Digital Sign Football Camp Registration Made Easy

Digital sign football camp registration

hi welcome to stalls TV today I will be talking about the print laminate cut workflow I'm Phil tarsi I'll be assisted by Taylor and Karin today so let's talk about the need for a lamination lamination is a thin film that is applied over top of your graphics to help protect them there it will protect them from debris from abrasion other chemicals so if you're going to be applying graphics in such an environment that's going to require lamination this is how you would do it so first thing we're going to do is we're going to calibrate our print cut device today we're going to using the Roland versa cam vs-300 I series so if you have a different device then just refer to its manual for those instructions so I'm going to ask Taylor to step over here and we will go through those calibrations there we go all right so again we want to do the calibrations the first we're going to do is the crop cut calibration so in order to do that you can see the my display panel I'm going to go to the menu button scroll to my cutting menu hit to the right go down to crop cut adjust and now I'm going to perform the test it's important to do this first so that way the optical I can be registered over the the printed area so once the machine performs this we're going to weed out that that rectangle or that square that it's going to print and then we'll see if we need to make any adjustments now if you have a role in being 20 you would have to go into the utility program to access the crop cut adjust feature and we have all of these service level videos on stalls TV as well I mean you can refer to them in your manual that comes with your device or you can go to stalls TV and see these videos on how to perform these adjustments all right so the crop market just read it with the optical I performed the cut and now it's going to forward it out so let's open up the cover here and we'll just pick out so as you can see it's cutting where it needs to be there's a little black line around all four sides now if your calibration was off and you were heavy on one side or a top or bottom you'd come back to the control panel here hit your down arrow to settings hit to the right and then you always move towards the heavy line so if it was heavy on the right side I would adjust my right arrow key a few clicks and then hit enter and then go back to the menu button and go back and perform another test cut and you'd move in small increments until you have everything set where you need it to be and then once that's done we're ready to move into the print cut adjust let me close the cover and we'll perform that action so the first one was the optical eye for the crop cut to when it when you print with registration marks the second one is just your print cut adjust and this is affected you know just to make sure that you have a nice registration along the entire length of the material and this is something you should probably do on a regular basis anyway when you're just performing regular print and cut so today since this lamination is used mostly on decals I'm using a the door saw 3.5 millimeter min printables warehouse they actually handle all of our sign banner and decal material and all the laminates that you know you would possibly need so if you have questions on any kind of materials you can always contact them printables and talk to one of their sales reps all right so it looks like the print is complete it's going to pull it back and now perform the cut again all right so we'll just lift the cover here we doubt boxes it's looking pretty good so far yep so again you're looking for a little black line around all four sides just to make sure that you're within those parameters and again back here on the control panel if you needed to make some adjustments you just hit your down arrow to settings hit to the right and then the F is your feed that is front to back scan is left to right and then you just adjust accordingly on the keypad and then hit enter to save your changes and then run another test print and confirm that the image is where it needs to be all right so everything looks good now we're going to jump over and actually show how to add a cut line and set up the file so Karen if you could go to desktop presenter please thank you alright so I have an image here yeah it's just a vector graphic I'm assuming I think most of you have print cut devices so you're probably familiar with how to add a cut line again if you're not familiar or if you need assistance you can always contact us or go to stalls TV comm we have some videos on how to add cut lines to your images so basically what I'm looking to do here is find a vector path I have this black line here and now I want to make this my cut line so I'm going to go over here to my library hover over the cut contour swatch and since I'm using CorelDraw I'm going to use the right-click for the outline tool and now it has changed that to my cut line so before I can export this I just want to group it all together and then file and export and then we'll just save it out to the desktop and we'll hit export so from this screen the EPS export screen again I don't have to make any changes just hit OK and then that will process the file so that's done so we're going to jump into verse or works and we're going to start setting up our file so again I have the material loaded and my base point set and then I'm going to go to file and add job to QA we'll go out we'll find our file and we'll just bring it in so once the file is brought in diverse works it's going to open displayed here so we're going to double click on it and we're going to take it to the layout it will open up in your layout screen so the first thing we want to do is click on get media width and