# roland sp 300 v cutting problems... blade seems to skip



## lunanoir (Sep 5, 2008)

hi everybody. this is my first post and im stumped.

we have a roland sp 300v used for cutting printed flex for t-shirts etc. we also print vinyl stickers with this baby. 

She purred on wonderfully for about 2 years and then we had to print polyflex on her for a special t-shirt job. as well as cad puff material and some shiny metallic looking stuff. the mashine cut those wonderfully, then after this job when we tried to go back to regular printed flex cutting, the blade seemed to skip at odd parts of the cutting process. it cuts some perfectly, others it seems to skip. does not matter if you cut squars or curves. u can cut the same thing any number of times and the skips are at different places on the graphic

we have fiddled with the cutting depth. we have fiddled with the blades (yes i put in a new one twice) we have fiddled with the cutting settings, slowed the cutting speed, we even changed the cutting strip as i read somewhere that this might affect the cutting as well) alas... we are stumped.

we have a HUGE license disc job breathing down our necks and we cannot even cut a plain circle! 

anybody have any idea what else could be wrong???

any suggestions or clues might help.


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## screen260 (Aug 3, 2008)

I used to work for a place that had a roland that they used to cut the thermo-flex material with and the same thing happened. They never got the thing fixed but what seemed to happen on theirs was that the whole carrier was rocking on the track. Maybe see if there is a way to tighten the carrier or possibly get new bearings/wheels for it? I'm not to familiar with your model. Also, not sure if you're using a 45 or 60 degree blade but the 60 works best for thick material.


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## lunanoir (Sep 5, 2008)

hmmm that makes a lot of sense. either way i think the boss must get Roland's tech to come look at it, but he wants to try and fix it himself... psha.... he has put the force up to over 130 when 80-90 used to be enough even with an old blade for the heat transfer materials.

i think we use 45 degrees. they worked fine till we cut that other material...

thanx for the help though. seeing that we had a few instances where the thing got jammed (NOT MY FAULT!!) and cutting the sheet with the metal-material-holder-down-do-hickies still in place ... (also not my fault) it could very well be the whole carriage that's loose...

argh now i have guilt.... might just have to mention to the boss bout this lose carriage business...

also... anybody ever dropped one of those damned screws down the machine's insides whilst cleaning it??? i've stolen a few screws from the back to put in there, but there's only one of the 3 left hehe... wonder if i can replace em? or get the ones from inside out somehow?


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## lunanoir (Sep 5, 2008)

just thought id add that we figured out what was wrong. the bearings needed oiling! or replacing... i don't quite know what the boss did with it. the bearings that turn the blade was grinding or sticking or something and that made te cutting process skip at random sections. so next time this happens i'll know to oil or replace the bearings.


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## tdeals (Dec 13, 2006)

lunanoir said:


> just thought id add that we figured out what was wrong. the bearings needed oiling! or replacing... i don't quite know what the boss did with it. the bearings that turn the blade was grinding or sticking or something and that made te cutting process skip at random sections. so next time this happens i'll know to oil or replace the bearings.


Seeing that the bearings needed oiling or replacing to fix the most recent issue, does your shop perform any type of yearly or twice a year maintenance on your Roland? This may be a good practice to start.


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## lunanoir (Sep 5, 2008)

routinely? hahaha no... we try to clean the machine after every roll we finished printing... say bout every 2 weeks, but this could go for bout a month. we replaced the wipers in the back.

a while back we cleaned the machine and did a test print and all was fine, then when we started printing a huge order the graphic started printing black, then went normal after about 10cm of printing. this would not do at all. we tried phoning roland to ask if they knew what the heck was wrong and they had no clue

so we opened her up again and took a look at all the bits and bops... turns out there was a piece of worn out fluff on the dampers that went from the black to the blue sections and this lead to bleeding between the black and blue. as the graphic was a blue and white logo this was very obvious.

the dampers need replacing. i've told the boss this, but he doesn't think its necissary. just make sure theres not fluff on it he says.

sofar she's doing fine still, but it is very annoying not knowing what the hell is going on with a machine i've just started using 6 months ago. and im sure more and more things are going to give in as she works A LOT!

anywho. thats why i joined this sight, to pick other people's brains!

also... another thing bothering me... does anybody else get constant static shocks when touching their machinery?? or issit just me? damn annoying!

with regards to routine maintenace... what besides the cleaning of the heads and wipers needs to betaken care of?


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