Gimp To Vinyl Cutter

Cutting vinyl letters and shapes.

Gimp to vinyl cutter.

That eps file can have very thin hairline lines of a specific color 100 magenta to tell the rip software where to cut. The versaworks software rip software needs an eps file to know what to print. We bought a jaguariv plotter for cutting clear bra but i was thinking that we could also use it to cut vinyl graphics. I m using a roland versastudio 20 vinyl printer cutter.

I have been watching some tutorials about paths and i m getting quite good at manipulating curves and such. How to take an image file on the desktop and turn it into something that the vinyl cutter will understand. Anytime i buy a new pc the first software i ll install is inkscape and gimp. It s free and a must have for all hobbyists.

The vinyl cutter uses a small knife to precisely cut the outline of a picture into a sheet or piece of vinyl. The knife moves side to side and turns while the vinyl is moved beneath the knife. With inkscape open the image file created in gimp. Add a box around the image leaving at least 2 3 of margin around all sides of your image so that the ink won t seep around the edges.

For some images you may need to do some editing first by using the path tools cut away any part of image you don t want then using selection as path then select invert then edit cut. When you have your design all set send it to the vinyl cutter. Cnc laser cutters vinyl cutters plasma waterjet routers they all will read a dxf file. To create my vector file i used inkscape.

What results from the cut process is an image cut into the material. But i don t know if i can output to the plotter from gimp. Click on image layer you want as the shape then layer add to selection then click on image layer you want cut then edit cut.