is it possible to for vinyl to be cut on a router?

[Richard]

I have to say that I have no experience of routers at all, certaintly not when fitted with a plotter blade.

However, a shot in the dark…it sounds to me that you need to be able to set what is known generally on vinyl plotters as “offset”.

This forces the knife holder through a complex path at corners to compensate for the distance between the centre of the blade (about which it rotates) and the tip which cuts.

This Graphtec article covers it quite well http://www.graphteccorp.com/support/appnotes/TNC_004_Accurate_Blade_Setup.pdf

I don’t know were you’ll be able to set this from, but might the company that supplied the blade & holder be able to throw some light?

Good luck

[Rab]

I did this recently for my own router by making a simple attatchment, but had to write in some new algorithms to my software to account for the blade offset which is what your problem seems to be.

If your router uses standard G-Code or even HPGL then you can use my CNC Toolkit (don’t worry, it’s a free beta version) if you need.

Regards,

Rab

http://www.rainnea.com/cnc.htm

[Paul Lowry]

Thanks Richard & Rab,
My problem was indeed a blade offset issue, I was trying this on a old version of the pacer control software which did not take into account the offset. A quick update from Pacer and a few hours experimentation today and I’m now happily ‘routing’ vinyl.

Rab I’m gonna take a look at your download and see how it compares to my current set up.

Thanks again.

If anyone is intrested in this operation get in touch
I might even do a tutorial on it.

C ya

[Paul Lowry]

Hi There

Just had a look at your link Rab – Love the stuff you have done on there

top quality – thanks again for the advice.

[Rab]

No bother Paul, I’ve had a lot of help from the folks here on general sign making, so glad I can contribute a bit in return.

I started work on an algorithm for tangential emulation for when one cut is close to the opposite direction from the last cut as I was getting occassional tearing on the vinyl but using a different blade holder solved it anyway.

What is your attatchment like ?

Let us know how you get on anyway,

Regards,

Rab

[Paul Lowry]

My attachment is made for the machine by pacer. Its a standard attachment made by them.

The latest software from them solves the problem of ‘ripping’ on the corners by cutting slightly wide of the corner and then coming back on itsself. If you imagine a square corner, instead of getting to the end of one line and then tuning 90 degrees the cutter continues cutting and comes back round in a circle so it is at 90 degree to the original line.
I dont think i explained this very well !!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway it works !!!!!!!!!

Thank for the info Rab – much appriciated