[Ad Lib]

I seriously opened the box of my CE500 an hour ago, and I'm ready to attempt to cut. I loaded my transfer, locked the hold bar, and clamped it in between the rollers, but the status still says "LOAD MEDIA!!", any idea what I am doing wrong? Please I need to get this up and running.

 

[Chani]

One thing that comes to mind is: which side of your plotter are you loading your media? It should be as far to the RIGHT as possible so that the optic media reader can see it (there's a little oblong hole in the front which is the media reader).

Also, you need to make sure your pinch rollers (the little gripper wheels) are lined up with the main grit roller's knurled portions. There should be little stickers on the upper portion to help you know where the pinch rollers need to be placed before you clamp them down.

Lastly...I THINK you need to turn on your plotter, THEN load your media. If you load your media before you turn on the main power, I think it will ask you to load the media. I'll have to check that one out, tho...

 

[Ad Lib]

Thanks a lot, that seemed to work, but now it won't read the registration marks

 

[Chani]

Have you read the help files? They actually cover this pretty well (Either for ROBO Master Pro, or for Cutting Master 2).

But first thing you need to do is align your KNIFE blade (not laser) up with your first (lower left as you're looking at your machine) registration mark. Which way you do it depends on the type of reg marks you are using. If they're like corners of a frame, then you make sure your knife blade is lined up to the INSIDE (toward your design) of your reg mark. If they look more like printing reg marks (the sides of the reg marks facing AWAY from your design), then you would place your blade toward the OUTSIDE of your design.

Hmmm...I might need to draw a picture here...

You can manually move your blade with the arrow buttons on the front of your plotter.

If that was too convoluted, please let me know and I'll show a diagram of where your blade should be lined up.

 

[Ad Lib]

All help is appreciated...I'm still very confused

 

[Chani]

I thought that might be. I didn't explain very well.

Read this, it might help:

[media]http://www.cemagraphics.com/plottertests/ContourCuttingCuttingMaster.pdf[/media]

 

[Ad Lib]

just so I'm clear, the tip of the blade should be pointed directly into the center of the "L" shaped mark in the bottom-left hand corner of the sheet. The I hit cut and the cutter should read the mark and begin to cut?

 

[Chani]

Sort of. Just pretend that your registration marks are a square with two sides missing. Point your blade directly in the center of the square.

Do one more thing when you get it lined up, hit "Origin" on your plotter. That way if there is a read mark error, it will return to that point, and you can adjust it again (and hit origin again).

Then you can send to your plotter. It will ask you to line up your reg marks again, but you've already done that, so you can skip that and go right to reading the reg marks and cutting.

Also, which program are you using to cut from? Illustrator, CorelDRAW, or ROBO Master Pro?

If either of the first two, you need to make sure you're leaving enough of a margin (and about 2 inches at the top of your sheet (as it sits in your plotter)).

These threads might help a little:

http://www.t-shirtforums.com/heat-press-heat-transfers/t26701.html

Or:

http://www.t-shirtforums.com/heat-press-heat-transfers/t38240.html

Or:

http://www.t-shirtforums.com/vinyl-cutters-plotters-transfers/t45799.html

 

[Ad Lib]

Thanks so much for those threads, turns out the only thing that was wrong was that the rollers were slightly inside the registration marks. It's up and running now.

 

[Chani]

Great! I'm happy you figured out what the problem was.

 

[suzette70]

I just go my Graphtec CE5000 this week also. I found graphtecamerica.com has a lot of helpful instructional videos under their support section.

Suzette70