Introduction

...learn about design, geometry, production, and CNC (computer numerically controlled) machines. Roland's GX vinyl cutter allows users to create signs, graphics, plastic stickers, 3D pop-up cards, dioramas, silk screening masks, and flexible circuits cut out of adhesive-backed copper foil.

San Diego Fab Lab Tutorial

1. The vinyl cutter can use vector file information from a variety of programs, such as Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, and Inkscape. The vinyl cutter also requires a path to cut. Most of these programs have a path, expand, or trace option. You can also save your image as a PDF.
2. Your document size should be no wider than 24 inches and orient in landscape.
3. The vinyl cutter uses vector paths to cut. Line thickness will not matter, as long as there is a path to follow. To generate a path that the machine will follow, select your drawing and use the path, expand, or trace tool.

Types of Vinyl Cutters

• Accepts material from 2 to 27.5 inches wide
• Mechanical Resolution of 0.0005
• Cutting Speeds of up to 20 inches per second
• Maximum down force of 250 grams

Material

• Vinyl or Copper sheets
• Utility knife
• Scissors
• Fine Tweezers(for weeding)
• Transfer tape
• Magnifying Glass

Source: ARC SPACESHOP - VINYL CUTTER TUTORIAL

Software

• Illustrator
• Inkscape
• Roland Cutstudio

Flexible Circuits

Vinylcut Copper Fabric PCBs

1. Prepare your vector graphics files. You will need one SVG for cutting the traces of the circuit from copper tape and another for cutting your solder-mask from fabric or tape with adhesive or iron-on backing.
   
   If you design your circuit in Eagle you can
   1. Export an image
   2. Open it in Illustrator or Inkscape
   3. Trace and expand the image to create vectors for cutting.
   In the image below
   Black = circuit traces.
   Orange = solder mask.
   
   
   

   This circuit was cut on a Graphtec CE6000-60 viny cutter using the Graphtec’s Cutting Master 3 Illustrator plug-in.
   

2. Weed material. Remove all the copper that is NOT part of your circuit. You can do this either before or after transfering the copper to some sticky (but not too sticky—masking tape is a good option) tape.
   
   
   
   
   
   

3. Transfer the copper traces of the circuit to a fabric or material (glass, acrylic, wood, cardboard, epoxy film (electric tape)) of your choice, but think about material that will not melt or burn when soldering the components.
   

4. Your transferred circuit should look something like this.
   

5. Solder any breaks before fusing solder mask.
   

6. Fuse solder mask.
   
   

   
   
   

Mika’s Review: Using a Roland CAMM 1 GX-24E vinyl cutter and Cutronic Foil from TechSoft to make a simple multi-vibrator circuit

1. Cutting. Pen Force as 80 gf and speed is set to 1cm/s (lowest).

   

2. Weeding. You can use a knife to support the separation. Stick a wide piece of masking tape on front side to transfer the foil from its backing and still keep it in place. Then stick it to a backing fabric (in the image below, the fabric is non-stretchy white cotton). Press the copper bits so that the circuit adheres to the fabric.
   
   The 3M 1126 conductive adhesive tape is pressure-set. This means that it sticks once you press it. To make circuits stick to your base, push the copper all over as evenly as you can. You can keep the masking tape on the circuit to protect it while pressing it.
   
   Remove the protective masking tape by peeling it off at as sharp an angle as possible, as not to rip up any of the traces. If the copper is lifting as you peel off the masking tape, push the masking tape back down and press the lifting area some more.
   
   When weeding do not try to keep the excess foil as one piece of copper, instead cut it away as often as possible.

   
   

3. Solder components to copper foil.
   eTextiles
   
   

Jie Qi's Vinylcut Fabduino

Simon de Bakker's Instruction

Nadya Peek

Instructable on vinyl cutting copper foil circuits

Hannah Perner-Wilson's Vinylcut Tilt Sensor

Copper Foils

• Cutronic Foil for PCBs
  
• 3M 1126 Copper Foil with Conductive Adhesive Tape
  
• TAPE COPPER FOIL 152.4MMX32.9M
  
• 3M #1126 copper tape with conductive adhesive 6"x 36 yds @$225.18/roll from Budnick Converting
• Cutronic Foil

Paper Speaker

Materials

• copper tape, conductive fabric, stainless steel thread
• some surface
• vinylcutter, scissors, paint brush, or sewing needle
• A vector file
• audio input jack
• amplifier circuit

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Create a coil shape. You can draw and scan or create in software.
2. Cut out the coil
3. Adhere coil to membrane
4. For a quick first test of your speaker clip on two magnets one on either side of your coil, so that they hold each other in place. If you have a smaller magnet, then place this one on the front side, since the magnet is conductive it will otherwise short out your speaker's coils. You can also put a piece of fabric in between the magnet and the coil to isolate it. For your final design you will want to mount your magnet(s) in the center of the coil without having them directly connected to the membrane.
   
   With aligator clips hook up your speaker to output of your source:
   
   
   Images from Instructables
5. If you get a faint sound, go ahead and build your amplifier.

