hello, my name is katrin and today i will show you how to use a cutting plotter. the cutting plotter works like a printing plotter except that it moves a blade inside a tool carriage instead of a print head. it is used for cutting out graphics from adhesive vinyl sheets to make wall art for instance. it can also cut graphics from so called flex films that are suitable for customizing textiles. the cutting plotter has two moveable pinch rollers
that hold the material in place and ensure proper tracking during operation. they can be manually adjusted along the guide rail. it’s important to know that the distance between the pinch rollers defines the maximum cutting width. the plotter can only cut inside the area between the two pinch rollers. so the actual cutting width is the distance between the pinch rollers minus ca. 3 cm. now i will show you step by step how the cutting plotter works by cutting out the happylab logo from adhesive vinyl. it’s important to first insert your vinyl sheet into the machine before you power it on.
after you power it on the tool carriage will automatically move sideways and measure the size of the sheet media. that’s why you should always load your material first. the pinch rollers hold your material in place. you will find the pinch rollers in the center area. they can be adjusted by lifting the levers at the back side of the cutter. make sure to always put the pinch rollers within the white marks. sheet media can only be loaded between the white marks. the alignment rulers will help you adjust your media accordingly.
they help position the vinyl sheet so that it doesn’t slip out from under the pinch rollers. now to fixate the sheet i will push the lever backward to lower down the pinch rollers. when using smaller vinyl sheets you need to make sure they cover a built-in sensor that is located at the front here or else the machine won’t cut. after loading the material i can power on the cutter with my member card. the tool carriage will automatically measure the size of the sheet. then the blade carriage will move back to its zero point at the front right corner. the zero point is where your print job starts.
before i start cutting i should always check on the blade. there might be accumulated media residue, which could effect the cutting quality. i can remove the blade by unscrewing the holder. now i can remove the blade holder and push this pin all the way in. now that i can see the blade i check for media residue. there is no residue here and i can insert back the blade.
i have to screw the blade holder back on and the cutting plotter is ready to use. the next step is processing the file on the computer. as our cutting software we will use coreldraw, a vector based program. this means that our files are line-based. the cutting plotter will slide the blade along the lines we have defined before. i will start by opening a vector-based file. suitable formats are eps or dxf for instance. after opening the image
make sure to set all the lines to „hairline“ and avoid surface shading altogether. surfaces and lines that are thicker than the set hairline will not be processed by the cutting plotter. now i will select my image and set the line width to „hairline“ at the bottom right of the screen. to get a sense of how the image will look like go to the view menu and select „wireframeâ€. this tells me which lines are actually going to be cut.
with coreldraw you can also edit your image. it has three useful functions: 1. rotating the image to use up the least amount of your material. i can change the angle of rotation up here by typing in a value in this box. 2. mirroring the image is important when using flex film. select the object and click on “horizontal mirror†up here
to flip the object from left to right. because flex foil can only be cut in reverse you have to mirror your image first. 3. „scaling“ allows you to resize your image. i can find this function up here. select the lock ratio symbol to change the dimensions of your image proportionally. i can either specify the percentage or type in a value in millimeter.
once i have my desired settings i click on file - print. i can choose from several printers at happylab. for this job i have to select the cutting plotter. under properties i can review the default settings with two important properties: pen speed and pen force. usually the preferences are already set in accordance to the available vinyl sheets at happylab but you should always check the set preferences first to be on the safe side. if you’re not sure about the required settings, you can look them up in our happylab wiki. on wiki.happylab.at you can find the right settings for your print job.
in the second tab you can set the size of your sheet. our vinyl foil is 500 millimeters long and 600 millimeters wide. i click „ok“ and move on to the print preview. here i can see a full preview of my image. this is not the most economical position for the sheet right now. if i want to quickly reposition my image i can set the image to be automatically positioned at the lower left corner which is useful because the zero point is located at the bottom left. after i adjusted the settings
i can send the print job via file - print. the machine has finished the operation and i can remove the sheet completely but before i will show you a little trick. i can use the machine to move the vinyl sheet and make a straight rectangular cut. i recommend using a scalpel for smooth results. i will switch the machine to off-line mode. now i can use the arrow keys to advance the sheet to where i want to make a cut.
then i just cut the sheet along this blade slot here. to remove the sheet i have to loosen the platen by lifting the lever in the back of the cutter. now i can pull the sheet forward and out the front of the cutter. in the next step we will weed our sheet by removing the unwanted material from our work using the same scalpel. it helps to carefully lift up those parts i want to remove. first i will cut off my image. with the scalpel’s tip i can carefully lift up the areas i want peeled off
after i have finished weeding the image, i can transfer it onto various surfaces like brick walls, windows, cars etc. when transferring we use a clear transfer tape that we apply to the front of our artwork. it helps position the sticker exactly where you want it to go. how to use and apply the transfer tape is explained in another video.