to other new users and also to the forum regulars. It sounds like the machine must not have a hold down fan (vacuum) like many of the higher end cutters. I cut a lot of HTV, are you having trouble with it bunching up at the blade? Or is it something else?  The softer carrier of many HTV products can definitely cause unusual circumstances. If you are having bunching you might double check that your blade is nice and sharp and that you aren't using any more pressure than you need to. Many people switch over to Clean Cut Blades that cut with about half the pressure of the cheap Chinese ones they ship with a lot of the budget cutters. They are especially helpful when dealing with HTV. 

This deff does not have any vacuum to pull down the HTV. 

I do not think this is a blade pressure thing. It is usually on the stroke that is outside of the rollers. Like if the end of my cut is like 2-3 inches outside of the pinch roller, it will crumble up the carrier and trash the cut at that point. The problem is starting at the right with your cut and having 12" vinyl, that second pinch roller will leave like 4-5  inches at the end with no pressure on a longer cut and it wont reach the next roller point. I have 15" vinyl as well, but I think I just got complacent and did not realize to push the right most pinch roller left and then use the first 3 rollers instead of trying for 2 not realizing my cuts went out that far. It is deff a learning process as now I have adjustability I did not have before. 

So I think in order to not start at the nested position and move my cuts over to hit other rollers better, I need to maybe change the image offset in Vinylmaster so it knows where to start the cut properly? This is kind of where I was going with having a ruler. If you move that over, having a ruler right there for quick measurement so you can adjust where the cut is supposed to start in VinylMaster would make this easier. 

Side Note: I mean it could partially be due to too much blade depth, because I had it perfect the other day and noticed it slaps the blade carrier down pretty hard. I thought it pushed the blade back in, so I had to readjust it and now it cuts the HTV just a tad deeper than I had it prior, but I really think it has more to do with not utilizing enough pinch rollers and dragging back across a loose area that is not clamped down. Although maybe slightly deeper, the blade glides across hte HTV with great ease. I had experience with that on my other machine and ruining smaller details as it would not fully life and drag across and lift up the HTV in really precise spots. 

I did see there are some nicer blades out there. I may consider that at some point as well. What is the price difference between the standard blades and these premium blades?

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Most people get the wrong impression about the blade exposed. The cutters use a pressure sensor to apply pressure to the blade holder to make the cut. When you adjust the pressure it either increases or decreases the pressure which dials in how deep the cut will go into the vinyl. If there is too much blade exposed it doesn't affect the depth of cut but does affect the quality of cut. Picture an exaggerated example where you had 6 Inches of the blade sticking out and dragging around trying to cut accurately and spin properly with the castor action developed by the blade tip. The closer you can get the blade holder to the vinyl without actually touching the vinyl the better. I like to just barely be able to see clear space between there when the blade is down and the cutter is cutting. If you have more sticking out it may affect the clean cuts and it also could cause the blade to accidentally cut all the way through when you load a different product in. Most vinyl is between 2 and 3 mil thick so once you get a blade exposure set it rarely needs to have that adjusted again until you need to change the blade or happen to try and cut something thicker like flock. (I set mine on 3 mil calendared cheap vinyl and then forget about it and just make pressure adjustments when needed). 

On the pinch rollers, your new cutter unfortunately has only certain grit roller spots. I hate it when they do this. One of the Titans had similar and it really limits the usability. You need to try and cut inside the rollers if at all possible especially with HTV due to it's softer carrier. You will have to measure the various width of the rollers and decide where you will place it in the cutter in order to utilize the width the best. Higher end cutters have a full 6inch or more over on the right side for cutting scraps and you use that area for anything up to about 6 inches and then when you get wider vinyl you move the left side to the next roller and use the right side roller to adjust to exactly the useable width. Why these designers can't get that into their thick skulls I'll never understand. My old P-Cut that I learned on didn't have that but it had a couple wide areas out in weird spots that I could use similarly and was able to cut about any size. Some of the older cheap cutters had a grit bar practically across the whole machine with just a center spot for a bearing, that was a good idea too. Not sure why they would limit you like this. I can't see very well in the picture from the manual, maybe there are more areas than it looks like. 

Screen Shot 2020-06-06 at 10.54.57 AM.png

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The rollers give me alot more than what I had for options, but yea, depending on HTV width, you need to determine where the best spots are to place the HTV to get a good cut and try not to cut outside of those. 

Do you always try to keep the rollers to the edge of the HTV? Or doesnt really matter as long as you are cutting on the inside of the rollers?