then I want to populate it how many copies I need so I'm just going to do three so and also I've centered it on the media so it centers accordingly so from here I actually tile spaced I just spread them out a little bit further so there's a little bit extra room and now I'm ready to go down to the second tab which is my quality tab and I want to select the appropriate media type so since this is a decal material I'll hit my drop-down menu go to a glossy calendar vinyl because you want to make sure you have the right settings and for today's demonstration I'll just do a high speed but normally you would do either standard or possibly a high quality print and then color management max impact that gives you a more bold saturation so we'll just select that as well so the next tab I'm going to click on is my mark tab mmm I want to print with the crop marks and that's the whole reason for this demonstration to show you how to print with crop marks take it off laminate it bring it back in and cut so we'll select crop marks and then we can go down to our cut controls now the normal operation is print and cut well we don't want to print and cut at this point we just want to print only so I'll select print only and then it's done it's ready to go so I'll click on OK in the lower right hand corner it takes me back to my main screen and then we're going to click on the print button it'll rip imprint the file so we'll just start that process now and then we'll switch back over to the live camera okay so the printer is ready to go it'll start now it didn't display the crop marks whenever I selected to print with them in our versa works but it will print them here shortly all right so while this is printing it only take a few minutes do we have any questions so far yes Phil could you recommend a laminator for the viewers eye can we we offer the Royal Sovereign lineup and that again is through in printables warehouse so for complete information and details you can contact in printables warehouse ask for one of the sales reps I would probably ask for Adam you Kish or Lee trenches they'd be able to give you all the specs and details about the different laminators that rolls rural sovereign offers all right so as you can see now we've it's printing the crop marks and you also notice that in the right-hand corner next to that first crop mark there's a rectangle that's just to help you with orientation whenever you're putting the material back into the printer alright so starting to print our image you so there's a lot of difference materials there's your calendared vinyl there's cast vinyl specialty vinyl and so there's appropriate laminates for each of those so the cast vinyl that's for car wraps things that you want to have a compound curves so you would use and it's a thinner material so you'd need a thinner laminate to apply to it same as calendar vial that's for more flat applications or very simple curves and again it has its own laminate it's been I've read some articles it's recommended that depending on the type of material in the laminate you're using you may want to print with your crop marks let it out gas for about 24 hours and then laminate and then return to the cutter for the cut portion this is just to make sure that the ink is completely cured or dried and then there shouldn't be any issues with shrinkage or curling once the laminate is applied so again you'd want to check with your the manufacturer specs on that material just for those details all right so the image is done printing it's now starting to print the second set of crop marks okay we have another question yes one of your viewers was thinking about getting either a vs 300 or vs 540 is there any difference other than size and what you're doing here is this for a beginner or a more experienced user there's no difference between the two units other than the size I mean they're going to have the exact same ink cutting tools everything it's just the the width of the machine so if you're planning on doing some larger graphics or car wraps or large banners the 54 inch is probably going to work better for you as far as what I'm trying to do here to demonstrate you know it's it seems difficult at first but once you do it a few times it's really pretty simple so I wouldn't say that it's it's a higher-end type operation so what I'm going to do now is remove this print from the printer but we're in a circulating ink mode at the moment never fails but what I want to do once this is done okay here we go I want to forward out the material a little bit just so my crop marks are out from underneath this cover because I need some extra material on the back end so when we reload it there's sensors and I'll show them to you here in a second you need to make sure that the end of sheet sensor is covered if not it will not perform the operation so I'll go to function scroll down the sheet cut and hit enter all right so here's the front paper sensor let's locate it on the front of the machine and then we not need we're not gonna be able to see it but underneath the paper in the back as the material rolls up over there's another sensor and it looks just like that and that's to let the printer know that if the paper is at the end of the sheet it will stop so that way it doesn't continue to feed it out and then print onto the platen so what we'll do now is we're going to move over here and now we need to put our laminate now I don't have a laminator here so I'm basically going to perform this with using some masks that we use for our heat transfer vinyl so we'll just use this but it'll give you the the idea of what we're trying to accomplish so I'll just split this all right so I'm going to take my mask and then just lay it down over top of the prints and if it covers the crop marks that's fine because that's going to