Trouble with Contour Cutting

[Trisha]

I have done lots and lots of contour cuts, but today, all of a sudden the Cougar is acting up. After I set the laser onto the first of the three needed registration marks, I hit the "next" button to continue on to the second one, and the blade housing will only move about an inch or so rather than go to the left all the way to the next mark. It just stops and sits there.

I have checked settings, connections, ports, baud, etc. I must be missing something, but I don't know what else to do. Can someone please offer a suggestion? I would so appreciate any assistance at all.

I have a few days, but this is a special request from my daughter that I need to have finished by New Years Day.

Thanks in advance,
Trisha
In God We STILL Trust

[Gigi]

Which program are you using Trisha??

[Trisha]

Which program are you using Trisha??

Oops, sorry! I am using Inkscape to design and Signcut to cut through.

Trisha
In God We STILL Trust

[Gigi]

I was afraid you were going to say that!!

I had the same problem with Sign Cut and nothing worked. Dawn suggested I uninstall (including from the registry) and reinstall to see if that worked, but I never did. I had reinstalled over itself but didn't try the total uninstall/reinstall. I just made myself learn SCAL and it was SOOOOO much easier and my print and cuts are right on. I know that isnt what you want to hear (although you can work in Inkscape and send to SCAL to cut - so maybe it's time for you to jump over to that program?

I hate to tell you that. I know we both spend a lot of money on SignCut and it's frustrating not to be able to use it. Perhaps someone else will have an idea, but I figured if Dawn didnt know......... I was in trouble!!

If you do go through the uninstall/reinstall, please let me know if it helps. It would be nice to have that program for back up

Sorry to be so unhelpful.......

[newbiecat]

HI Trisha
I had a similar problem with Signcut, in my case what happened I discovered eventually , is that when I lined up the media on the mat before I started trying to do anything the registration mark on the left hand side was actually in front of the cutter head, not by much but by enough to stop it recognising it was there.

Try lining up your media well behind the white cutting strip, this ensures that it is all behind the cutter head and then start the process and see if that helps
Good luck
Pandora

[Gigi]

I just tried mine again. It was shutting down almost instantly when I would send something to SignCut - now it opens and has images, but when I go to cut, nothing happens.. It looks like it is sending the information.... but that's it! Sure glad I have SCAL!!

But it still bugs me - I want everything to work the way it is supposed to!!l

[newbiecat]

Hi there

Hope I am not misreading you message - if so sorry but if you mean images as in pictures Signcut hates images and will not play it you send one to it - what i do is put my image on one layer- and the cut lines on another - ensure that I close the eye on the image layer before sending to signcut

If you mean that you can see the cut lines outline but it will not cut = would be happy to test the file on my cutter and see if it works here if you would like to send it to me

just cleaning up after all the cooking/entertaining and now my DH want to know what can he eat - there is fridge full of food however nothing to eat - go figure !
Pandora

[Trisha]

I was afraid you were going to say that!!

I had the same problem with Sign Cut and nothing worked. Dawn suggested I uninstall (including from the registry) and reinstall to see if that worked, but I never did. I had reinstalled over itself but didn't try the total uninstall/reinstall. I just made myself learn SCAL and it was SOOOOO much easier and my print and cuts are right on. I know that isnt what you want to hear (although you can work in Inkscape and send to SCAL to cut - so maybe it's time for you to jump over to that program?

I hate to tell you that. I know we both spend a lot of money on SignCut and it's frustrating not to be able to use it. Perhaps someone else will have an idea, but I figured if Dawn didnt know......... I was in trouble!!

If you do go through the uninstall/reinstall, please let me know if it helps. It would be nice to have that program for back up

Sorry to be so unhelpful.......

Well, shoot!! That is enough to make a person want to go behind the barn, smoke cigars, throw rocks, and cuss!!

So, I could go to the computer and do the uninstall thing, and then -- when I reinstall -- I don't remember for sure, but I think I need to enter some numbers--from my license? I never am sure about these things. I may give it a shot. It's not like it could hurt at this point.

I really do not want to purchase yet another software that I do not use. I already have MTC!, so I might give that another shot. I did not give it a good try when I first got it, because by the time I finally got it I had already learned enough of Inkscape to get by and just didn't want to bother with it. And there was all the friction on that forum...maybe I will go with scal after all...I'll have to think about it a bit. I flat-out do not want to deal with any more unpleasantness from certain quarters.

Trisha
In God We STILL Trust

[Trisha]

HI Trisha
I had a similar problem with Signcut, in my case what happened I discovered eventually , is that when I lined up the media on the mat before I started trying to do anything the registration mark on the left hand side was actually in front of the cutter head, not by much but by enough to stop it recognising it was there.

