diagonal cuts rendering hundreds of stickers useless :/

turbooo
Oct. 11, 2020
chat_bubble_outline 6
  • link
    Members 4 posts
    Oct. 11, 2020, 12:57 p.m.
    link

    Hi,
    I am trying to do a batch of reflective stickers using inkcut on a macbook and a velor vinyl cutter. Whenever I am confident enough that I have everything set up correctly to leave the cutter running for a few hours, I will come back to see several diagonal cuts :/ These cuts do not show in the live preview. But they are executed and destroy expensive foil. Any ideas what could be wrong/how to fix this?

    photo of diagonal cut
    inkcut preview of above program

  • link
    Team
    Oct. 11, 2020, 3:55 p.m.
    link

    This sounds like the cutter firmware having a buffer overflow. Its a common problem cheap Chinese cutters, you get what you pay for.

    Either get a name brand cutter (eg Roland, Graphtec) or you can try to tinker around with feed rates and reduce the job size.

  • link
    Members 4 posts
    Oct. 11, 2020, 4:03 p.m.
    link

    Thanks for the quick reply!
    Yes, that could well be the issue.. so this cutter is running at the default settings (9600baud + "e Speed +6Val e"). I have compiled inkcut from master and now it starts to stutter and cut really slow after a row of stickers :/ I believe this happens when the cutter 'catches up' to the live preview in inkcut.
    The feedrate is already kinda slow at 70mm/s. My plan was to keep the cutter running for a day. So I'll try a lower baud rate?

  • link
    Team
    Oct. 11, 2020, 4:26 p.m.
    link

    Baudrate shouldn't matter.

    When spooling is disabled inkcut will throttle the rate it sends commands based on the feed rate setting to try and reduce the memory needed on the device.

  • link
    Members 4 posts
    Oct. 11, 2020, 5:13 p.m.
    link

    I don't get why it is doing this stutter action now. Should I revert back to the 2.1.1 release? Spooling is disabled (it won't start cutting if I enable it). Also, I am using the " VE-810 (XD) Engraver" driver. Maybe this is what is causing my problems? It is a cheap "Vevor" Vinylcutter.

    Also, the overcut and offset settings do not seem to work as I hoped for: When weeding, the foil will often stick and/or cut at the knife entry points. The offset begins from inside the stickers instead from the part that gets weeded. And the overcut does nothing at all yet, does it?

  • link
    Members 4 posts
    Oct. 20, 2020, 1:11 p.m.
    link

    Is it possible that I have compiled a debug version and that this is causing the hicups? (2020-10-20 15:10:46,229 | INFO | inkcut | Version: 2.1.2dev)

    2020-10-20 14:18:25,370 | DEBUG   | inkcut | -> /dev/cu.usbserial-1410 | PD126,663;
2020-10-20 14:18:25,399 | DEBUG   | inkcut | -> /dev/cu.usbserial-1410 | PD129,656;
2020-10-20 14:18:25,427 | DEBUG   | inkcut | -> /dev/cu.usbserial-1410 | PU0,0;
2020-10-20 14:18:25,451 | DEBUG   | inkcut | device | finish
2020-10-20 14:18:25,451 | DEBUG   | inkcut | -> /dev/cu.usbserial-1410 | IN;
2020-10-20 14:18:25,475 | DEBUG   | inkcut | device | disconnect
2020-10-20 14:18:25,475 | DEBUG   | inkcut | -- /dev/cu.usbserial-1410 | closed by request
2020-10-20 14:18:25,481 | DEBUG   | inkcut | -- /dev/cu.usbserial-1410 | dropped: [Failure instance: Traceback (failure with no frames): <class 'twisted.internet.error.ConnectionDone'>: Connection was closed cleanly.
  • link
    Team
    Oct. 21, 2020, 1:56 a.m.
    link

    If the send rate/velocity setting is too slow it can cause it to jitter because the cutter will stop in between each movement while it waits for the next command to come.