Small Vinyl Cutter Reminders

From HackPittsburgh Wiki
Revision as of 21:25, 6 December 2021 by Sowens (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Other Reminders

Vinyl Cutter (Small)

The Vinyl Cutter setup consists of:

  1. The vinyl cutter itself.
  2. A Mac laptop with Sure Cuts A Lot 4 Pro installed on it (there should be one with a sticker on the lid that says "VCarve Computer"
  3. A USB cable to connect the Mac laptop to the vinyl cutter (there should be one with a tape label attached to it that says "Vinyl Cutter"
  4. The vinyl cutter power button is on the left end, near the power cord. You should probably insert and adjust the vinyl material before turning it on.

Consumables

Things you will need in addition to the vinyl cutter, Mac laptop, and USB cable:

  1. Your design in one of the digital formats that Sure Cuts supports (Illustrator, SVG, DXF, PNG, PDF).
  2. Vinyl material.
  3. Transfer tape.
  4. A burnisher to apply the transfer tape (though you can improvise this from many things).

Inserting Vinyl Material

  1. If cutter is on, take the cutter offline using the console "On Line" Button
  2. At this writing we assume:
    1. That the shiny side of the vinyl should be up.
    2. That the vinyl feeds from back to front.
    3. We may be wrong.
  3. Adjust the rollers.
    1. The back of the cutter has four black rectangular fittings, about 1.5" x 1" x 3".
    2. Each fitting has a little lever.
    3. Lift the lever up to vertical to open the roller.
      1. This both lifts up the rollers so you can slide vinyl material under them, and makes it possible to slide the roller fittings horizontally,.
    4. Move the vinyl material into place under the rollers
    5. Adjust the roller locations to position them above the vinyl material, spread out evenly.
    6. Press the levers down to horizontal to lock the rollers.
  4. Any unused rollers, lift the lever to vertical.
  5. NOTE: The little red buttons inside the vinyl cutter, on either end, are hard stops. Make sure you don't put the vinyl so close to the hard stops that the cutting head will hit the hard stop. There is a small ruler that stops 1/2" from the right-hand hard stop, don't put the vinyl any closer to the hard stop than that.

Zero the Cutter

  1. Use the console arrow buttons to move the head to the zero point on the vinyl material.
    1. The zero location should be in lower, right corner (aka front, right corner) of material.
  2. Press the console crosshairs button (in center of arrow buttons) to reset zero to current location.

Mac Steps

  1. Before using Sure Cuts A Lot Pro:
    1. Press the console "On Line" button again to bring the machine online.
      1. Make sure the console screen says "On--Line"
    2. Make sure the USB cable labeled "Vinyl Cutter" is plugged into both the cutter and the Mac laptop.
  2. Use the program Sure Cuts A Lot 4 Pro, on the MacBook
    1. Note, the Mac has a sticker on the lid, "VCarve Computer"
    2. The VVarve Mac has both a Windows and a Mac partition.
    3. Sure Cuts A Lot 4 Pro is installed on the Mac partition.
    4. Hold down the Alt key while booting to get a menu to select OS, boot into Mac.
  3. Start Sure Cuts A Lot 4 Pro
  4. Import your file.
    1. Sure Cuts A Lot 4 Pro supports Illustrator, SVG, DXF, PNG, PDF
      1. Note: With Illustrator docs, Sure Cuts A Lot 4 Pro only imports the first Art Word (i.e. first pagE)
  5. Use GUI button Preview, at top right of Sure Cuts A Lot 4 Pro GUI to review design.
  6. Use the Document dialog in the upper right of the GUI to select the Mat Size for the piece of vinyl, and the orientation (landscape, portrait, etc)
  7. Arrange your design on the GUI. The relationship between the GUI layout and the cutter is determined by the "Orientation" in the Document dialog.
  8. Click the "Cutter" button, at top right of Sure Cuts A Lot 4 Pro GUI.
    1. Dialog pops up.
    2. Usually take the defaults.

After Cutting

  1. When cutting is complete, move roller levers to vertical & remove vinyl material
  2. "Weed" the vinyl (peel away the material you don't want).
  3. Transfer Tape
    1. The idea is that you stick the vinyl letters or design to the tape, that is the adhesive side of the transfer tape is pressed against the non-adhesive side of the vinyl.
    2. Then you use the tape to peel the vinyl design off the backing, exposing the adhesive side of the vinyl design.
    3. Then press the adhesive side of the vinyl against whatever you want to stick it to.
    4. Buff the transfer tape very hard when applying it.
    5. It's a good idea to watch a bunch of videos on how to do this, or to get somebody with experience to walk you through it.