# GCC Expert 24 LX, a long weekend and some frustration



## Blue92 (Oct 8, 2010)

Picked up a GCC Expert 24 LX last month and this last week was the first it actually got used for more than a few test pieces.

Did a dozen, four color front and back design, t-shirts for "The Race for the Cure." All original artwork with a mix of Super Film, Fashion Film II Metallic and just for fun did a distressed look with one color of the Super Film.

In between not having used the cutter, Corel Draw X4 or Great Cut it was interesting.  Two 2:00 AM nights later (the garment and sign business is a part time gig for me) we had them delivered. 

9:00 AM this morning started a small 2' x 4' banner for EMS Week due for delivery this afternoon.

For a cutter that did such a great job on shirt vinyl doing the sign vinyl was not fun (Did I mention I hate weeding sign vinyl? Luckily I'm married and the actual business belongs to the better half ). 

No major problems until we went to cut her company info for the back of the banner. Same settings and vinyl we used for parts of the banner and the cutter would not cut through enough to weed it. Checked blade depth, increased the down force from 30 to 100 and got the second attempt to cut well enough to weed.

Just now pulled the blade holder and found it appeared to be packed from the factory with a thick Vaseline like lubricant.  

If I pushed the blade pin down it forced the blade out the bottom of the holder to extract it but would not retract by itself.

Cleaned it out and will do a few test cuts tomorrow. Hopefully that was the issue with the poor performance and the slight dragging we saw on some of the sign vinyl. Tape Tech 3 mil 4000 series if anyone is wondering.

Anyone else have a relaxing weekend?


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## DivineBling (Sep 14, 2010)

Well that stinks... hopefully you can get that figured out. I have a GCC Bengal and a GCC Puma III and they both came with that lubricant in the blade holder. I didn't clean them out and they've never given me any problems. What blade are you using? Just the 45* blade that came with it?

You might want to check out Clean Cut Blades. They're stronger and last way longer and require less downforce than other blades. 

Keep us posted!! 

Stephanie


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## Nick Horvath (Feb 26, 2010)

I'm not sure that cleaning the lubricant out of the blade holder was the best thing to do as it aids it the blade spinning freely while cutting.

As for why you are not getting clean cuts on your sign vinyl, there are things to check.

Your blade should be extending roughly the thickness of a credit card. If it is extended too far out then you could be dulling the blade faster, or worse chipping the blade.

It sounds like either your blade dulled or you just were cutting a thicker grade of sign vinyl. The Expert 24LX has up to 250 grams of down force so you have quite a bit more downforce to play with.


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## Blue92 (Oct 8, 2010)

Standard 45 degree blade with the 3 sign mil vinyl. I wouldn't think cutting about 8 yards of vinyl would dull a new blade that quickly. I've got Roland 60 degree blades on the way just to have on hand.

There's still a small amount of lube in the holder and the blade depth is right at a credit card thickness. The amount in there was enough to cause a drag rather than a light coating that might be worthwhile. 

I'm going to do a few cuts a little later to see how it cuts now.

I also in the GCC manual that the default offset is .175 and I had changed that it to .25. I'll try a few cuts with each.

I can say the people at Stahls were I bought it were good to deal with.


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