 

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20 hours ago, PM-Performance said:

Do you always try to keep the rollers to the edge of the HTV? Or doesnt really matter as long as you are cutting on the inside of the rollers?

I do if possible. My old original P-Cut was interesting and had several varied sizes of grit areas so I had to get creative with it. I think as long as it's not causing potential wadding up it probably doesn't matter. If you are cutting regular sign vinyl with a good stiff carrier you can likely sneak out beyond the rollers as well. My Summa has such crimp force that it ruins the vinyl where it rolls so I always stay within just because of that. 

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16 hours ago, Wildgoose said:

I do if possible. My old original P-Cut was interesting and had several varied sizes of grit areas so I had to get creative with it. I think as long as it's not causing potential wadding up it probably doesn't matter. If you are cutting regular sign vinyl with a good stiff carrier you can likely sneak out beyond the rollers as well. My Summa has such crimp force that it ruins the vinyl where it rolls so I always stay within just because of that. 

Normal vinyl does not seem to be an issue, just the HTV I have to be cognizant of the pinch roller setup and how I position it. I guess knowing this and realizing now, I can adjust accordingly and just use diff roller areas depending on what size HTV I am running and rotate images if needed to keep the cuts within them. 

Having the option to move the rollers is nice as there are like 5-6 strips, and the fact these rollers do not make any marks on either material is very nice as well. It gives me options

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On 6/5/2020 at 1:36 PM, PM-Performance said:

So I think in order to not start at the nested position and move my cuts over to hit other rollers better, I need to maybe change the image offset in Vinylmaster so it knows where to start the cut properly? This is kind of where I was going with having a ruler. If you move that over, having a ruler right there for quick measurement so you can adjust where the cut is supposed to start in VinylMaster would make this easier. 

Most cutters, and I'm assuming this one as well, have an origin/reset button. You position the cutting head where you want then hit the origin button and the cutter now treats that point as it's home point. No need to make changes to your design to offset it.

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16 hours ago, darcshadow said:

Most cutters, and I'm assuming this one as well, have an origin/reset button. You position the cutting head where you want then hit the origin button and the cutter now treats that point as it's home point. No need to make changes to your design to offset it.

So I have been seeing a reset button, but I was thinking that was for the resetting of presets or something. None of this actual important info was in the manual that I saw. 

I have just been using the arrows to put the head where I want it and it has been doing its thing on its own. When I have second guesses, I use the Test Area function in Vinyl Master and that has been pretty helpful. 

There is an image offset button in VinylMaster though that you can shift where on the vinyl the image is placed though. I do not fully understand its use, but I have played with it and see it changes the offset from the right side when I change the settings. 

PS: I appreciate the guidance. I really feel like more of a noob when talking to people that actually know what they are doing. I just poke around and see what functions do and test things and a good portion of time waste a little material trying to figure stuff out. 

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No worries, we were all noobs at one point in time. And you have a cutter that is new to most all of us so specific help is not quite as plentiful.

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21 hours ago, darcshadow said:

No worries, we were all noobs at one point in time. And you have a cutter that is new to most all of us so specific help is not quite as plentiful.

So I did find a button on the advanced menu to tell the head where to return to and can either advance after cut, or return to origin. I also found something in vinyl master to set the origin as well. That is what I was referring to before in the software. I can manipulate my head in the software. 

 

Thanks for reminding me to check that. I actually made another video yesterday to post this week of the "real" getting started guide and what the basic functions are and how to manipulate some of these things and some tips and tricks I found. 

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That advance after cut or return to origin is for post cutting, I prefer advance after. There should be an origin reset some place. That being said, I just pulled up the manual and don't see anything in there about one. I suppose it's possible the origin of the cutter is fixed and you have to adjust any offset via software but that seems like an unnecessary complication of the cutting process.

Section 3 of the manual shows a picture of the touch screen that has Settings, PSD/FRC and test cut buttons at the top. At the bottom of that screen is what looks like an Advance menu button. What does that pull up for you?

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Origin is a function while the cutter is on PAUSE or OFFLINE.
You must be able to adjust the vinyl and the cutting head while it's offline, (x and y axis movements) and when the tip of the blade is where you want to start the cut, ORIGIN is set.

This is the most basic procedure of a cutter, it is essential on every job to be able to accomplish that, and should not be "buried" within an Advanced menu. Or unavailable at all! That's just ridiculous if the cutter doesn't offer this functionality.

