Wide-format inkjet printer and vinyl cutting plotter manufacturer Mutoh Europe nv announces that it has integrated two new features into its SC-PRO series of professional sign cutting plotters. Apart from regular kiss-cutting of lettering jobs and automated contour cutting of pre-printed stickers, Mutoh SC-PRO cutters now also incorporate a cut through function and a poster trim feature.
The new cut through function allows cutting through both the self-adhesive vinyl and the vinyl’s protective backing paper. This will enable users to “finish” individual contour-cut sticker designs. The new poster trim feature will enable trimming of poster designs, eliminating the hassle having to
do this manually.
The two new features are now standard integrated into Mutoh SC-PRO series cutters. Installed-base SC-PRO users will be able to have access to these features via a regular firmware upgrade.
All that is required to perform semi-automatic poster trimming on an SC-PRO cutter is that the printed poster comes with a registration mark printed in each corner. After loading the poster into the cutting plotter, the operator can have the cutter memorize the four registration marks using the SC-PRO’s integrated laser beam. Once this is done, the poster will be automatically trimmed via activation of the cut through function on the cutter’s control panel.
The cut through functionality enables cutting through both the self-adhesive vinyl and the vinyl’s protective backing paper to individually finish sticker designs which may have been contour-cut previously with the SC-PRO cutter. Stickers that have been cut through can afterwards be easily removed from the vinyl.
Cut through can be performed in two different ways. A first method consists in adapting the cutting force of one single knife holder which performs both contour cutting of pre-printed stickers and cut through of each individual sticker. A second method is to use two separate knife holders, the first one for contour cutting and the second knife holder for cut through. A test pattern integrated in the SC-PRO firmware will enable testing of cut through parameters per type of material that is used and to freeze optimum cut through pre-sets in the application software driving the SC-PRO.
The new cut through functionality for Mutoh’s SC-PRO cutters is now already supported via Mutoh Edition software versions of EasySign®, SAi® and Caldera® RIP software, as well as the original versions of these RIPs.
