Using the Graphtec ‘ARMS’ optical positioning system in SP5.0.2 and higher.

There are three possible scenarios using this alignment system. The first one is where a normal alignment plot is done. The second is a ‘multi-segment’ alignment, and the third is multiple copies of a single alignment plot.

Designing an alignment job

This is identical to normal designing, however you should mark the lines that you want to cut instead of print. Select these lines, then choose ‘Edit’ ‘Convert to’ ‘print & cut line’. The line will be shown dotted.

Normal alignment:

This is the most basic scenario, it prints cropmarks around the print work, and aligns the plotter to this print work. You can choose to scan 2, 3, or 4 cropmarks while aligning. Accuracy will be better when more cropmarks are scanned, at the expense of speed.

To enable this, right click on the worksheet and choose ‘Cropmark Settings’. The following dialog will appear:

For the alignment system, choose ‘Graphtec ARMS, 2/3/4 points. Choose a cropmark size (we recommend 30 mm).

Also check the media loading: if you load the media from the back, set the ‘media load direction’ to normal. If you load it from the front, set the ‘media loading direction’ to ‘rotated’. See the manual of the Graphtec plotter on how to load material from the back or the front.

Please be aware that the software always prints 4 cropmarks, even if you want to align on 2 or 3. This way, you can always change the setting later and scan a different number of cropmarks without re-printing.

After positioning the cropmarks, you can print the worksheet using the EasySIGN Print Server. If you want to print on other RIPs, you should export the design to ‘Adobe Illustrator (AI) format and send the exported file to be printed.

When the print is ready, load the material in the plotter. After the material is positioned, move the cutting knife to within the lower-right cropmark, and press the ‘Origin’ button on the plotter.

You are now ready to send the plotting data to the machine. To do this, click ‘File’ ‘Plotting’. The following dialog will appear:

Make sure the checkbox ‘Alignment plotting’ is checked, then press ‘plot’ to send the job to the machine. Your plotter should now start with searching for the cropmarks, and then plot the job.

Multisegment alignment

If your alignment job is long (more than 1 meter) you can choose the multi-segment alignment system. This will provide you with better accuracy on long plots. To do this, choose ‘Graphtec ARMS, multisegment’ for the cropmark setting. Next, you can choose the number of segments. We advise you to set a segment every 50 cm, so a 3 meter plot should have no less than 6 segments.

Be aware that you cannot choose the number of cropmarks, it is fixed at 4. You also cannot use the multi-copy option in combination with multisegment aligning.

Multicopy alignment

If you use the ‘Graphtec ARMS, 2/3/4 points’ systems, you can plot multiple copies of a job at once. Simply enter the number of copies and the distance between copies. The rest of the procedure is identical to the procedure for plotting a single alignment job.

These options mention ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’. as you are standing in front of the plotter. Horizontal is therefore the carriage direction and vertical is the roll direction.