Try lining up your media well behind the white cutting strip, this ensures that it is all behind the cutter head and then start the process and see if that helps
Good luck
Pandora

This certainly sound like it is worth investigating! Thanks, Pandora!!

Trisha
In God We STILL Trust

[kmmhug]

Trisha,

I don't know if it will help to use MTC or not, but I will say that things seem to have calmed down somewhat on their forum. There have also been a lot of really great upgrades recently. I was in the process of switching to SCAL, and have bought it and converted all my files to SVG but since things have calmed down I have not really gotten around to messing a whole lot with SCAL, it is just easier to stick with what I am used to when they are not being so icky of late! Anyhow, it might be worth trying before you expend more money!

[Trisha]

I already have most of my files in svg, so that will work fine. I think I will just sit tight for a little bit. I know I will not be doing any cutting to speak of for a couple of weeks, anyway. Thanks for the response, kmmhug.

Trisha
In God We STILL Trust

[Angel135612]

I think it is always nice to have options. I first bought SCAL and didn't like it, reminded me too much of Cricut Design Studio, which I despised. Then found out about MTC, and bought it and started learning it. Then after I bought my Cougar, I wanted to learn Inkscape, and use Signcut. When I bought my Silver Bullet, I got a new copy of SCAL (I didn't update it since I first bought it, since I was happy with MTC and couldn't see spending money on updates for a software that I wasn't using).
I have been spending a lot of time learning Inkscape, and loving that program and getting pretty good at tracing images, and altering things to suit me. I hadn't used MTC much since I started spending time with Inkscape, but I still update the program when a new one is released. I also am trying to learn more about SCAL and do things with it. By having all of them, and making the time to learn them, I can choose which program I want to work in, because I believe that there will never be ONE program that does it all, and does it well... so I can choose which program does what I need the best, or which one will do it the quickest and choose which program I want to use to cut it with.

It does take time to learn each program, but there are a lot of similarities to them as well, so if you know one, it would just be a matter of learning where the tools are and what settings you need. But the basics of what the program does would be the same.

[Trisha]

Good points, Diane. The first design program I tried to learn was RoboMaster. Can you say "nightmare"? Argggghhh! I had never done anything at all beyond send a few emails and google a simple search.

Then I decided Inkscape would be better. Ha! THAT was a struggle and how!

But now, with a few years of designing and so on, I think I can manage to learn the program I need. You are right about having options. And I understand some programs even make the cuts more/less smooth or some such effect on the outcome.

Trisha
In God We STILL Trust

[Angel135612]

Trisha I know what you mean about Inkscape being a struggle. It can do so much, that it is overwhelming. What I did to make it less so, was to concentrate on learning how to do ONE thing. I think the first tutorial I found was one from Penny on how to trace an image to get the cut out line. I watched her video over and over and over, until I was able to take almost any image and get a decent trace. In the process of learning that, I also learned how to do other things, and found a forum for using Inkscape with cutting machines.
http://www.inkscapecuttingdesign.com/
Now I have a place to go to ask questions specific to Inkscape, and creating a cut file and I don't have to mess with all the other stuff that Inkscape does (unless I want to learn more about that). And if you go there, you will see some familiar names

The trick is to take it slow, and ignore the stuff you don't need, and just concentrate on what you want to learn. (That goes for anything you want to learn) Don't try to learn it all at one time and don't try to learn it when you have a deadline. I think it took me at least a year, before I was comfortable enough with Inkscape to decide I wanted to use it for most of my designing. But I had MTC to fall back on, when I needed to get something done quickly. Since I haven't been using MTC much, I need to get back to that and learn all the new stuff it has, and knowing Inkscape, will help me with how some of that works, so it shouldn't be as hard to learn.

[PennyDuncan]

Yeah Diane I have to say I totally agree....and wonderful advice!!!!! For me I do all my creating in Inkscape an just export my file into SCAL3Pro when I'm ready to cut...I love it because it sends whatever graphics you're wanting to use as well into SCAL that is a huge plus for me.....I also continue to download the updates for MTC even thought I don't use the program because I did pay for the program so why not make sure it's always current.....It does have a great tracing feature in the program......

[Trisha]

Yep, that's totally the way to go. I have been a member of the inkscape forum for quite a while, and was a regular on Carolyn's blog for a long time before that.

Thanks for the reminder that I need to go update my MTC! I guess it's been nearly a year since I even checked for updates.

Trisha
In God We STILL Trust