happen with a laminator as well it's going to laminate the entire sheet and now I'm just going to squeegee out any bubbles and I want to make sure that I get a good adhesion here over top of the crop marks because if there's any kind of air or anything there you could get some problems when trying to reload it to get to read the crop mark so now we're going to take this back to the printer so I'm going to remove the paper that's already the roll that's in there and I'm going to reinsert this so like I mentioned before we have the first crop mark with that rectangle so that's going to be in the position closest to the printhead so I'm just going to adjust my pinch rollers and then if you can see here's the cutting strip this runs the entire length of the print area and I want to make sure that I load my material back in with that crop mark on top of that cutting that cutting strip and that will just help when the machine with the optical I tries to find that so lock this back down close the cover and then it'll do its normal come across and and look for the the width so it's just a normal setup procedure here it's going to cross looking for the pinch rollers and I've done it a couple different ways I've actually just let the machine go back to its its normal home position and not set a base point and I've also brought the cutting tool out and I've positioned it right over top of that first crop mark so that way it knows where to start looking for those registration points but what I want to do before I start this is I want to do a test cut because now I'm cutting through a laminate and through the material so I want to make sure I have enough force on my blade so I'm just going to move this over a little bit I know it's not going to cut into my design but I'm definitely over top of the laminate so I'm going to set my base point there I'm going to go into function cut configuration and now I'm going to scroll down to my force and we're currently set at 75 grams of force so I know that that's not going to do it so we'll just jump up to a hundred and hit enter and then we'll go back go to test cut and we'll start with our test cut now again we want to make sure that our test cut so it's not quite enough yet because that is a little hard to pop out so I'm going to increase the force and I don't really see any scoring on my my carrier sheet there so I'll just jump back down to force and I'll jump it up to 105 grams and hit enter and then we can perform another one but I feel confident that that will do it so we'll close the cover again and I'm going to reset my base point right over top of that first crop mark so you could do that test cut before you even set your base point just to make sure you have it where you want it do your test cut then bring it back alright so now if Karen can take it over to a desktop presenter again alright so we're back at our main screen of Ursa works so I'm going to double click on my file that we just printed so now as you can see we're still in the cut control tab we do not want to do print or print cut we just need to cut only so we'll select that and as you can see it's removed the print file and it just leaves us with the cut file so from here I'm just going to click on OK go back to the lower left hand portion and hit print and then it'll start so if we can jump back over to live camera there we go all right here comes the cutting tool to optical I it's looking for those crop marks so it has to find all four registration points before cutting so there we are at the second one alrights found the fourth point and now it's going to perform the cut now if it does not find the crop mark there could be a couple reasons why it could be because a glare maybe from a bright light or if it's close to the window and the sun's coming in I've seen instances where with that laminate it'll cause a glare and then it will not allow the optical eye to see so you know you can either dim the lights close the window blinds give that a try hopefully that would would remedy the situation and then it could also possibly be that the the voltage on the crop mark board needs to be recalibrated unfortunately that we require a service technician to come in and do it but I've seen that I've done that myself I've had to go into shops and recalibrate that board and actually replace it it's not an expensive board or very hard to do but it sometimes it's just necessary all right so we've removed our prints with a laminate and now I'm ready just to pull it out so as you can see out a little bit of a over bleed with my ink just to make sure we did not have any registration issues and then our finished product so we have the door so premium gloss white vinyl with the roland eco saw max two inks which are rated for three to five years outdoors unlimited but now that we've added the laminate to it they're rated for five to seven years so again the only time you'd really want to do this is if this is going to be in an area an environment that's going to get dirty or it's going to have chemicals possibly get on it or abrasion such as a football helmet lacrosse on something like that that's when you would want to laminate your decals all right Karen any questions on that process no questions okay let's check for time here all right well let's go into another little process I swear since we did a print and then we cut right to the incline there's another one where you can actually do a little bit of an over bleed and I have an example of that if we can go to the overhead shot there we go alright so what we're looking for here again if you want to have the laminate overlap or go to the outside of your print and that will help protect your graphic a little bit better because the laminate itself will then would be applying directly to the finished surface such as the