Vinyl Cutting

Once your logo has been drawn in Vectorworks, there are a couple of things you need to do before you cut it in vinyl.

Last things to check in Vectorworks:

• put an appropriately sized box around your logo, this will help define your logo and define how big a piece you need.
• select everything on your page and 'Group' it, this will make it easy for you to change its size. Hold down shift to maintain width/height ratio.
• resize your logo so that it is around 100mm by 100mm. These measurements do not need to be exact, check with your instructor for sizing questions.
• set the origin to the bottom left corner of the box. You can find this tool under 'Page' -> 'Set Origin'
• all 'filled in' objects (e.g. arcs, polygons, polylines) have been converted to lines. You can find this option in the 'Tools' menu.
• 'Export' your document as a .dwg file. This option is located under 'File'.

Generating the NC code:

Getting Started:

What we are doing now is generating a program for the CNC Mill to follow in cutting out our vinyl logo. We need to give the Mill precise instructions as follows:

• First, go to My Computer -> Docs (I:) -> Handout -> A Hughes and copy two files: CBSS.CSV and larkenmm.spm into your server folder.
• Start up Visual Mill and open your .dwg file that you exported from Vectorworks. You will need to change the 'files of type' box to look for .dwg files.
• Your logo should look like this, with the axes starting from the bottom left corner:

Choosing the Tool

We now need to define HOW we're going to cut on the Mill.

• Expand the curves menu (shown in the image above)
• Goto 'Tool' -> 'Load Tool Library' and find the CBSS.CSV file that you saved.
• Goto 'Tool' -> 'Create/Select Tool' and this window pops up:

• Click on the different shapes at the top until you find 'vinyl_knife'

Setting up the Engraving:

Now we need to setup WHERE we're going to cut. Also we need to specify how deep we're going to cut. The latter is simpler since everything will be at the same depth.

• Ensure that your curves are still selected in the left hand window.
• Click on 2 1/2 axis milling and select 'Engraving'.
• Set up these settings on the window that pops up, then click on Generate.

The mill is now set up to cut through the vinyl but not the vinyl backing.

*Optional Step*

• Change the view to isometric and double click 'Toolpath' on the left. The generated program will show on the right and you click scroll down the list of commands to double check that all of your lines are to be cut.

Post Processing

We need to convert the Visual Mill instructions into something that the Mill programmer will understand. This is called the Post Process.

• Click on 'Post Process' -> 'Set Post Options'
• For 'Folder where post-processor files are located' find the folder that contains the larkenmm.spm file.

• Click on 'Post Process' -> 'Post Process'
• This window pops up, select larkenmm from the left side and type in 'H:\logo.nc' at the bottom

You're done (for now). The next few steps are done on the computer at the mill. Log in there and get some supervision for the final steps.

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