Vinyl cutter for glass side panel

[crazyfrog]

So I've wanted to learn how to use a vinyl cutter for a while and I was really impressed with PC for grant, apparently maddison did the artwork using the vinyl cutter.

I dont want to replicate that but what hardware, software and tools would I need to do something similar?

 

Linus is smurf no filter

K

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, crazyfrog said:

So I've wanted to learn how to use a vinyl cutter for a while and I was really impressed with PC for grant, apparently maddison did the artwork using the vinyl cutter.

I dont want to replicate that but what hardware, software and tools would I need to do something similar?

 

Linus is smurf no filter

K

The vinyl cutter will come with software. Usually you feed it a svg or some other vector based file then the software will take care of the cutting. Inkscape is good opensource and free software for vector creating and editing.

[crazyfrog]

23 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

The vinyl cutter will come with software. Usually you feed it a svg or some other vector based file then the software will take care of the cutting. Inkscape is good opensource and free software for vector creating and editing.

Is it standardised like STLs in prusaslicer, windows printing?
 

Cups print server from my raspberry pi any good? 
 

is it worth me learning adobe Illustrator?

Annoyingly I can use photoshop, 3Ds max for modelling but no experience with vector based 2d graphics and I blame my U.K. schools teaching office like typeaway software in primary school and Microsoft office in high school, every once in a while getting out a roamer robot so they could say they taught us programming

[Blue4130]

18 minutes ago, crazyfrog said:

Is it standardised like STLs in prusaslicer, windows printing?
 

Cups print server from my raspberry pi any good? 
 

is it worth me learning adobe Illustrator?

Annoyingly I can use photoshop, 3Ds max for modelling but no experience with vector based 2d graphics and I blame my U.K. schools teaching office like typeaway software in primary school and Microsoft office in high school, every once in a while getting out a roamer robot so they could say they taught us programming

Is it standard? That will depend on which cutter you use. I am certain taht many use their own format, but there are likely also some that are more open about what they use.

 

If you can use PS, 3dmax and other software, then learning Illustrator or inkscape will be quite trivial. I was like you and it took me all of a couple hours to get decent with inkscape. The general principles are the same in most design software.

 

As for CUPS, not sure. I just source my designs out to a sign shop or CNC place for the actual cutting. (As an expat in China, it's cheaper for me to send them my designs rather than buy my own machine)

[crazyfrog]

On 4/4/2024 at 3:30 AM, Blue4130 said:

Is it standard? That will depend on which cutter you use. I am certain taht many use their own format, but there are likely also some that are more open about what they use.

 

If you can use PS, 3dmax and other software, then learning Illustrator or inkscape will be quite trivial. I was like you and it took me all of a couple hours to get decent with inkscape. The general principles are the same in most design software.

 

As for CUPS, not sure. I just source my designs out to a sign shop or CNC place for the actual cutting. (As an expat in China, it's cheaper for me to send them my designs rather than buy my own machine)

I got a bit further and I want to be able to just print everything and it take 10 minutes with all my materials in a small area. 
 

When I’m searching for sticker cutters I’m finding the silhouette, cricut and loklik they’re all fairly similar with different softwares. The motors and blades don’t seem to be as good as the commercial stuff though and graphtec seem to be the premium brand. 
 

I’ve looked for other vinyl cutters as the graphtec seems expensive and 14” vinyl cutters from aliexpress look great built with basic arm chips like gdm32 or atmegs but they don’t have an optical eye/scanner to align printed a4 sheets which is something I’d really like to be able to do.