Misaligned cutting

[Cheryl1st]

I created my own svg, a gatefold card, which looks fine on the screen - nice and centered scrollwork on the "gates" and arch. When it cuts, though, the cut lines on the gate scrolls are not lined up properly. I've attached some pics to give a visual. I am wondering, after having the issue with the P2C feature not lining up proper, and now the cutting is not lining up proper.....maybe I have a defective machine??? Any thoughts on this are very much appreciated! P.S. I thought I should probably add that I'm working with a Mac, not a PC. Not sure if this is an issue, or not, but figured I'd include as much info as possible! I'm not new to SCAL. Have been using it, previously with my "little green chirping machine", and have used it since version 1.

Gatefold-Pic.jpg (22.3 KiB) Viewed 5543 times

This is a pic to show that the top arch is correct.

Gatefold-Pic-Left.jpg (41.16 KiB) Viewed 5543 times

This pic shows the misaligned cut on the left "gate"

Gatefold-Pic-Right.jpg (31.9 KiB) Viewed 5543 times

This shows the misalignment on the right "gate".

[Cheryl1st]

Here's a picture of the mat to show the location of all the cut lines

Gatefold SCAL Mat Pic.jpg (72.74 KiB) Viewed 5539 times

[papasue]

What a beautiful design. I sure hope you get an answer to your misalignment problem.

[sstehman]

This is a beautiful file....not sure what the problem is but maybe if you can post the actual file, someone else can cut it and figure it out from there. I gladly will try but won't be able to get to it until Fri or Sat.

[Cheryl1st]

Todd is on the case! :0) Thanks, everyone! Thanks for the compliments, too. I ended up changing some things about the file to make it easier to assemble, and that will be available on my blog on Friday for free, but only for a week.
The file I have a pic of had some design issues, but weren't the problem with cutting that I was having, so Todd is working on that for us. He's also working on the P2C issue - some small tweaks, from what I understand, are needed in ecal.

My Blog addy:
http://www.cafexpressions.blogspot.com

[sstehman]

So glad you got a response and that Todd is working on your issue.

[clbecker]

So glad they are working on the p2c, cause I really want that to work! I did it perfectly once, next time it was way off. Shouldn't have to recalibrate our machine every time I would hope! Sometimes with the laser preview it was fine, go back to do the cut and it gets off. But I will patiently wait. I know they will get it all good cause SCAL2 was great!

[papasue]

Cheryl, I saw the final card on your Blog http://www.cafexpressions.blogspot.com/ today, downloaded it and cut it. Glad you were able to get it finished it looks really wonderful.

Thanks.

[Cheryl1st]

Update for those following this thread:
Todd suggested the following steps for P2C:

1. Once you have your image on the mat, and the shadow created for it, select the Shadow layer
and change both the Fill and Stroke drop down boxes to "None" (these are located in the Appearance window of SCAL, beneath the Shadow drop-down menu.
You won't see these options when viewing the placed image, but they will show up if you have the cut layer selected.)
2. Choose Print2Cut and print out your image, with regmarks
3. Then do the Cut from the Print2Cut without changing any layer attributes ( i.e. you don't have to hide the image layer when cutting).

After trying this, with my shadow layer at x1.5, I have a decent enough cut image to use (I attached my pic). I still can't get a cut to work right on the black outline of an image (not even close - see pics), but for now, I can deal with the shadowed cut I did manage. I'm hoping he comes up with a solution so this works as seamless as the Silhouette machines are for this feature!
The pic shows two tests I tried - top cut image: one with the shadow (x 1.5), bottom image r I tried to cut right around the image.

dbl snowman final cut.jpg (247.89 KiB) Viewed 5450 times

A few other things I've learned while playing today:
When placing the image on the mat to print, the registration marks are placed 1/4" from the outside edge of the white box that is around the image (thanks for that info, Todd!), so make sure to place the image at least 1/4" from the top and side edges of the mat (I suggest at least at 1/2" in from top and left edge of the mat to accommodate a typical 1/4" printer margin, as well). Also, when printing on an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper, do not allow your image to extend past the 8-1/2" point of the virtual mat - it is beyond the actual paper size and won't print. (Learned that the hard way! lol!). One last thing - when printing multiple images from the mat, ecal does not treat each image independently - registration marks print at top left and bottom right only, so cutting all images has to occur all in one pass. I was trying to print multiple images, each with it's own set of registration marks, in order to set some aside for later cutting. I actually like that it doesn't print marks for each image, but wanted to let you know what I learned. :0)

Hope this helps someone!

[mitsim]

Cheryl, I've been trying P2C, and have failed miserably. I have contacted Craftedge for support. Just wondered how this works. When you start, do you just open your jpg onto the eCAL mat? I tried that, and did the restration marks and it printed fine. Then I put on the mat board, and set the registration marks, but when I went to cut it said it couldn't find anything to cut. So, then I made an SVG outlined copy and placed it underneath. This time it finally cut, but it cut little tiny chunks out of the object, all over the place in random fashion. And, the machine started to act crazy. So, I cancelled, at which time it just spit out the mat.
This is my second attempt, and I'm getting frustrated. This was a big sell point for me too, so I really want it to work. I hope whatever Todd (is he one of the software developers?) is doing will help the matter. I was hoping this would not be so difficult. The video from CHA made it look so easy, but there were really no detailed instructions on that.
Anyway, thanks for your help. Love your gate file! It's beautiful.