Welcome back to the Cut Doctor’s office! I hope you’ve been learning a lot about healing your cutting ills. Today we’re going to talk about things that might happen even before cutting starts. (To start with Lesson 1 in the Cut Doctor series, go here).
There are 2 times you visit your regular doctor: when you’re getting a general checkup and when you’re sick. At a well visit, you’re doing thing like checking your blood pressure, getting diet recommendations, getting a flu shot, etc. When you’re sick, the doctor will listen to you describe your symptoms, run tests and prescribe a course of treatment.
So far in our Cut Doctor series, we’ve been focusing on the former. I’ve explained preventative maintenance — things you can do before you cut to achieve optimal cut health. Now we’re moving into the second part, which is troubleshooting things that go wrong with a cut. This is the meat of the series. We’re going to look at the symptoms in order to figure out the causes and solutions. And just like with your real doctor, there may be different maladies causing cut problems. In the final lesson, I’ll give you a handy printable reference chart with all the info.
We’re focusing on actual cutting issues, and not things like getting a “Could Not Connect” message or troubles with setting up Bluetooth. Those I cover in the series Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Version 4 Send Area. You can start Lesson 1 of that series here.
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Let’s start in this lesson with some things that might go wrong before cutting even starts.
Symptom: Machine starts tapping when powered on
Diagnosis: Ghost job
If you turn on your machine and it immediately starts moving the blade holder up and down rapidly or starts to cut a job that you didn’t send to it (and isn’t left over from a job where you turned the machine off in the middle of the cut), you’ve got what’s called a ghost or phantom job. If you take out the USB cord it stops, only to start up again if you plug it back in.
What’s happening is that another device’s driver is getting in the way — something like a printer, even if you aren’t using it or don’t have it any more. It’s taking up a USB connection port, thinks your Silhouette is a printer (or whatever) and is trying to send data to it (trying to finish an uncompleted job). That confuses your Silhouette. Your machine thinks the data it’s getting is a set of cut commands.
Prescription: Remove the interfering device drivers.
- Turn off your machine and close your Silhouette software.
- On your computer, go to the Control Panel>Hardware and Sound>View Devices and Printers.
- In the list of printers, look for any grayed out ones OR printers you don’t have any longer and so you don’t have connected.
- Right-click on one of the printer drivers in question and go to the Printer Properties option.
- In the window that comes up, go to the Ports tab.
- Find the port type File and check this box.
- Click on Apply.
- Repeat this on all printer drivers for devices you no longer have.
Symptom: AutoBlade Not Adjusting before cutting
Diagnosis #1: Incorrect Blade Selection
As we discussed in this post, there are basically 2 types of blades: ratchet and auto. If you have the ratchet blade selected, the software isn’t going to try to adjust that because you have to do it yourself.
Prescription: Check the Send area to make sure you’ve selected the correct blade type.
Diagnosis #2: Blade loaded incorrectly
If the blade isn’t sitting down all the way in the holder, then the machine won’t be able to adjust it properly. This is really common. I’ve discovered it’s really easy for you to insert the blade and have it sitting down fully, then it pops up when you close the locking mechanism. So always check both before and after you slide the lock. Also make sure you can see the dot through the lock to make sure you locked it completely. See this post for more about loading a blade correctly.
Prescription: Ensure the collar of the blade is resting fully down on the blade holder, especially after locking.
Diagnosis #3: AutoBlade used in wrong machine or tool holder
The AutoBlade is for Cameo 3 and 4 and Portrait 2 machines only and only in the left tool holder. If you try to use it in another machine or in the right tool holder, it won’t fit which is by design. The Cameo 4 has to have the Cameo 4 AutoBlade — the earlier models won’t fit. And if you try to force it you’ll break something. The machine still wouldn’t adjust it, as it knows which machine you’re using and knows that the AutoBlade only goes in a left tool holder. You won’t even see the option to choose AutoBlade on Tool 2 in your Send area.
Prescription: Use the AutoBlade only in a Cameo 3 or 4 or Portrait 2 and only in the left holder. Make sure you have the appropriate AutoBlade for your type of Cameo.
Diagnosis #4: Blade is malfunctioning
Sometimes the blade just stops working correctly. Here’s how you can check to see if that’s the issue–
- Check to see the number the blade is on currently.
- Load a piece of scrap material on your mat and load the mat into the machine. I recommend using a pretty thick one. That way if the blade isn’t adjusting correctly you’ll prevent damage to your mat. Regardless, make sure it’s one that would need a different number than what the blade is currently on.
- Draw a simple line or add a simple shape on your Design area.
- Send the shape to cut and watch to see if the machine attempts to adjust the blade at all.
- Let it finish, then pull the blade out and see if the machine set it to the correct number.
