Vinyl Cutter

v0.2 by Ger Walsh - January 2018

General

This guide describes the procedure for using a Vinyl Cutter, which is a cutting machine with a knife tool that cuts different thicknesses and grades of vinyl, flock, card, paper or similar. Popular applications would be to produce window stickers from adhesive vinyl or transfers that can be used to put graphics on clothing, with a suitable heat press. Vinyl cutters can even be used with ink pens to produce graphics as with an older style plotter, or with inkjet printing to both imprint and cut material according to a user's specifications.

This is to serve as a general guide, but will include specifics using a Roland Camm-1 GS-24, which is quite a popular model of vinyl cutter, particularly with Fab Labs and maker spaces. This model of Roland is recommended as part of standard Fab Lab Inventory, and standard equipment for the Fab Academy. The Roland is an inexpensive machine, costing a little less than $2000 (see http://www.rolanddga.com for more details).

The Vinyl Cutter is connected by USB Cable to a computer, adjacent.

In order to run a cut job we are going to need a number of packages installed. Including an appropriate usb driver, CutStudio (software from Roland, needed to operate the cutter), and optionally a plugin for your preferred drawing package, for instance Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. These are preinstalled on the PC in the Fab Lab, so that users may prepare drawings in advance, if they so wish.

Preparing Drawings

In Illustrator, open a file or create a new file from the `File` menu.
Make a file with a portrait artboard - 610mm wide * 1000mm tall. The 610 (or roughly 24") width is the horizontal dimension, and you can alter the height of the document for taller graphics. Note that the bottom left of the Artboard is the origin position, which we will define when Preparing the Vinyl Cutter.

Outline any typography in the drawing, and draw any cut lines as closed vector polylines. Line colour may be used to determine cutting order while cutting.

Use Illustrator's Image Tracing Functions to convert JPGs and other rater objects to vectors.

When your drawing is ready use the plugin in Illustrator to send selected graphics to the Cut Studio standalone program. The large Roland Button sends the selected geometries.

Preparing the Vinyl Cutter

The Vinyl Cutter can accept sheets or rolls. For rolls, use the holder that mounts at the back of the machine - the roll rests on bearings and allows the machine to pull on the material without resistance. Pull the material through, and align the wheels at both over the material, and within the highlighted areas (marked with white). Press the lever to fix the wheels. Select Roll or Sheet, and press Enter. The head now moves across and scans the width of the material. And moves to the origin position. You can use the directional buttons to move the material, and the knife up, down, left and right.

Hold the test button to cut a pre-programmed "t" graphic, for testing. This allows you to quickly find the correct gf setting for the loaded material. For instance, the supplied material cuts well at 30 gf. Press force then select the gf strength, and press enter to try different settings.

Hold the origin button to set the current knife position to the bottom left limit. Note that this reduces the usable area of the loaded material, and that cutting will happen above and right of the origin.

The cut job will be started from the software.

Sending from CutStudio

There are limited drawing tools in the CutStudio program, but you should find enough to Arrange, Scale and Mirror the graphics as necessary. When ready, press the Cutting icon to set up a cut job.

There are options in this dialogue to assign colours to different cutting forces and depths, and a number of other settings. Leave these as Same as Machine to use the settings you applied when setting up the machine in the previous step. You may also press Change if necessary to access the Print Setup from this Cutting panel.

If you are happy with those settings press OK to start cutting.

Applying/Transferring Graphics

Accompanying a vinyl cutter there are often rolls of transfer tape, and some materials - for instance "FloatOn" - which is a volatile compound that vapourises at a low temperature shortly after being sprayed. Using this spray over the adhesive part of sticker vinyl, makes the cuts re-positionable. Transfer Tape is very useful when creating stickers - cover the front of the artwork, so that you can expose the sticky reverse of the vinyl sheet, then, attach and position directly on the surface, remove the sticker, and remove the transfer tape, taking care to rub in the edges and the graphic so that nothing comes away unintentionally. Have a sharp tool at hand to help lift the remaining cuts away.

Vinyl Cutting