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Computer Controlled Cutting 💻🎬🪚

🎨 Vinyl Cutting

🔧 Introduction to Vinyl Cutting

Image Vinyl cutting machine

At the FabLab, we use a Graphtec CE-7000 vinyl cutter, a professional-grade machine known for its accuracy and efficiency. But before we got our hands on it, Akhilesh Sir gave us a safety briefing and machine walkthrough.

Image Fab-ulous 5 at the vinyl cutter

Rather than diving straight into explanations, he started with a question:
“What do you think this machine does?” 🤔

A few of us took guesses—some mentioned sticker cutting, others said sign-making—but as we soon learned, there’s a lot more to it than just sending a file to the machine and watching it cut.

🛠️ Understanding the Machine

Akhilesh Sir walked us through the key components and functions:

  • The Blade Mechanism 🪡 – He removed the tiny cutting needle, showing how adjusting it clockwise extends the blade, while turning it counterclockwise retracts it. This tiny adjustment plays a huge role in ensuring the vinyl gets cut properly without damaging the backing paper.

Image Blade

  • Material Loading 📏 – To prevent misalignment, we had to:
  • Adjust the push rollers to ensure the vinyl feeds smoothly.
  • Define the cutting area on the machine’s interface.
  • Use the lever at the back to secure the material properly.

Image

Image Loading the material

  • Setting the Cutting Conditions ⚙️ – Depending on the type of vinyl, we had to tweak parameters like:
  • Cutting Force (how deep the blade cuts)
  • Speed (how fast the cutter moves)

Image Cutting Parameters

  • Blade Offset (compensating for blade position shifts)

Image Selecting the front edge of the medium

Since we were cutting regular adhesive vinyl, our goal was to adjust the force and speed so that only the sticker layer was cut—not the backing paper. This ensures easy peeling and transfer.

After making these adjustments, we set the origin point and conducted our first test cut—a simple square—to check if the settings were correct.

🐉 My First Vinyl Cut – House Targaryen!

By the next day, I had a good understanding of how the machine worked in principle, but now it was time to create something personal and exciting.

Akhilesh Sir introduced us to Graphtec Pro Studio, the software we would use to send designs to the vinyl cutter.

Image

The interface was intuitive and user-friendly, with a lot of essential tools for:
✅ Importing vector graphics
✏️ Manually adjusting paths
🖌️ Image tracing – a powerful tool that automatically converts bitmap images into cuttable vector paths

Image Interface of Graphtec studio

Image It has a dark mode yay!

🔥 For my first cut, I chose the sigil of House Targaryen—the three-headed dragon!
- I imported the symbol, adjusted its size, and traced its edges to generate cutting paths.

Image Importing the vector

Image Tracing the outlines

  • With everything looking good on the screen, I was ready to cut!

Image Connecting the Vinyl cutter through USB

Image Cutting preview

🚨 First Attempt – Not Deep Enough!

I excitedly loaded the vinyl, set the origin, and sent the design to the cutter. The machine came to life, the blade swiftly moving over the material, carving out the dragon emblem.

But when I tried to peel the sticker… something was wrong. 😟

  • The cuts weren’t deep enough—some parts of the design didn’t separate properly.
  • The intricate details of the dragon’s heads and wings lost sharpness.

I quickly realized my mistake: the cutting force was too low. The blade wasn’t pressing down enough to cut through the sticker layer cleanly.

Image

Innacuracies of the first attempt

🏆 Perfecting the Cut

To fix this, I increased the cutting force from 8 to 10, ensuring a deeper cut. This time… SUCCESS! 🎯

  • The cuts were sharp and clean.
  • The details of the dragon sigil remained intact.
  • The gold vinyl sticker lifted smoothly without any tearing.

I carefully transferred the final sticker onto a surface, and it looked amazing—a perfect gold Targaryen sigil to flaunt! ✨🐉

Image Final Outcome

The Art of the Perfect Peel

  • Transfer tape is underrated. Seriously. Cutting is just one part, but the real magic is using transfer tape to lift your design and apply it seamlessly—so you can flaunt it wherever you want. ✨
  • First attempt? Disaster. ❌ The cut wasn’t deep enough, so the vinyl ripped while lifting.

Image First application attempt

I had to step in with a small cutting edge to manually remove the excess vinyl. A delicate operation. 🫣
- Second attempt? Smooth as butter. ✅ Updated the cutting settings, and this time, it lifted off perfectly!

Image Second attempt

  • Biggest challenge? Separating the tiny dragon scales from the backing material. 🐉 But hey, with more practice, I know I’ll crack this like a pro! 💪🔥

Image The chronicles of the transfer tape

🔥 Laser Cutting – Beyond the Basics

I’ve been using the laser cutter for a few years, so I felt confident about it. Too confident, actually. Just doing the assignment wasn’t enough—I needed to push myself, break things (figuratively... mostly), and learn something new.