football helmet so if you can see that there's a thin layer on the outside of our decal so I'll do a demonstration on how to how to do that so if we can go to desktop presenter please so I'll jump in to CorelDraw and we'll open up a new file so here we have it's 5 o'clock somewhere I have them laid out I have them already with our first cut line so this is our cut contour line and then what I do is I copy this to the second page and I've basically just taken that cut line and I've expanded it out or I've contoured it to the outside so that way I have a second cut path so just to show you this if I copy this and go back to my first page and paste it you'll see that we have two sets of cut lines we have the original cut line which is going to cut the graphic itself and then this second cut line will bring in as a separate file and we'll apply that once the laminate is you know onto our decal material so you'll save both of these out as individual files so I'll take this first file without that secondary cut line I'll export it out and then I'll go to this page and I'll export this set of files and it's important that you don't change your registration so if I'm copying from the first page to the second page when I do that function I'll copy paced I always said enter I never try to manually place it because if you try to move it your registration is going to be off rollin also has some documentation on how to do this as well so you know if anyone's interested we could email you that that PDF so again once you have this done we're going to go back to our versa works and then we'll go to our file so instead of printing this again I have a copy already ready to go so basically I'll just walk you through the setup so we'll go to file or I'm sorry we'll go to layout get media with and I've centered it on the media and then again you're going to change your media type you're going to go to your your mark and you're going to print with your crop marks and then you're going to go to your cut controls now the difference here is we're going to print and cut on the first pass as well because we want to weed off the excess material so we'll select print cut and then I also want to cut image boundaries so where you see this blue box it's going to do a cut around that as well and that's going to allow us to weed off the extra material but it's going to leave our crop marks still on the page that's important if you don't do that then you'd have to manually trim this out and leave the crop marks on the page so cut image boundaries and then you hit OK and then print so we'll jump back to our camera all right so here's our image printed with crop marks and contoured cut so now here's that cut image boundary box I was talking about so that gives me the ability to weed out the excess material and that's important because if you don't do that then you're not going to get the laminate to overflow like we want it to do so we have that now it's time to apply the laminate just try to Center it up and lay it down and again we're using the hand squeegee we'll give it a nice firm pressure to make sure that we have it applied again over top of the crop marks and then we're ready to take this back into the Versa camp so again you want to slide it back into place you want to line it up over that cutting strip make sure your pinch rollers where they need to be will lock it down and close the cover so we'll jump back over to desktop presenter and now I brought in that second file which is just the cut only so as you can see the cut lines here it's not showing any print file because we didn't have a print file associated with that second page it's just the cut only and again before you go ahead and perform this you probably want to do your test cut I'll just drop the pressure a little bit because we're just going through the laminate itself at this point we don't have to cut the okay so I'll go ahead and hit okay and print and it'll come out and you'll see it's going to find the crop marks and then do the cutting we have another question we have a couple questions coming in is a laminator or recommended purchase with the purchase of a printer cutter if you are planning on doing decals that require lamination I would definitely I would definitely consider it yes I mean if you're just doing some basic bumper stickers window decals things like that probably not but if it's going to be in an environment like I mentioned earlier that's going to come into contact with other surfaces you know and have some abrasion or chemicals yeah I would definitely consider a laminator with the purchase is there any difference in the process for a be in 20 it's basically the same basically the same workflow because you're using versa works you know the only difference is whenever you're doing your adjustments it's done in that utility program not onboard all right so as we can see it's performing that the cut all right so we'll remove it and then we can take these out then I don't know if you can see but then there's the over the over bleed of the laminates so that way it'll hear directly to the finished surface and just not be on top of the decal itself so that workflow is a little bit more detailed a little bit more complex if you have further questions on that you know we'd be more glad to talk with you one-on-one and and help you get set up if you have any questions on the calibrations the operation you know of this function you know feel free to give us a call or call our tech support department and they'll be able to they could actually remote access into your computer and assist with that at that time so any other questions Karen no all right well thank you very much for attending I do appreciate it again my name is Phil tarsi and if you have any questions feel free to give me a call thanks have a great day