I couldn’t see any kind of activity light on the pi-w and I tried a couple of different power supplies, to no joy. I’ll be back in tomorrow and have another shot at it while I wait for 3D prints.
Vinyl Cutter I've never used it
I was able to do a test with the the blade removed this evening. Only thing I can think of was maybe the wall switch was off?
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I am not a smart man.
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So I have it working, though I ran into a tough patch with the hpgl I had generated from things not playing nicely with the cutter. hpgl-distiller, the free utility in the machine notes made it actually work.
Still can’t quite get to grips with how it zeroes out but I have a working cut now!
Also found a 5v power supply with a micro usb on the end, might be a more elegant power solution until we can wire it back in internally? I’ve left it with the pi-zero anyway.
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Can you post a picture? Does it have pigtail mains? No worries if not, just figuring what we need to grab to get it back to all parts internal.
It’s just a phone charger with a micro usb on the end, it’s just a longer cable than the dinky one I had stuck in the extension cable. I will have a fish in the bucket for one with with a detachable cable next time I’m in.
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I have gone through the bucket under the electronics bench and there aren’t any replacements unfortunately.
Is there no 5v rail or even 12v rail we could tap into with a regulator on the machine itself?
It’s a good shout but I’m not sure how oversized the power supply is for peak loads. If you’re willing to investigate, that’s a good option.
More vinyl adventures. Managed to get it cutting again but with some realisations about getting a good result.
It’s not happy cutting small shapes and I was getting some very rounded edges. Googling suggests this is the result of blade offsets but that seems to only apply to using the official software, which looks a bit crap and I don’t think we still have the serial that would get us an install of it anyway.
It’s also cutting slightly undersize, which is a slight problem when I’m trying to hit dimensions. Not entirely sure how small just yet, my next step is going to be cutting some tests so I can at least suggest a scaling factor to get things right.
Still haven’t worked out how the hell it works out a zero point or what, if anything, the laser pointer dot in it lines up with. The instructions leave a lot to be desired.
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So it’s cutting everything at 90% of full size. There’s doubtless some primary school maths I’m forgetting to get it back but scaling by 1.1 got it close enough for me.
The zero point seems to be, confusingly, the bottom right of your design. Still can’t work out what the laser pointer is for other than if you put it at the edge of the vinyl it gives you a margin of error.
Still no luck cutting small letters or sharp corners though.
Sounds like one of those things where they intentionally give you vague support for the machines so you have to get official support for lots of pennies.
Really annoying that the scaling is off. I hat it when I get this problem when I’m printing printing. Guessing this equally off in both directions? If it is only off in one direction, then it might not be picking up the material thickness properly or something.
I’m popping down about half 12 if you are still about?
It’s 90% in both, not a material movement thing. Possibly the official software would help but that seems unlikely to me.
Do you have a simple test hpgl file? I assume the scaling happens inside the plotter but it would be nice to confirm.
I just drew a 100mm square and measured it. Came out 90mm on each side.
Perfect! Can you upload it?
Yes sorry, just checked discourse. Will re-generate a copy and upload it tomorrow.
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Here you go, a 100x100mm square to try out, as run through hpgl distiller.
10x10output.hpgl.zip (265 Bytes)