54
The settings from 1 through 4 are the slow speeds and should be used when cutting dense difficult
materials, such as chipboard, craft plastic, styrene, and balsa.
The settings from 5 through 8 are medium speeds and should be used for easy-to-cut materials, such
as cardstock, vinyl, iron-on transfer, and rhinestone template material.
The settings from 9 through 12 are the fast speeds and are useful for engraving, embossing, and
drawing. You may, however, find that some materials will cut well at the faster speeds.
•
Cutting Speed
is usually more important to control since the blade may need more contact time with a
particular material.
Travel Speed
can usually be left quite high although, for print and cut accuracy, it may
need to be lowered if there are many shapes to be cut from a printout.
•
On the Skycut control panel, the default setting is to have the
Up Speed
and
Cut Speed
the same and
referred to as
SPEED.
This can be adjusted by pressing the
Force/Speed
icon
and then setting the
SPEED
to the desired level. In order to enter a separate
Up Speed
on the control panel, refer to
Section
1.14.1
.
2.03.3 Blade Offset
•
Blade Offset
is the horizontal distance from the center of the blade shaft to the tip of the blade. A pen or
engraving tool has an offset of 0 because the tip is centered with the center of the pen/engraving tool shaft.
But a blade is different:
•
If you set the
Blade Offset
to 0 when cutting with a blade, corners will be rounded. On the other hand, if it is
set too high, bubbles will be cut on sharp corners:
•
Below are the approximate
Blade Offset
settings to use for each of the three types of Skycut blades:
Red capped blade: 0.3 mm
Blue capped blade: 0.4 mm
Yellow capped blade: 0.75 mm
•
Any time you order new blades, check for the recommended
Blade Offset
on the packagin
g. However, it’s
not unusual for blades to be slightly off-spec.
•
SignMaster has two built-in
Blade Offset
calibration routines which can be used to determine the best
Blade Offset
setting for the current blade in use. Here are the steps to access either one:
Select the material you want to use for testing, such as vinyl, paper, or cardstock. Note how much
material will be needed for the test you select and add a few inches to these dimensions:
Offset is too low:
corners are rounded
Offset is too high: bubbles
appear at the corners
Imagine a line
passing through
the center of the
test pen or
blade
The
Offset
is the distance
between the center of the
blade holder and the tip of the
blade.
There is no
Offset
on a
pen.
