jagrjones

Blade Adjustment Over Time

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Do you find that you need to adjust the blade depth or only pressure as the blade wears down?  I set the blade to the depth of the media, starting force on my CE7000 was 11 and everything cut great.  Cuts starts to get a little light after a couple of weeks making the vinyl hard to weed so I bumped the pressure to 12 and it cut like new.  After a bit I had to bump it up to 13... and now I'm at 15.  How high do I go on pressure before I start to have problems?  Should I be starting over and resetting the blade depth or do I just keep adding pressure?

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Carbon Steel blades are not going to 'wear down' with infinitesimal contact against vinyl.

I have the same original blade running in my SC2 since day one, years ago. Never changed downforce.

It's possible your blade tip is broken, have you put in a new CleanCut blade?

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What are you cutting? Glitter, reflective, metallic vinyl can all cause a blade to dull rather quickly. Paper does as well. Increasing force can compensate for a dull blade to some degree. But unless you are cutting this hard stuff non stop, I would expect a blade to last longer than 2 weeks.

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I'm cutting Oracal 651 including thier metallic silver and gold colors (not sure if that's just as hard on blades as other metallic colors).  I'm not cutting paper or gouging into the backing.  Time in days/weeks isn't really a good measurement of blade life because I could do 1 cut in weeks or cut all day every day and both would result in different amounts of blade life.

I'm more interested with what users end up doing when the blade stops cutting all the way through the vinyl and weeding becomes tough... do you just increase pressure forever or at some point are you readjusting the blade downward?

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Setting your blade correctly is the first thing,  Do not use instructions that say use a credit card or post it notes, that is too much blade exposed.  I use Seiki blades for my Graphtec, have many, many years.  I can get 8-10 months from blades. cutting almost daily. I would not have to change force until maybe 8 months. I cut Oracal 651. Once in a while Avery chrome. 

 

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 tip out of the blade holder. Regular sign vinyl is only 2-3 mil thick. You only cut with the very tip of the blade. When you think the blade is so far in the blade holder, that you think it would not even cut, that is probably correct. 
 

 

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