Vinyl cutting
Used to make sticker and best use is to make PCB that are flexible. Can cut copper, epoxy and vinyl sheets.

Loading the material 
 Use this lever to release or secure the vinyl.

Materials should be between the two translucent patches as shown in the picture. These have rough surface in order to grip the papaer better. The wheels should secure the paper when the lever is engaged. The paper cant be secured in other places or any paper smaller than the length between two translucent rough patches.
Allign it: Parrallel to the scores provided in the machine.
Settings should remain as the following.
Pen force +2 always
Set different force and other setting from fab modules.
The patch of
127
441
Do a Test cut to check if it is working good. It cuts a square inside a circle and the criteria that the vinyl cutter is good condition is that the inner square should remain stuck to the base but the exterior circle with square hole should come off

The Test button needs to be long pressed for around 500 ms

Problem

The circle came out with the square so the cutting is in complete.
We tried the following to troubleshoot

1. Blade length increased.
This didnt help and increasing the blade length too much is not recommended and it actually ponts to different problem.
2. We removed the blade and inspected it. Debris were found, We cleaned it but these debris cant cause a severe problem as not cutting. It can cause problem in free rotation of the blade and improper cut. We were getting clean lines but not deep enough cut.


3. Inspection of the blade tip.
We inspected the blades under a microscope camera and compared a brand new blade with the used blade. The problem was evident. The edge was blunt and edges eroded.

Ideal length of the blade length looks like this.

The final test cut looks good.


Setting origin

Move the vinyl to desired location. Usually bottom corner of the paper or any free space or space good enough for your piece. Origin has to be set now. To set origin long press Origin button.

Setting up Ubuntu and Fab modules for vinyl
Connect the vinyl cutter to the computer and  open http://localhost:631/ in web browser to access the CUPS.
CUPS is the standards-based, open source printing system developed by Apple Inc. for OS® X and other UNIX®-like operating systems.

Follow these steps to add and configure roland vinyl cutter to ubuntu.

Adminstration-> Add printer->Roland GX-24
Name it as "vinyl". Do not vary these.
Choose RAW for drivers. This means that the printer is going to directly controlled by the computer. The software that does it is the fab modules and through this we bypass the drivers installation and configuration etc.
In the "Printer tab"

Work with the settings from top to botttom and letf to right.
Top most is -  Type of material
Then Load png
Make path,
Make camm
and Send it.

Sometimes the printer doesn't run from the fabmodules
The following troubleshooting can be attempted and were attempted while using the vnyl cutter.


Go to CUPS
Check jobs in cups
Cancel jobs
Go to printer tab it should b ready and not idle
Next
Pause and resume printer
Unplug and replug- Worked best for us


Things to note. Even though the vinyl machine automatically measures the length of the roll. It leaves about 2 inches of the material uncut. This is because the sensor that measures the sheet is placed farther away from the actually cutting area. It doesnt estimate the distance between the sensor and the cutting area and it is not considered. So you might feel like you have enough vinyl to be used but make sure it can be cut with 2 -3 inches away from the end of the sheet.
Final product.

Preparing Laptops and Lab Computers

Since fabacademy philosophy roots in opensourcing it only makes sense that Ubuntu and the free softwares are used. This allows free and ope access to anything and everything that is done in fablab. It allows repetability and a common framework that anyone can work with. One of most important of them is the OS itself which is the linux based UBUNTU system. The next most inportant software is  the fab modules which can control alomst any CNC machine that is present in fablab.

The pain of Ubuntu 

Ubuntu means 

"A quality that included the essential human virtue; compassion and humanity. there is a need for understanding not vengance, ubuntu is not victimization"

Indeed you need to have a all these to go through Ubuntu install and setup.

Creating digital accounts

During fabcademy you will be evaluated through your documentation which explains the world and the remote mentor or Neil what you have done. There will be times when your projects will be recommended by your remote mentor to higher faculty or Neil. They will see your website or the files you created. For these reason you need to learn to effectively express your work in a document. They should be online and freely available to anyone, they are opensource.

Day 4 week 1

Lab maintenance and Material handling

I took charge of Vinyl cutter and Roland Modela

I learned how to better handle the vinyl rolls. The vinyl rolls when kept vertically deform and get damaged at the edge which happens due to it not being able to support its own load properly. The correct way to keep a vinyl material is horizontal and the rolls to be taped at the open edge after use so that they don’t become loose.

The vinyl rolls were kept on the ground earlier.

Vinyl cutting

Used to make sticker and best use is to make PCB that are flexible. Can cut copper, epoxy and vinyl sheets.

Loading the material 

Use this lever to release or secure the vinyl.

Materials should be between the two translucent patches as shown in the picture. These have rough surface in order to grip the papaer better. The wheels should secure the paper when the lever is engaged.

Day 2 w2

Laser in our fablab is a trotec speedy 100 with that we have an atmos exhaust filter from trotec. Here's the laser machine and our super cool prefab guide and fabguru Francisco explaining about the filter system.

Polycarbonate lid and Atmos Exhaust Filter system

Filter parameters

Things to watch out for

Exhaust filter should be on.

Molding Casting and Roland Modela

The basic idea for this session is to create an 3D object through computer and try to make it in machinable wax in such a way that a molding pattern is created directly from it. Roland modela will machine the wax. We will try to replicate this object by creating a silicone mold and later use the silicone mold to cast hard plastic into it.

Day 5

Shopbot

Notes:

Designing for milling

Due to tool radius inner corner of a hole or a pocket cant be sharp. Overmilling is advised in such cases.

Good design guidelines for milling.

http://blog.inventables.com/2014/06/learn-about-milling-inside-corner.html

http://www.efunda.com/processes/machining/mill_design.cfm

Better to use antimony to design material to be milled.

Dia max to be used for milling in shopbot- 6mm

Dia max to be used for milling in roland -3mm.

Week 3 Day 1

This week we move to electronics design and fabrication.

Today we started with electronics production. The goal was to fabricate a pcb from an already existing design. We use roland modela to fabricate the PCB.

Assignment: to fabricate a version of fabISP using Roland modela and fab modules.

Process

We downloaded the the following designs.

Week 3 Day2

Many of the fabacademy cad items are design that have .cad extension. These were designed in kokopelli. .cad file is basically a python script. Today we try to edit and understand how the script ad kokopelli.

Assignment

We add components to a hello.ftdi.44.cad and wires on a board and fabricate it.

Consider the following methods of programing a microcontroller

Arduino ide- most user-friendly, many tools, quick,  easy

C  - intermediate difficult, need to have more hardware knowledge, more efficient in code handling and storing, more freedom to program.

Assembly lowest level of programing, need to have through understanding of the hardware also, more difficult, highly efficient in code handling and occupies least storage, and allows most freedom to program.
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