|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 12, 2009 14:08:54 GMT -9
First off, I do NOT have a friendly relationship with technology. For some reason every time I follow the directions as written, nothing works as expected. The case of this cutter ended up the same.
I am 5 hours into trying to get anything useful out of this machine, and am ready to take a very large hammer to it.
Drivers would not install, I had to do some investigation to see that I had to download special Vista 64bit drivers, the driver is now installed.
I went through the calibration sequence outlined in the manual.... FAILED. Nothing I have done will make this thing automatically register, nothing. I tried to manual register, and tried registering by hand using the first cut as a guide with registration off. No two sheets cut the same. SO again I tried to go through the calibration routine setup by Mel, with his files. The machine refuses to find the registration marks, even if the sheet ONLY has registration marks and nothing else.
I seriously do not know how you get this thing to work. I cannot get anything to cut right, and now the carrier sheet has so much torn up paper left on it, it will take me hours and hours to pick it all off. I am really disappointed with this thing, and am ready to dump it back in the box and return it.
I seriously don't know how many hours of my time I'm willing to put into this time saving device. JIM
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 12, 2009 14:57:07 GMT -9
Alright, I finally got Mels test cut files to work, how I do not know.
None of my elf army figure sheets would work, cannot find the registration marks. The reg marks are set to 7.25 x 10.375 inches, and these are the setting in the reg dialog box. I don't get it.
I think I need to set the registration mark locations more accurately in the controller setup, although it seems everyone uses a different registration setup, this is impossible. DO you have to readjust the registration mark area for each different model set?
I'm not sure how much more I can take of this madness. JIM
|
|
|
Post by tugunmojo on Sept 12, 2009 15:36:21 GMT -9
I haven't bought one yet, but I have been noticing the various forums that I visit have a lot of traffic devoted to the various cutters. Between the one here and at WWG, I'm sure you can find someone who'd give you some good advice on how to get it going for you.
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 12, 2009 15:48:55 GMT -9
Yea, I used Mel's form for most of the trouble shooting, and have read everything at WWG.
What I am finding is that people seem to be able to get the stuff they design themselves to work fine, but when you try to get others files to work, that's where the trouble starts.
I'm not really sure if there is any plug and play way of getting these files to work with different machines, and other peoples setting on their machines. It may just be me, but nothing I have followed in the manual has worked at all, NOTHING.
I'm going to walk away from the thing before I beat the crap out of it, and see if I can get some feedback that will help. JIM
|
|
|
Post by old squirmydad on Sept 12, 2009 19:07:15 GMT -9
Sorry to hear about your teething pains, the manual really isn't helpful.
Very strange issues; the most important thing is that the print file and the cut file match, regardless of whatever other settings your Robo Master program may have. At least that's my experience. So far, after some initial operator errors, I haven't had any problems cutting files that I make myself or have purchased from WWG and Ebbles.
The one issue that I did notice early on was that Acrobat wasn't printing some files quite right, regardless of source. Have you checked your acrobat settings to make sure it's not stretching, resizing, or moving the image around on the page? Also, Acrobat was, initially, cutting off part of the reg marks during printing so the eye couldn't see them.
My first day was also kind of frustrating and I chewed up four prints because I wasn't aligning the carrier correctly, had a setting off here and there. Once I got through that it was all gravy.
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 12, 2009 19:36:08 GMT -9
That's what's so odd. I can't get any of the Elf army figure to cut at all, won't recognize the registration marks. I tried the tank parts as well ,and still I get the failed registration notice.
The only file I have been able to run with any success is Mel's test file.
I was very careful to make sure everything was printed right. I have the pages oriented correctly, and the alignments are spot on, some tests I just ran the paper itself with no backing, just to see how it aligned.
I've wasted over 7 hours of my day trying to get it to work, and am quite fed up with it for now. JIM
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 12, 2009 20:28:22 GMT -9
|
|
|
Post by Sirrob01 on Sept 13, 2009 5:17:00 GMT -9
Try loading the page further down the carrier sheet (so the L's on the carrier are more closely aligned with the print ones on the feed this end in side), I've found I get a failure sometimes on Mels layout as the little L's are so far up the sheet that the eye only checks the first 1-2cm and misses them. For calibration I tossed the calibration instructions they seemed overly complex for such a simple process. I started using Mels doomball the page with the big circle in the middle I'd print that then just cut the circle and look were the cut line was then jump into calibration and move the blades up/down left/right as required. Takes about 2 clicks in calibration before you'll notice any change in line cut location. Once I was sure it was spot on I made my own sheet up for future use. Good luck with it
|
|
|
Post by jwalker433 on Sept 13, 2009 5:20:09 GMT -9
Jim
I have a Silhouette SD that I am in the early stages of using. I had no problem printing any of the Elf Army pages that I just bought. I have to say the manual is quite Greek and I am an ancient computer programmer with an Electrical Engineering degree.
It is important when things don't work to follow a divide an conquer approach. That is consider everything that could be the problem.
Here are some issues to try an eliminate.
