Pepakura

Anyone cutting Pepakura files in paper or foam? I’m having some success, lets talk…

I was using pepakura some years ago. loking forward to see setup and maby to try to cut.

My MPCNC bed is 950mm x 480 mm. For paper I’m printing on 22 x 28 card poster paper from Staples. I ran the paper through a color plotter to get the template image on them. You can skip this step and just cut/burn the paper if you like. Then I set the poster board on the MPCNC and cut away. I’m using Inkscape to generate the Gcode and a laser to cut the template out.

I’m getting inconsistent burns on the fold lines. I think it might be because of the white paper. Also I’m learning that I have to join the segments in Inkscape for the Gcode to run correctly.

I bought a drag knife from the Vicious shop so I’ll give that a try when I get a chance.

If you’re building with 6mm EVA foam the laser does a great job. I’m new to foam so the learning curve is there but I can get the MPCNC to consistently give me what I want it to. Right now they’re a little off, but that’s my fault.
Eventually I want to try and 3d print on and pattern cut with a dremel before cutting the patterns out of the foam.

I finally had time to try this out and have successfully cut out a Master Chief Halo helmet.

The Pepakura file was from https://www.405th.com/forums/ by DANNIFOOD4LESS.

This is a picture of the helmet hand cut: (build before I had the MPCNC)

I’ll attach all the files I used. The paper was Staples 100 lb Card stock. The laser is the 100 dollar laser build IAW the guidance on this site.

If you want to print one, open the Inkscape file.

  1. Open the layers panel, hide all the layers except Numbers and Registration and print that on your 100 lb paper.
  2. Put the printout on your MPCNC Laser work area.
  3. Put on your goggles.
  4. Run Registration points Gcode. It will turn on your laser at X0, Y0 with a power setting of 1. It will then move to the center of each registration mark pause for 5 seconds and move to the next.
  5. Run the code file for the sheet you just printed.
  6. Repeat for all pages
  7. Assemble helmet.
The Mountain Folds (ML) are cut with a Feed of 600 and a Power of 150

The Valley Folds (VL) are cut with a Feed of 600 and a Power of 130. They are also cut 3 times with an offset to allow the paper to fold toward you.

The Cut Lines (CL) and cut with Feed of 350 and a Power of 255

Does anyone know of some good screen recording software? I’d like to try and make a video of the process to produce these files.

I might have to change the way I do things. I just learned something new from the posts in Tangential cutter in development…

 

 

P180-Halo-Helmet.zip (1.23 MB)

Looks neat. I use simplescreenrecorder on Linux. I’m not sure if it’s cross platform. It’s the best I’ve used.

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When outputting gcode from an imported Pepakura DXF, Gcode tools and JTP_Laser_Tool, treats each line segment as individual paths. (as it should) You can go into inkscape and join the line segments to make a single loner line, but this takes time and a lot of clicking and joining line ends.
This extension inkscape-chain-paths will join the path segments for you. One file I was cutting went from 3200 lines of code to 400. There’s something oddly satisfying about that.