Registration marks: where and how many
Marks are what lets the machine find the job. Too few and it drifts, too close to the edge and the sensor misses them. Three in a corner pattern is the practical default.
What marks do
A registration mark is a small, high-contrast target printed with the artwork. The machine's sensor finds it, and from that position the controller knows where every path is. Without marks, a cut that looked perfect on screen lands a few millimetres off after the media shifts.
How many
- One job, one sheet — three marks: bottom-left, bottom-right, top-left. Enough to correct position and rotation.
- Long or warped media — four, one per corner, so the controller can correct skew across the whole sheet.
- Repeated tiles — a mark set per tile, not just at the sheet corners.
Placement rules
- Keep a clear margin around each mark — roughly the mark's own size — so nothing prints over it.
- Put them outside the cutting area, never inside a piece that will be removed.
- Keep the same mark type and size throughout a job; mixing types confuses the search.
- Print marks in solid black on light media, or white on dark. Contrast matters more than shape.
Cut, do not printIf the marks are only for alignment of the cutting file itself, cut them as paths instead of printing them. Printed marks on a cut-only job just add ink and one more thing to misread.
A quick check
Before sending, zoom out to the full sheet and confirm the marks are the outermost objects on all sides. If a piece of artwork sits further out than a mark, the sensor may lock onto the artwork instead.