I am making sure I can do this before spending the money. I sublimate patches, then hand cut them, a giant pain in the a$$. I want to use a laser cutter with camera setup to do the job. I know that the problem will be when I heat press the print onto fabric, there is a slight shrinking that changes the layout. High end lasers like Trotec have cameras that compensate, I cant afford. I was thinking about using the scan and cut method, which would probably work, my only concern is if I need to scan each sheet of material then cut, or does one scan work with a repeat button(all the sheets shrink roughly the same). If anyone has any input or suggestions, I’m listening.
Print and cut by definition requires alignment to the material to work correctly. There’s nothing that would readjust automatically to repeated operations.
However, it sounds like you’re saying that the shrinking amount is predictable. In that case, I’d suggest that it may be better to approach this using a jig that locates the material repeatably at the same position. Then apply a size reduction in LightBurn based on known shrink amount and then burn. You could arrive at the reduction percentage by measurement and experimentally until it’s dialed in. Then should be repeatable.
This would eliminate any manual alignment required.
This ! A jig is always the best solution for repeat work or anything that requires accuracy in alignment
Thanks for that, I will try it. I am still wondering if I do a scan and cut, is it one button repeatable, or do I need to scan each time. I would rather a scan tell lightburn how it shrank, then repeat until finished.
I should elaborate, when I say I am cutting sublimated fabric, it is a gang sheet of up to 40+ patches, square, circle, odd shaped etc. We run a roll sub dye printer, take the gang sheets and heat press onto patch material, then hand cut all of them out, sometimes thousands of them. I can pre-shrink the fabric to eliminate a lot of shrink, but I cant pre shrink the paper, which is just as much the problem. So I thought if I cut the patch blanks, then do a jig on the heat press maybe that would work, but found that as soon as I put the printed sub transfer over the jig filled with blanks, the heat from the press pad would shrink the paper enough to make some or all of the prints miss the blanks…its hard to explain, but I have come to the conclusion that I have to make my laser adapt to the alread printed and shrunk fabric. Which brings me to what I think is my only shot at laser cutting, laying a printed gang sheet on the cutter, scan then cut, they don’t have to be exact, but very close is my goal. After my first scan/cut, can I repeat after marking a corner/side registration guide? I have confirmed that each sheet of fabric shrinks almost exactly the same.
The setup of print and cut requires the careful alignment to 2 target/registration marks on the material. There’s nothing preventing you from running the same burn multiple times after setting up print and cut. However, there’s no auto-realignment to the new target markers on subsequent runs.
The method I list above requires no alignment per design, and could work on any design given the same dimensions for the base material.
You are correct. If I can get a close % of shrinkage, I would apply it to the file, and send it.
Thanks for the advice.
Let us know how you carry on.
Will do, thanks again
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