 

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14 hours ago, slice&dice said:

Origin is a function while the cutter is on PAUSE or OFFLINE.
You must be able to adjust the vinyl and the cutting head while it's offline, (x and y axis movements) and when the tip of the blade is where you want to start the cut, ORIGIN is set.

This is the most basic procedure of a cutter, it is essential on every job to be able to accomplish that, and should not be "buried" within an Advanced menu. Or unavailable at all! That's just ridiculous if the cutter doesn't offer this functionality.

 

Again, I am a noob so that is part of the problem. 

Yes you can advance the cutter on the screen with the back and forth arrows and yes that will set the origin for that cut. 

In the advanced menu, I did find an option to set the origin, advance cut at end of cut and something else I cannot remember. I outlined this on a new video I am posting this weekend as I familiarize myself more with the machine. You guys can see the menus more from there. 

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You basically just need to practice and be sure you understand the principal and process of moving your cutting head to where YOU want zero to be (X/Y location) Then be sure you know how to zero out those values and the machine at that point only knows it's now at the starting corner of the design. Most designs are not built with a square corner so you are really just telling the machine where the useable edge of the vinyl is and the graphics sits to the left of that point plus a little room for a weed border if you are using one (recommend). Your software should tell you how wide your overall design plus extra weed borders will be and you can easily use a loose ruler or tape to measure to the other side from your chosen zero point to be sure that you have a wide enough vinyl. 

Higher end machines measure this on their own and place the cutting head in the correct spot and also send that info to the cutting software so it can calculate how many copies can be made in a given available area etc.... When I load my Summa it runs a length of vinyl out equal to about 1.5 times the width and does a side to side measure so it knows what area is available. If it finds the end of the roll before it reaches that 1.5 length it records that too so it knows exactly how much working space there is and sends all that info over to my cutting software (in my case that is SignCut Pro). When it reaches that point in the cut 1.5 times the width then it stops cutting for a sec and rolls out another length verifying that there is still vinyl and keeps the vinyl pulled off the roll so it's not trying to roll the vinyl while it's cutting and then goes back to work cutting the design. It will repeat this process over and over if I happen to be cutting something very long or making multiple copies that are many cards long. I input my design and tell it how many copies I want and push go because the head already settled on the zero point and it's ready as soon as it's done it's measure process. I assume the Graphtec is very similar and probably the Roland cutters as well. More budget friendly machine have you do this kind of thing manually but it's all the same in the end. 

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Skycut has a video on youtube explaining what the control menu does. It's on the first page of the motor set menu.  Where it shows the X Y buttons.    Where it shows X=0  is your ORIGIN.  That button is right in the middle, of the other 4 buttons..   You press that.   The other buttons are for  left , right, up, down.   The ORIGIN is your starting point to measure your design.  X 0  Y 0     You put the cutter head where you want it to be on the vinyl then, press X=0

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MzSkeeter, I am quite relieved to know that this vital function is right up front and easily acessible. I was shocked to read when darcshadow said "There should be an origin reset some place. That being said, I just pulled up the manual and don't see anything in there about one."

For reference, realizing that this is a SKYCUT (OEM) can be quite valuable information to know when talking about PrisimCut operations.

I found THIS video, and was a bit intimidated when I saw that complicated touch-screen Control Panel for the first time (with optical position registration -- a camera in the cutter head, instead of a laser light point). In my humble opinion, this type of cutter is NOT really a great choice for a newbie that's never used a full-sized plotter before! That being said, it's a really beautiful machine with excellent capabilities for all sorts of work.

 

 

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1 hour ago, slice&dice said:

In my humble opinion, this type of cutter is NOT really a great choice for a newbie that's never used a full-sized plotter before! That being said, it's a really beautiful machine with excellent capabilities for all sorts of work.

 

 

While I agree I am a little over my head, I wanted something I can grow into , rather than out of. My prior machine was a Cameo. For reference, I made about $5k profit with that machine without even trying all that hard in less than a year. That little machine got a workout and was working well past its intent and design. I had to turn some jobs down because I just could not do what was requested sometimes and had to pass people off to other locals that had bigger/better machines. 

I am not dumb by any means. I got this thing making me money within a an hour of messing with it. Its just learning as I go. I just cannot sit for hours on end figuring things out all the time as I do work full time as a Network Admin. Like with anything though, some things are trial and error. Knowing the basics of the head manipulation and axis that most people do not discuss makes the difference though. So thank you all for the additional guidance. 

 

PS: while this is the Skycut machine hardware wise, the firmware is different. So the screens are not the same between them. Prismcut puts their own skin on it. Similar to like Android Devices. Same bones, but diff skin and logo

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