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Here’s the results of my first real attempt at vinyl cutting. I used Ryan’s mount and the cutter from the store. The mount is another piece of clever design as there is some flex in the mount that works like a variable pressure foot. As a result the Z height is not super critical. The blade depth is critical though so you need to follow Ryan’s suggestions for setting it. Of course I tried the hello world of the MPCNC. I used the vinyl as a stencil on birch plywood and used 24 karat gold spray can, that’s what it said on the label anyway. The vinyl stencil produces very sharp and clean lines, another great use for the MPCNC.
I just followed the instructions for the cutter depth from Ryan’s blog post and used Fusion 360 to generate the tool path. I used the 2D trace in CAM, 1500 mm/min for the feed rate and 0.15mm lead in. Tool choice in Fusion 360 doesn’t matter much as the trace function just follows a path. I did use the lead in and that seemed to work quite well.
Looks awesome. Once you get the hang of a lead in it makes great stickers. You can also get some iron on material to make some quick and dirty shirts as well. I still have a few I made.
I realize this is an old thread, but hopefully someone sees this! I am doing some vinyl cutting with my MPCNC and using estlcam to set up[ my G-Code. Wondered if there is a setting that will have the path “over-cut” a few millimeters. What I mean by this is, start the cut at point a, cut around the object, and continue slightly past point A before moving on to the next cut. I am noticing that my drag knife can leave a small piece uncut at the start/finish point of the object because of the pivoting of the blade.I thought that might be done with the “Lead-in” command, but am not sure how to make that work. Any assistance is appreciated!
Thanks Ryan. the lead in method works, but I am reaching out to Christian at estlcam as well to see if there is a better way. I will post it here if there is!
I have vcarve/aspire, it allows you to put loops at the corners specifically for use with a drag knife. I’m sure there’s some vinyl specific software out there available for much less or free. Might not work with Marlin though probably grbl.
