Titan 3 Contour Cut Misalignment

[Davis25r 0]

Good evening everyone,

So I recently purchased a Titan 3 68" about a week ago, and I've been tinkering around with it and it seems to be pretty a solid upgrade from my trusty MH 871-MK2 I used for years. The speed, and quietness is pretty nice.

Racing is how I got into this whole deal, and I've been doing cars with manual vinyl for about 5 years. I recently stumbled across a good HP Latex at the beginning of the year, and have finally got it running. So I needed a cutter to go along with it, and I've been happy with my US Cutter MH 871 for years, a lot of people frown on them, but you just need to learn how to adapt around the machine. I've made tons of money with it.

Doing vinyl work is a side gig for me, my day job is a mechanical engineer. So I didn't want to jump into the big penny Graphtec's right off the bat. As I was unsure how all this would unfold for me. 

 

So that being said, alignment with the Titan 3. I feel like I have most the kinks worked out, but I am having alignment issues front to back, not so much side to side. I line my vinyl up, even out the pinch rollers on the sides, and check for no to minimal skew from front to back of the work.

I just got done with doing a piece, and it seems like it was off consistently about 1/16" to 1/8" front to back, but right on the money left to right with maybe a bit of variance. This was about a 35" long piece.

 

Now, that being said I am laminating these prints, and I am half wondering if the barcode markings are "curling" when the laser reads over them and that is causing my misalignment issue front to back.

I am just looking for some input here as to how to better set myself up for success with contour cutting. When cutting laminated pieces, do you recommend rolling the vinyl up and leaving it over night to fight against the curling at the edges? Should I be recalibrating the cutter daily? Do you prefer the barcode scanner, or using the ARMS scanner?

I am pretty confident I will get this all figured out, just takes some time and patience.

Leave your input, if it doesn't help me, it may help some others in the future.

 

Thanks! 

[darcshadow 1,626]

Have you checked the calibration of the cutter? Does a test box say 12"x12" come out exactly 12x12? Could be a simple adjustment.

[Davis25r 0]

I have not done that, but thats a really wise idea to do. I'll try that tomorrow. Without looking, theres a calibration module within Vinylmaster XPT to adjust for sizing of the cutter itself isn't there? 

The only calibrations I did on the machine was for both ARMS and Barcode. 

[darcshadow 1,626]

Yes, the calibration has to be done in the software you use to cut.