Hey guys. Been cutting decals for over fifteen years with a Seiki SK720H and Oracal 651 vinyl. I cut a lot of decals with small text and up until recently have had problems with dots over the 'i', dashes, slashes sometimes to often staying on the weeded material. This caused significant frustration and time to recut and manually move.
I had been using Flexisign starter for most of this time but recently switched over to Vinylmaster Cut. I went through the whole calibration procedures to get everything zeroed in. All seemed well but I continued to have the issues. I decided to give two pass cutting a try and now I'm having a much better success rate (~98%) on these small pieces staying on the backer. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why this is happening.
I've tried increasing the downforce from 120g (leaves slight impression on backer paper) incrementally up to 160g (nearly goes through backer paper) with single pass. This did not affect the small pieces staying where they should at all. I am using a quality Clean Cut 45d blade which I purchased a month ago. I have been using those blades for years. I've also reduced the speed to see if that helped, but that didn't help either.
Can anyone suggest something to try so that I can use one pass instead of two. While the two pass is great in reducing my frustrations, it does take twice as long to cut the decals and is not ideal. Thanks for your time!
The fact that you are almost going thru the wax paper backing at higher force, is too much blade exposed. It is not possible if the blade depth is set correctly
Oracal 651 should never have to use 2 passes. It is only 2.5 mil thick. With that Clean Cut blade you may also have broken the tip off, very easy to do. It takes much less force than regular blades. This is the correct way to set the blade depth.
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 barely see and feel the blade out of the blade holder. Regular sign vinyl is only 2-3 mil thick. You only cut with the very tip of the blade.