posted
Of course, this only happens on a panic day when I have a deadline....
I've never had this happen before:
Plotter is cutting letters way smaller than I am sending them.. i.e.: a four inch letter is coming out 3 inches.... I restarted the computer, shut everything down, did a test piece, a 4 1/2 inch tall letter....it cut it 3 1/2 tall. I'm pulling out my hair!!! What could be going on!!????
I have a banner to finish tonight, and have just about run out of the color I needed with the screw ups.... I can't afford to waste anymore.
posted
Adrienne, That happened to my plotter one time. What program/plotter are you using? I don't remember exactly what fixed it but I did have to send my Mimaki plotter to the manufacturer to get a motherboard not long after I purchased my plotter. I hope your problen is just something simple like a setting in your sign program. Hopefully someone else will post with the solution. Judy Good luck! JUdy
-------------------- Judy Pate Signs By Judy Albany, Georgia USA 229-435-6824
Live simply...Love generously...Care deeply...Speak kindly...Leave the rest to God. Posts: 2621 | From: Albany,GA,USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
I don't know what cutting program you are using Adrienne but mine has a Factor or percentage function for scale of letters. I use it to scale plotted paper patterns.
My setting are a ratio 1:1, 1:10 etc ... yours might be a percentage ... sounds like it's set on 75%.
posted
Just a thought, but have you checked to see if your unit of measurements are in inches or mm (metric). There is usually a place in the software where the unit of measure can be set and every now and then it will change for no apparent reason.
-------------------- Frisby Signs, Inc. El Dorado, Arkansas Posts: 902 | From: El Dorado, Arkansas, USA | Registered: Apr 1999
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posted
Was they converted to curves before cutting? If they were, you must be wary of extreme control nodes which will make a smaller design appear larger than expected. This can be corrected by placing one node at each extreme edge (at North, South, East & West); & be sure control points don't exceed their limit.
Edited to say: Any graphic with these extreme points will give a false reading to its actual size. Exact size may be smaller than measurements.
[ May 21, 2007, 11:30 PM: Message edited by: Bill Cosharek ]
-------------------- Bill Cosharek Bill Cosharek Signs N.Huntingdon,Pa
bcosharek@juno.com Posts: 703 | From: N.Huntingdon, Pa, USA | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Nope, none of the above. I did a bunch of cutting this week, everything fine. I had to do a recut today to change copy on the banners I was working on and that's when it started.
I did nothing different, since I'm out of time will have to try to cut bigger to see if I get close and redo the entire line of copy instead of changing two words.
BTW.. I'm running Corel 8 software and my plotter is a Roland Camm-1
posted
If it is consistent in the new size, you might be able to set a scale factor until the problem is resolved. Cut a 10" box and measure the exact dimensions. If it cuts it at 7.75", divide 10 by 7.75 and you get 1.29032. Multiply that by 100 and you will have 129.032%. Scale up your graphics by that amount before you cut them and they will cut the correct size.
If it is really weirding out and your box is something like 7.75" on the X dimension and 8.25" on the Y axis, use the same procedure to find the scale factor. X would be 10/7.75=129.032% and Y would be 10/8.25=121.212%. When you rescale for cutting, do a non proportional rescaling, multiplying the height and width by their respective amount.
When I have to do something like the above, I do my rescaling on a copy of my original. That way, I still have the correct one for reference and later use.
I had to do something like that for a while when I got a beta software upgrade that was somewhat scrambled until patched a few days later.
-------------------- David Harding A Sign of Excellence Carrollton, TX Posts: 5084 | From: Carrollton, TX, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
I found I had overlooked the fact that the line of copy I was trying to cut had a 'Q' in it so it was reading the largest letter of course.(duh!)
But I also noticed when I went to turn the image 90 degees to cut it shrunk the copy just a little.
It's very strange and it's too late for my brain to understand any of this...I'm going to bed, maybe I'll look into it tomorrow.
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