Amplifier Circuit

Vout=AOL(V+-V-)

Parts

• Breadboard—Jameco
• Wire—Jameco
• .01µF Capacitor—Jameco
• .047n Capacitor—Jameco
• 100µF Capacitor—Jameco
• 220µF Capacitor—jameco
• 10Ω Resistor—Jameco
• 25Ω Rheostat—Radioshack
• 5KΩ Potentiometer—Jameco
• LM386 —Jameco
• 8 Pin IC Socket—Jameco
• On/Off Switch—Jameco
• Battery Clip—Jameco
• 9 Volt Battery
• 3.5 mm Male Audio Jack—Cable Wholesale
• 6ft. 3.5 mm Male/Female Audio Ext Cord—Cable Wholesale
• 1/4" Knob—Jameco
• 2.5" x 4.5" Protoboard—RadioShack

Instructions

1. Solder wires on to the following components:
   
   1. Solder a red wire to the third lead of the 5K potentiometer and a black to the center lead:
      
   2. Solder a red wire the the third lead of the Rheostat and a black wire to the center lead:
      
   3. Solder two wires to the leads of the switch:
      
   4. Solder a red wire to the first lead of the Audio Jack and a black wire to the second:
      
      
      
2. Take two wires and connect power to power and ground to ground so that when you power the breadboard you will be able to use both power rails as power and ground:
   
3. Insert the LM386 chip over the gutter of your breadboard. Make sure that the circle is facing in the same direction as you see in the image. The pin closest to the circle is pin 1. On the same side are pins2-4. On the other side of the chip on a diagonal from pin 1 and across from pin 4 is pin 5. The pin at the top of the chip across from pin 1 is pin 8:
   
4. Connect the red lead of the potentiometer to pin 1 and the black lead to pin 8. This potentiometer will control the volume:
   
5. Use a wire to connect pin 2 to a GND rail:
   
6. Connect pin 3 to a row on the breadboard with the .01µF capacitor:
   
7. Connect the other side of the capacitor to the red lead of the audio jack and the black lead to the GND rail
   
8. Connect pin 4 to the GND rail:
   
9. Connect pin 5 to a row on the breadboard and that row to the 10ohm resistor. Connect the resistor to GND trough the 47n capacitor:
   
10. Add the 220µF Capacitor (the long lead) to the same row that is connected to pin 5:
    
11. Connect the red wire of Rheostat to the short lead of the 220µF Capacitor and the black wire to a row on the breadboard:
    
12. Connect a red wire (later this will connect to your paper speaker) to the black wire of the Rheostat and a black wire (later connected to your paper speaker) to the GND rail:
    
    Connect Power and GND through the 100µF capacitor:
    
13. Remove the red wire that connects power to power:
    
14. Connect the two wires of the switch to the power rails
    
15. Connect the 9V battery connector to the board:
    
16. Attach the battery, and connect an iphone to the circuit to test:
    

Puzzles and Maps

Inkscape

Zoom Presets

Image from chrishilbig.com

1. The Spiro Path tool. This tool that will automatically convert any path you create to be a better and orderly path. There are three kinds of items that you can use to create a Spiro Path. The Triangle, Ellipse, and From Clipboard. Select Noneif you don't want to use a shape and just want to make a line. Using just the line tool, you can easily create your own style of floral design or swirly curl.
   
   

   ---

2. Path Effects
   The Spiro Path uses two kinds of path effects, Spiro Spline and Pattern Along Path. Pattern Along Path gives you the opportunity to cut shapes, and paste them so that you can edit it as you like to get the shape you want. Note that the Spiro Path has limitations, which sometimes makes the path broken when using edit on canvas. Undo to fix it. When you select Pattern Along Path the pattern that you can modify will be found in the upper left corner of the page. Add points, modify the closed form and see how the flourish cha
3. Create Tiled Clones
   This tool is useful for creating a pattern or forming the composition of the clones of your Spiro Path. There are several types of symmetry you can use when making clones. Using the few Spiro Paths you can create good designs with this tool.

1. Find an svg on the internet and import into Inkscape.
2. Reduce the size and rotate 45°
   
3. Duplicate (CTRL+D), move and flip horizontally:
   
4. Select both images and duplicate again. Move the duplicated images below the fold and flip vertically:
   
5. Select all 4 paths and under the Path menu select Combine
   

Vectorized Portraits

1. Start with preferably a high resolution image of the face you want to use
   
2. Delete the background
   
3. Adjust the levels
   
4. Select Image>Adjustments>Threshold to reduce the colors to black and white.
   
5. I adjusted my image to 100
   
6. Save the image
   
7. Simplify if you need to:
   
8. For the cutter software on Windows you need a .jpg or a .bmp file. On Mac you will use Illustrator with a plug in.
9. If you want to create an svg too open a vector program like Inkscape.
10. Open the image in the program
    
11. Select Path>Trace Bitmap
    
12. Click Update and OK to convert the bitmap to vector
    
13. Save as an .eps file
14. Load the electronic Cutter.
    
    Make sure the cutter is off
    
15. Unhinge the latch in the back:
    
16. Load a roll on top of the feeder rollers
    
17. pull material through to make sure it does not catch on the lip of the machine:
    
18. Position the little wheels to the edge of your material then close the latch
    
19. Adjust your options. Select our feed style. Select 60 gf for light material (paper, thin vinyl) or 120 gf for glossy heavy duty vinyl
    
20. Convert your graphic in CutStudio
    
    Import your graphic
    
21. Select object then click Object>Image Outline
    
22. Click on Extract Contour Lines (you may need to adjust the image density )
    
23. Once you click the button you should see blue lines.
24. Select Cutting
    
25. Select File>Print. Let it auto-detect the margins.