Tips to get the Best result from your Mutoh Valuejet and SC Pro and Kona Cutter

Room conditions are very important.  

A constant room temperature of 23° and 55% humidity is ideal. These can vary slightly provided they are both constant. Any sudden change in either temperature or humidity can cause quality issues.

Media should be acclimatized to the room conditions. ie removed from packaging and placed in the print environment. 

Avoid air conditioning ducts and fans blowing directly onto the printer or cutter 

Typical faults if above conditions aren’t met are: 

Vertical banding and head strikes ( caused by media tunnelling). The head height can be changed to high to avoid strikes but print quality will suffer slightly. 

Pressure roller marks in the media. 

Spots on print caused by dust on media. 

Always have the standby heating switched on in the Valuejet Control Panel and set the time to at least 30 minutes. Having this  set means that the media is being kept heated between print jobs.

In the morning or if a print hasn’t been sent for a while it’s best to release the pressure rollers, lower them again, initialise the media ( which will activate the heaters). After 2 or 3 minutes raise and lower the pressure rollers again to smooth the media and then send your file to the printer. 

It is extremely important to setup the PF adjustment for the media and print mode being used. You can save up to 30 of these settings on the Valuejet. The correct User Mode can be selected when the pressures rollers are lowered just before the media size is determined. If the PF adjustment isn’t correct there will be horizontal banding that even the wave print won’t fully hide. This should be done by the technician at install. 

A micro PF adjustment can be made from the control panel on the fly ( while a print is in progress). This may be necessary to adjust on some media when the roll is nearing the end ( less pull on the supply scrollers). Heater temperatures can also be checked and adjusted from this menu. 

Pressure rollers should be kept clean to prevent media slippage and therefore horizontal banding. 

Operator maintenance will be demonstrated at install and is important to do at the intervals suggested. 

Technician maintenance and consumer parts replacement is done at 6 monthly intervals 

Vinyl cutters 

Always keep the cutting knife clean and change when cut quality deteriorates 

Change the cutting strip at regular intervals ( depends on use and type of cut) Cut through will do more damage to the strip and the cutting knife. 

Select the correct speed and pressure for the job.   

Complex contour jobs and jobs on laminated material will need to be run at a slower speed to maintain accuracy. 

Cut through jobs also need to be run slow ( the Easysign default settings should be used)