🛠️ A Look Inside – Understanding the CO₂ Laser

Before we even started cutting, Akhilesh Sir decided to make things interesting. Instead of just giving us a safety rundown, he opened up the back panels and walked us through how the CO₂ laser actually works. And let me tell you—it was like opening up an ancient spellbook but with plasma and mirrors instead of magic and dragons.

Here’s what we learned:
- Inside the machine, there’s a CO₂ tube where electrons jump between anode and cathode, creating a plasma discharge that produces the laser. ⚡
- This tube is kept cool using water from a chiller unit, ensuring it doesn’t overheat and explode (okay, not explode, but let’s not test it). ❄️
- The laser beam itself is invisible, so if you ever see it, it’s probably the last thing you’ll see. 👀
- The beam is guided by angled mirrors to the nozzle, where it gets focused onto the material.
- Loose clothing? A fire hazard. Skin in the wrong place? Burn city. Basically, we were told: Respect the laser, or the laser will teach you a painful lesson.

📏 Group Assignment – Kerf and Focus Tests

With our newfound (slightly terrifying) knowledge, we jumped into the group assignment—figuring out the kerf and focus of the machine. We split into teams, and Sohan, Devanshi, and I took on the 30-degree method:
- We placed a piece of material at a 30-degree angle and cut a line.
- The thinnest part of the cut was our focus point.
- Using some basic trigonometry, we calculated the focus distance.

Then, we moved on to the comb method to determine kerf:
- Our material was 3 mm thick, so we made slots ranging from 2.7 mm to 3.4 mm.
- After cutting, we checked which slot fit perfectly—turns out, 2.8 mm was the winner.
- That meant 0.1 mm of material was burned away on each side—our kerf was 0.1 mm. Precision at its finest. 🎯

Image Uploading the file on RD works

Image Trying to cut it out on MDF

🍂 Experimenting – Engraving on Leaves

I wanted to push the limits of what I could engrave, so I decided to try something unusual—leaves. 🍃

To do this, I needed to rasterize an image, so I used ImageR, an online tool that converts images for laser engraving. Leaves weren’t listed as an option, so I chose cork, a similar organic material.

After adjusting power and speed settings, I tried a few different leaves. Some burned completely, others came out too faint. But after multiple iterations, I found the perfect balance.

The result? A delicate engraving that preserved the veins and structure of the leaf, without burning through.

🔄 Exploring Auxetic Structures

What are auxetic structures?

Auxetic materials behave in an unusual way—they expand when stretched, instead of becoming thinner. This makes them incredibly useful for shock absorption, medical applications, and flexible materials.

I hand-cut one auxetic unit to understand how the cuts should be placed. Then, I tessellated the pattern into a 4×4 grid, creating a flexible, expandable structure. I think this could be useful as a buffer material in my final project—possibly for impact resistance.

Image Paper prtotypes of auxetic structures

🏗️ Project: Parametric Phoenix (or... an Angry Lobster?)

Now came the fun part—designing my parametric construction kit. Inspired by the mythical Phoenix, I wanted each individual piece to have an organic, fiery form. What followed was a battle with Fusion 360.

  • I imported my DXF file from Illustrator, ready to set user parameters for my slot dimensions.
  • But then... Fusion 360 had other plans. The moment I added curves, the user parameters option became inaccessible. 🤦
  • After multiple failed attempts to troubleshoot, I decided to ditch the DXF and trace the design from memory using the Spline tool.

💡 Pro tip (learned the hard way): Set your slot parameters before sketching curves. Otherwise, Fusion just decides you don’t deserve nice things.

Once the design was ready, I:
- Exported the DXF from Fusion 360 to Illustrator to optimize layout and reduce material waste. ♻️
- Arranged the pieces as tightly as possible—because wasted material = wasted money.

💀 Unexpected Challenge: The PC Gave Up on Life

Just when I thought things were running smoothly... the PC connected to the laser cutter decided it was done with existence. 🖥️⚰️

But we had a workaround!
- We used RDWorks as the encoding software.
- I uploaded my file to another PC, set the power and speed, and exported it as a .rd file.
- Copied the file onto my pendrive and plugged it directly into the laser cutter.
- Navigated through the Udisk menu, selected Read Udisk, saw the files magically appear, selected them all, copied them to the machine, set the origin and focus—and we were ready to cut!

🔥 Burning Lessons

The power setting I chose? A little too high. Result? Some parts of my corrugated 3-ply board were charred into oblivion. Lesson learned: Next time, lower the power and do more test cuts.
Image Burnt ends

🦋 Playing with Forms

Image Pile of possibilities

With my laser-cut pieces finally in hand, I started experimenting with different forms.
- First, I made butterflies (because why not?).

Image Butterflies

  • Then, after some rearranging, I attempted a phoenix...
  • ...and ended up with an angry, skinny lobster instead. 😂

Honestly, I’m keeping it. Lobster Phoenix is officially a thing now.

✨ Takeaway

This week reminded me that no matter how long you’ve been using a machine, there’s always more to learn. Between troubleshooting Fusion 360, learning about CO₂ lasers, and reviving dead PCs, I gained a whole new appreciation for the process.

Now, onto the next challenge! 🚀