Day 3 was the start of learning about the fab machines. In this day I have learned about using the vinyl cutting machine. This machine is used to produce stickers and logos. First thing to do was downloading inkscape software which will convert the required image from Raster to Vector and then back to Raster. This conversion process is performed to improve the quality of the image.
After I have exported the logo (I will cut Jaguar logo), I have started to set up the vinyl cutter.
Photo 7 shows the Pen force, by default it is 0. Pen force is the force exerted by the cutter on the vinyl.
Photo 8 shows the place of the cutter, it should be hard to notice the cutting edge, otherwise the cutting edge will touch the machine bottom.
Photo 9 shows the vinyl roll.
After setting up the machine, I have downloaded fab software which is used to convert the image into .rml file and send it to the machine from this link, then installed the dependencies by the following command sudo apt-get install python python-wxgtk2.8 python-dev python-pip gcc g++ libpng12-dev libgif-dev make bash okular libboost-thread-dev libboost-system-dev cmake
, python was not installed so I had a problem, but I solved it by downloading python wxgtk2.8 and the the command worked. Finally I have finished installing the fab program by the following commands make fab
and make install
.
The next step was to set up the communication between my pc and the machine. To do this I have opened a firefox tab and wrote localhost:631
, At first nothing appeared on the page so I searched the problem and found that a software called cups should be installed. From administration I have added the machine as a printer successfully from the first try.
Last thing to do was to stick the logo, usually a transformation paper is used, but instead I have used a tape. Don't stick the logo directly like the following photo.