1. Is there a hardware issue with your Silhouette SD. I don't know anything about who made this cutter and their quality control. (I know it is a rebranded Robo Cutter) The cutter could be essentially dead on arrival.
2. Is there a problem with your printer or the paper that you printed it on. You might consider mailing some pages to one of us to try. That would possibly tell you if the problem was with the cutter or the printer.
3. How are you inserting the paper. It needs to be fed top down with the two registration marks at the top of the page entering the cutter first.
4. The instructions for aligning the paper on the carrier sucks. I made sure that the page was centered between two rollers as I could not understand what the instructions were trying to to tell me to use as an alignment indicator on the cutter. Also as a first attempt print out one of the Elf Army pages on 110# card stock and run it through the cutter without using the carrier. Set the cutting blade on the lightest cut so that it does not cut through the paper. This is not recommended for really cutting for many reasons but it gives you another way to try to insert the paper.
5. I find the carrier very tricky to use and the glue goes bad quickly. Then the paper comes off easily and can jam inside the cutter. Centering of the page on the carrier may be an issue.
Best Regards
Joe
|
|
|
Post by djlittle on Sept 13, 2009 6:53:30 GMT -9
AAAAAAHHHHHHH!
After hearing about all of these problems, I'm paranoid on getting my cutter. I ordered it a couple of days ago, but was too cheap to pay for expedited delivery.
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 13, 2009 8:11:07 GMT -9
I think the core problem comes from the fact that we are pushing the capabilities of this machine to it's limits as far as auto registering and getting perfect cuts.
I'm giving it a few days and trying it again when I have had some time to think this through.
I do think my printouts are coming out scaled, even though I have every scale turned off or set to 100%, and they still come out reduced, it's got to be the printer, it is 6 years old after all. It might also be the program I print from, so I am going to try some tests to see how each program prints the same file.
The carrier sheet it ships with is useless as far as I'm concerned. It has registration marks already on it, that interfere with auto registering a page with printed reg marks. SO, I'll be picking up some light spray tack from the craft store, and just use my junk heavy card for the carrier.
I do intend to get this working. JIM
|
|
|
Post by anitangel on Sept 13, 2009 10:21:39 GMT -9
I'm glad you are not that angry at it anymore that you want to return it. I am surprised that it got this complicated, and that others don't have problems with cutting your stuff. I'm sorry that it cannot go easily for you to set that machine up. Wishing you good luck.
|
|
|
Post by jabbro on Sept 13, 2009 14:33:34 GMT -9
Good luck with it, Jim. I hope you are not running it from the mac. Their site said some problems can occur and that was unsupported. I thought you had gotten a PC recently for stuff like this, though. I know these little things can be frustrating, but you really have to stick with it and just change one thing at a time. Testing is what I do for a living.
|
|
|
Post by jwalker433 on Sept 13, 2009 15:32:29 GMT -9
I worked on both designing and cutting today. I discovered that the placement of the sheet on the carrier seems to work best (for me) if I put the sheet even with the bottom of the arrow at the top middle of the page. I noticed that the cutter got completely lost if I either put the page at the very top edge hiding the arror or if I but it even with the first gridded horizontal line.
Best Regards
Joe
|
|
|
Post by old squirmydad on Sept 13, 2009 16:11:38 GMT -9
I didn't like the glue on the factory carrier sheet so I used it once and shelved it. The Krylon spray is quite economical and efficient, remember; light spray of adhesive. For carrier sheet lineup there's a tiny pic on the bottom of page 11 of the manual that sort of indicates how to load a sheet. This pic shows it a little better; A funny thing about Acrobat, MacOS, and my ancient HPdesket6520- I can't get a setting to stick using acrobat with this printer through MacOS - it always lops of the bottom 1.5mm of the reg-marks so the cutter can't find them and fails....unless I draw them in by hand, which is kind of silly but does work....What works even better is that I do all of my Craf Robo pdf prints via the WinXP interface on my Mac, and it works fine every time. Best of luck, maybe Mel will wake up soon, and give a hand.
|
|
|
Post by Christopher Roe on Sept 13, 2009 17:22:57 GMT -9
How'd you know I was taking a nap? *grin*
Until Jim fixes the PDF scaling issues he's having, I'm kind of spinning my wheels waiting for the next step. The first step is getting an accurate printout, and the next step is to get the hang of properly feeding the machine and using the correct settings.
If Jim would trust me and let me walk him through things instead of running around all over the place until he gets to the HULK SMASH point, I could save him quite a bit of Maalox. I've been waiting for him to update the thread he started at my forum, and I didn't realize he was only posting updates here now.
-Mel
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 14, 2009 7:25:03 GMT -9
Thanks guys, I think I'm about 99% there.
I need to print from the windows side of things to get exact scaling, odd.
The paper alignment has never been a problem, I know how to load the machine, and adjust the cutter head into the green zone.
I still have lingering problems fining the registration marks, but this is from my old paper size settings being off. I'm sure once I get everything fixed from my previous fixes it will work just fine.