- Do this a few times to make sure it’s working correctly.
Prescription: Check to see if the machine is adjusting the blade correctly. If it isn’t, replace the blade.
Symptom: cutting never starts
Diagnosis #1: Raster image in use instead of vector image (no cut lines)
Images such as photos and clip art are raster images — a grid of tiny squares filled with different colors. That means they contain primarily print information. The only vectors (cut commands) would be the outer rectangle around the image. Therefore, when you open a raster image in the Silhouette Studio software, it is set to No Cut. You have to add cut information. For more about rasters vs. vectors, see this post.
Prescription: Perform a trace to create vectors based on the raster image. (I will be doing a series on Tracing in the future).
Diagnosis #2: Cut lines not turned on
Sometimes a design does have cut lines but they are not enabled. This is the case with SVG (scalable vector graphic) files — they come in set on No Cut. You don’t need to trace them but just turn the cut lines on.
Prescription: In the Send area, set the image to Cut or Cut Edge in Simple mode, or check the box in Action by: Line, Fill or Layer.
Diagnosis #3: Images not on defined page size
The machine will only cut images or portions of images that are on the defined page size. Say you have a Cameo machine and tell the software you’re using a 12″ x 12″ Cameo mat but have your page size at 4″ x 4″. An image placed at the bottom right corner of the mat won’t cut. If you have a design half on, half off the page, only the portion that’s on the page cuts.
Prescription: Ensure that you’ve set the page size correctly for the material you’re using and that images are within the boundaries of that page size.
Diagnosis #4: Blade housing moved before cutting and not returned to origin
The origin is at the extreme upper left of the page. When you first turn your machine on, the blade housing is positioned to start there. If you move the motor box to the right or down the page for a test cut or other reason and don’t move it back, one of 2 things will happen. It will either never start the cut at all, or start the cut in the wrong place (more on that below).
Prescription: Always return the motor box to the origin point before sending the job to cut.
Diagnosis #5: Incomplete prior jobs
Sometimes you hit Send and the machine can’t do the job for some reason. That can happen when:
- the software hasn’t recognized any connected machine (message to connect a cutter).
- the software can’t connect to a machine it has recognized during the current software session (Could Not Connect or Unavailable message).
- the machine is syncing (trying to connect).
- the machine is busy (generating a cut job).
- you’ve paused or canceled a job on the machine and not told the software what to do with it (resume or cancel). You see the message Connection to X machine was lost before cutting completed.
- your machine loses power because you turned it off or unplugged it in the middle of the job.
The software doesn’t forget you wanted to cut something. You told it so by hitting Send. If you send a new cut job when any of those is happening, it puts that job in the queue. In other words, it’s putting it next in line and waiting until you deal with the original job. You can either keep going with that first job by clicking Resume or Restart, or cancel it by clicking the X or Cancel. Your machine isn’t going to start the new job until you do one of those in the software.
Notice above the red number 4 in a circle beside the words Send to Queue. That’s how many jobs are waiting. If I click on that, the software opens a dialog box to show me them all.
To clear any “oops, I didn’t mean to send that job” from the queue, click the X at the end of the name of the file (the one after the time estimate).
An example
Let’s say our friend Sara is cutting along fine and is about to start another cut job. She glances up at the clock, realizes she’s late picking her kids up from school and rushes out the door.
When she gets back, she forgets she turned her machine off as she headed out. She’s in a hurry to get an order out so doesn’t notice that the software isn’t seeing a machine connected. She sends the job to the machine, not noticing the message Unavailable. Nothing happens. She hits it again, thinking maybe the computer didn’t catch her mouse click. She also doesn’t notice that it says Send to Queue instead of the normal Send. Again, nothing. Then she realizes the machine is off and turns it on. Send again, still no joy. She figures out her toddler unplugged the USB cord from her computer so replugs it (ya, this sounds like a typical day). She sends again. Still nothing. ARGHHH!! She starts hunting around and clicks Resume or Start Cutting ‘cuz she’s looking for ANYTHING to get this stupid machine going. (Yes, I made this a fictional character, but doesn’t it resemble lots of us?)
This time, the machine FINALLY starts cutting the job. Everything is right with the world again (or so it seems). To be continued… (cue dramatic music)
Prescription: Check for the status Ready before starting the cut job. Only the word Send starts that actual cut job immediately, not Send to Queue or Resume or Start Cutting. When you pause a cut job on the machine, resume it or cancel it. Then clear out the job in the Send area. Do that also if you had to turn the machine off during the cut. To start a job that’s in the queue, click Start Cutting or Resume.
Up Next
Okay, let’s say you are able to send the job to the machine without any of these issues, but it starts cutting in the wrong place. We’ll talk about that at our next appointment.
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