MPCNC Vinyl Cutting: Squidwrench Logo

The Mighty Thor provided the new-ish Squidwrench logo in various digital formats, not including DXF, but dxf2gcode can process PDF files (and a few others), and the cutting / weeding / transfer ended well:

MPCNC Vinyl Cutting - Squidwrench logo on mug
MPCNC Vinyl Cutting – Squidwrench logo on mug

That’s the same 14 mil gold vinyl you saw in the Crown test.

Alas, I re-covered the pattern with the transfer film when I ran the mug through the dishwasher, in the mistaken belief the film would protect the vinyl. Come to find out the film adheres better to the vinyl than to the mug: it pulled loose during washing and peeled most of the logo off the mug.

Setting the drag knife to cut hot pink 9 mil = 0.25 mm vinyl film produced another logo:

SqWr logo - hot pink
SqWr logo – hot pink

It’s now survived several trips through the dishwasher with no protection, so I’ll call it a win.

I set dxf2gcode to use a cutting depth = 1.0 mm for about 400 g of downforce, which seems to work, although the vinyl surface showed some marks from the flat nose around the drag knife blade.

The USB camera provides a convenient way to set the “workpiece origin” before cutting:

bCNC - Video align
bCNC – Video align

Because the camera sits 130 mm beyond the blade in the +Y direction, it can’t see the swathe along the front of the MPCNC. Hard and soft limits in bCNC / GRBL keep you (well, me) from smashing the gantry into the rails, but it’s a nuisance when you forget to tape the vinyl far enough from the front.