Artique Mats--Cutting problem on Wizard Cutter

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William Ross

CGF, Certified Grumble Framer
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Oct 30, 1999
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costa Mesa, Ca, USA
This question is for Wizard and other computer mat cutters.

We are having problems with Artique mats from Larson-Juhl being the same thickness thought the sheet. On a multi-opening mat some of the openings do not fall-out. There is no pattern to where this is going to happen on the matboard. Testing with cut-outs showed the mat to have different thickness. Adjusting the blade only produces overcuts.

Question:Have you had this type of problem?

We are not having any problem with Tru/Vue-Miller, Crescent or Bainbridge rag type mats.
 
Interesting. I actually prefer to cut Artique mats on my Wizard. They're a littly harder and thicker than the other boards and I think they give a nicer corner.

Are you having the problem with all colors of Artique boards or just one? If just one, maybe you got a bad batch? I haven't seen this problem personally but...???

Do you use different defaults on Artique, Alpha, Miller... for your overcuts, backups, etc.? Contrary to what the Wizard help desk tells you, you SHOULD! You will get much better corners if you have different settings for each type of board. Depth of cut is VERY important, but it is not the determining factor in overcuts and undercuts. I just argued this point with the guys at Wizard to no avail, but believe me YOU NEED DIFFERENT SETTINGS FOR DIFFERENT BOARDS. Sorry, I'm getting all riled up again :mad: ! Anyhow, this might be one area to look at.
 
We keep a "set of keys" for lack of a better description next to the Wizard. For each board type that we cut, we have a 1" x 3" piece of matboard, bevel cut. We use these to measure the depth of the blade. And there are about 8 keys on the ring now... gives you a general idea about blade depths... and we haven't had problems with artique. Maybe we have just been lucky?
 
My Fletcher-Terry F-6100 has it's "normal" settings tuned in for regular Alphamat. The "normal" setting is a combination of a specific blade holder which determines blade depth and a pair of software adjusted "start of cut" and "end of cut" settings. It takes just a few test cuts to adjust the corner cuts to suit a specific blade holder in a specific type of board. There are 4 color coded blade holders: 2 ply, 4 ply, 6 ply, and 8 ply. But of course there are no standards in mat thicknesses. In this case the F-6100 provides a number of user defined settings. So, for example, I have defined a setting for Cresent suede mats. In my case these are cut with the 6 ply blade holder and I have set up by test the precise start of cut and end of cut settings to give me a perfect corner when cutting Cresent Suede. At the moment I am cutting a bunch of cresent whitecore mats for a group of one hour photo stores and these mats vary in thickness from one suface paper to another so I have set up a special setting to cut these mats. In this case we use the 4 ply blade holder but do an additional manual depth adjustment of a few thousandths of an inch and adjust the start and end of cuttings to suit. F-6100 is Cool!!!
 
I haven't had any problems with Artique mats on my Wizard. I have had problems from time to time but haven't noticed it being any particular type of mat.
Generally problems with fallouts ar corrected by adjusting blade length or replacing the blade.
 
We never adjust (okay, almost never) the depth of the blade. Bob went in and changed the configs for each type of board - foil, 4 ply, suede, rag, etc. Before you cut, tell the Wizard what type of board you are cutting and each and every one is perfect. Check your manual - it tells you how to set the configuration if the board is not coming out or if you're getting overcuts. We have not noticed any problems with different thicknesses of Artique.
 
Thank you for the information about your experance with Artique matboards. I set-up new cutting defaults for them and it worked.

Thank you the quick answers.
 
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