Vinyl Express Vinyl Cutter

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Hive13 Equipment
List of All Documented Equipment
Owner/Loaner: Hive13
Hive13 Asset Tag: None
Make/Model: Vinyl Express Q60 (google)
Arrival Date: 1/15/2015
Does it work?: Yes
Certification Needed?: No
Contact: Fab Lab area Warden
Floorplan: 1A

Overview

Fully functional. Donated by a friend of Dave B (Tony). Will cut up to 24" vinyl sheets.

The hive should figure out a system for stocking vinyl and charging for it (just to break even).

Setup

Install driver. Plug in Vinyl Express Q60 into your computer. Under device and printers you should see an unspecified ‘USB Printing Support’. Right click and select ‘Troubleshoot’. It should automatically install the drivers, and then identify the Vinyl Express Q60 under Printers and Faxes.

Network Access (July 2019)

The vinyl cutter is available over IPP at http://172.16.2.215:631/printers/VinylExpress_Q60 Linux and Mac devices should handle this fairly well (install the generic text-only driver). Windows 10 needs IPP support enabled, you can do this with PowerShell...

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Printing-Foundation-InternetPrinting-Client

Adding a printer by URL to Windows

Let it chug for a bit, then you're ready to download the printer driver from the links at the bottom of this page. Once you have the zip file extracted, you are ready to go to the "add a printer" sequence in Windows. Tell windows it sucks at searching for your printer ("The printer I want isn't listed") and type the URL in the box that appears, as shown to the left.

At this point you'll be asked for the printer drivers. Click the "have disk" button and browse to your extracted driver folder. The Q60 is a rebranded Graphtec FC-7000, so select that one from the list.

Now you're ready to shred some vinyl and if you're really lucky, you'll have a good looking cut to stick on your laptop. Or something.

Notes

Cutting Program

I use Inkscape 0.48.5 to prep my image, but you need a program to actually cut the Vinyl. I used Sign Cut, but Linux has a free app linked to Inkscape called Inkcut. Some people have had success in running Inkcut on windows, and there is a tutorial here. http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=4987&start=100

To print an image using Inkscape and Signcut, choose any image, and open it inside Inkscape. With the image selected, go to ‘Path > Trace Bitmap...’. Edge detection seems to be the easiest to use, but play around with settings. The lower the threshold the more detailed the picture. Keep it around .5, but may vary depending on what image you are using. When you are done with that, select your bitmap image and go to ‘Object > Fill and Stroke...’. In the ‘Fill’ tab, click the ‘X’. This will cause your image to disappear temporarily. Now click the ‘Stroke paint’ tab, and click the blue rectangle (right of the ‘X’). This will render your image so that It can now be cut. Save your image (for Signcut, .svg is fine) and you can now import into your cutting program.

Cutter Setup

Once you're ready to cut, turn on the vinyl cutter. select 'Rear Set' (Roll-1 or Roll-2 doesn't matter for this cutter). If it's says 'Front Set' press the left or right position button until it displays the 'Rear Set'. Press 'F1'.

The next screen will say 'Press enter key after releasing media lock'. Here is where you can release the media set lever and adjust the pinch rollers. The distance between the pinch rollers determine how wide of a printing surface you have to work with, so adjust to the edges of the vinyl. I try to leave about an inch of wiggle room on each side. Once the media and the pinch rollers are aligned, pull the media bar back into it's default position and press enter.

The pen carriage will now calibrate and sense the cutting distance between the two pinch rollers. Once it's done calibrating, it will say 'Condition #' and display ready. Once you get to the ready screen you can print from your vinyl cutting program.

WARNING!: When on the ready screen, you can adjust the Force, Speed, Quality, etc. A Force of 14 barely didn't cut all the way through, and 35 ripped the vinyl. Force of 20 seems like the best average setting.

Inkcut scaling settings

x = 2.86

y = 2.93

HPGL vs. GPGL - Inkcut on Linux

When using Inkcut from Code LV on Linux, I had much more luck switching the cutter and Inkcut to using GPGL instead of HPGL - the software doesn't seem to insert HPGL "pen up" commands and the cutter will happily shred the vinyl. -User:Kungfoo

To switch or verify the command language used on the cutter:

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  Before loading media, press the F4 key to enter the initial configuration menu.

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  Press F4 to enter the interface menu.

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  Press F4 to enter the command language menu.

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  From this screen, you can press F3 to select GPGL and F4 to select HPGL. Press the Enter key at bottom right when you are finished.

Manuals

http://signvue.info/techsupport/manuals/VEX_Q06_152.pdf

Drivers

Install drivers from sign warehouse or graphtec (The sign warehouses Q60 is essentially a re-branded Graphtec FC-7000)

Windows

https://www.graphtecamerica.com/s/OPS662ver300-z22p.zip <- CURRENT AS OF 2019

http://www.signwarehouse.com/blog-support/q-series-driver-windows-32-bit/

http://www.signwarehouse.com/blog-support/q-series-driver-windows-64-bit/

http://www.graphtecamerica.com/graphtec-america-support-downloads-cutting-plotters-discontinued-legacy-cutting-plotters-fc7000-series

Mac

http://www.graphtecamerica.com/graphtec-america-support-downloads-cutting-plotters-discontinued-legacy-cutting-plotters-fc7000-series

Gallery

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  First display screen.

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  Suggested settings on ready screen.

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  Force set at 35.

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  First successful print!

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  Front door.

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  Laser cutter.