I just have to remember to run everything from the windows side of things. JIM
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 14, 2009 16:36:36 GMT -9
The saga continues! I have posted this at Mel's forum as well ,since he has the most experience. If anyone here can help me, especially if you've had the same problem, or there is something I am missing in the setup, let me know. I have yet to get anything productive out of this machine yet. I am still getting registration errors on everything I try, no matter what it is. Here is the sequence I am assuming a need to go through to cut something. The printouts are now the right size, so that is no longer an issue. I open the craft master software and open the cutting file I want to cut... I click the cut button on the tool bar, which brings up the cutter control panel... I load the paper, Like I'm suppose to. In this case I am not using a carrier sheet or anything, I just want to test cut with the lightest setting, so just use the plain printout... I adjust the cutter head into the position of the registration area. While I have it positioned for the side to side correction, it does appear that the paper is being fed too far into the machine ,and it cannot see it, and I can't back it out at all, this is the furthest OUT I can adjust it... Once everything is set, I hit the cut button. This is a closeup of all the settings suggested in the manual. I can't seem to be able to adjust the distance between marks settings. But that shouldn't matter with auto registration... It looks for the registrations mark for about 10 seconds, then flashes the error screen... This is far as I have been able to figure this out for myself. I have a sneaking suspicion that I am missing something obvious ,and it's making me more insane. I've wasted over 12 hours trying to get something out of this thing.
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 14, 2009 17:21:12 GMT -9
Alright, I think I figured it out. It is cutting your test sample right now as I type.
I have the media settings right.
Early in my use of the thing it jammed up, HARD, and just stopped working. I had to manually pull the carrier sheet out, and it did not sound pretty, at all.
I think this threw off the normal loading, and is now loading the paper in too far, and missing the reg marks. So what I did is just hit load and waited a couple seconds to actually feed the page. This left it too far out, but that's easy for me to adjust it in.
I lined everything up as I'm suppose to, with all the same settings, and it works fine doing that.
I still wander why there is not a good way to remove jams, or if that stupid thing stops cutting in the middle of the page ,and you cannot get the material out without destroying the rollers, or the gears. I totally think something skipped or was thrown out of alignment by me doing that.
Anyone have tips for unloading the material if it won't UNLOAD all the way itself?
Thanks for your help guys. Now I think I can get back to doing something else, like maybe design some figures... JIM
|
|
|
Post by old squirmydad on Sept 14, 2009 19:37:07 GMT -9
Awesome! So, do you have a seperate PC to handle cutting and printing or did you go with one of the partition apps like Paralells? I use Paralells to run WinXP on my Mac and had a weird thingy happen during cutting; I had just gotten a page of Elven Pikemen going and decided to do some work on the Mac side of the machine and the moment I clicked on the Mac desktop the cutter freaked out and destroyed the Elven Pikemen in a fit of pique...so after that I stayed on the WinXP desktop when doing any cutting.
|
|
|
Post by Sirrob01 on Sept 14, 2009 22:43:20 GMT -9
I had a similar problem with mine after it jammed once, turning it off (unplugged) for awhile and back on seemed to resolve the problem.
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 15, 2009 4:44:55 GMT -9
I picked up a HP tablet, touchsmart TX2 ,worst PC I have ever owned, under powered, can't even run the drawing app included with it. And it took a while to adjust Vista so it ran smooth. So yea ,I have a dedicated PC for it, but may swap it out for a desktop PC later running XP. It is handy to know that you can't work in the Mac space while cutting in virtual windows. I am really not having very much luck with any of my new computer toys... JIM Awesome! So, do you have a seperate PC to handle cutting and printing or did you go with one of the partition apps like Paralells? I use Paralells to run WinXP on my Mac and had a weird thingy happen during cutting; I had just gotten a page of Elven Pikemen going and decided to do some work on the Mac side of the machine and the moment I clicked on the Mac desktop the cutter freaked out and destroyed the Elven Pikemen in a fit of pique...so after that I stayed on the WinXP desktop when doing any cutting.
|
|
|
Post by jabbro on Sept 15, 2009 5:18:15 GMT -9
Microsoft doesn't seem to have learned the lesson that just because your newest OS allows you to throw more ram into a PC, it does not mean that the extra ram should be a requirement just to run the OS. Unfortunately it requires a lot of tweaking, especially with the graphics heavy programs. Google is a wondrous thing though when it comes to finding out the best way to optimize the system.
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Sept 15, 2009 11:53:05 GMT -9
Yep ,the first thing I did when I got the Vista machine was hit google with tips on how to get more performance out of it, and degunk it from all the crapware loaded on it. It took a couple days to eventually get the OS running snappy.
I am just hoping the Windows 7 improves application performance. The machine specs are the max I could order, so it really should be faster than it is. JIM
|
|
|
Post by stephengroy on Sept 15, 2009 19:01:05 GMT -9
Glad you got it up, Jim!
Always best to kill the power to the thing before forcibly removing stuff from it.
I have had great success with Mel's .GSD files, but have not completed any of my own.
|
|