The process is actually surprisingly simple, all you need is to mask out the design you want through the use of a vinyl cutter and then pouring some etching solution over it. He even notes how he custom-built a pogo-pin header at the end of the USBASP programmer to be able to easily use the same ICSP pinout in future projects.īut since a lot of you are likely all too familiar with the ins and outs of your basic Arduino projects, you’ll be more interested in the next steps, detailing how he milled the solid wood base and etched the glass that fits onto it. First, the electronics driving the WS2812 lights are designed from scratch based on an ATtiny microcontroller on a PCB designed in Fritzing, and the sources necessary for replicating those at home are all available on GitHub. There are a few different steps to this build and each one is beautifully detailed for anyone who wants to follow along. However, if you want to kick things up a notch, shows us how to build a plaque from scratch using not acrylic, but rather etched glass to make the finished product look that much more professional. The chances are you’ve seen the myriad cheap copyright-infringing edge-lit acrylic displays from Chinese suppliers everywhere on the internet, and indeed, etching acrylic with a modest CNC laser cutter has become easily viable to a lot of us in more recent years. And in case a plain old’ vinyl cutter blade wont do the trick, why not try running it at ultrasonic speeds?Ĭontinue reading “Vinyl Cutter Migrates From Scrapbooks To Gaskets” → Posted in Tool Hacks Tagged gasket, gasket copying, vinyl cutter It seems like we often hear about vinyl-cut gaskets in passing or in the comments, but it’s great to see a team post such a fabulous success story putting them to good use. Finally, sizing “by eye” in the vinyl cutter’s software after measuring an existing dimension gives them sufficient precision to remake a duplicate gasket that’s eye-for-eye indistiguishable from the original. Some light work in photoshop cleans up everything except the resulting gasket they’re looking for. By starting with an image of the existing gasket, they capture a reference image. In the video after the break, the two step us through their process in detail. Not to be dismayed, he turned to his fiancee and the two of them managed to design and cut a perfectly fitting replacement gasket on vinyl cutter in a mere matter of minutes. That’s exactly where found himself one evening: with a torn gasket. And while waiting may reward the patient, creativity may reward those who act now. In the late hours of the night, no hardware store will open its doors. We know it all too well: another smoothly-operating night in the garage easily halted by a broken component. Continue reading “Making PCBs With A Vinyl Cutter” → Posted in cnc hacks Tagged pcb, surface mount, vinyl cutter The really interesting part for us was using the vinyl cutter to make three parts of the process: the etching mask, the solder mask that protects the traces and the solder stencil that applies the solder to the pads for surface mounting. The whole process is very well written up, and even experienced PCB makers will probably find a few useful tricks here. The end result of the process that lays out is the tinyDice, a cute little electronic die that can fit on a keyring. While we’ve seen plenty of make your own PCB guides before, this one goes a bit further as it covers using the vinyl cutter to make solder masks, so you can use it for surface mount designs. You might assume that you need a lot of expensive stuff to make your own PCBs, but that isn’t the case: you can do it with a vinyl cutter and a few common chemicals and tools. Video after the break.Ĭontinue reading “From Printer To Vinyl Cutter” → Posted in cnc hacks, hardware Tagged 3d printing, arduino, inkjet printer, pcb, vinyl, vinyl cutter But if you don’t have a CNC, shares all the STL files for his cutter as well as the schematic. If you don’t have a printer on hand, you can always use your CNC as a vinyl cutter. From the outside, it’s hard to believe that HP didn’t manufacture this as a vinyl cutter. For example, the old PCB was cut and connectors were re-used. What we love about this build is the ingenuity and reuse of parts inside the old printer. An Arduino Uno takes in commands from a computer with the help of a CNC GRBL shield. A solenoid-based push/pull mechanism for the cutting blade was added with a 3D printed housing along with a relay module. The feed mechanism was reworked to be driven by a stepper motor with some 3D printed adapter plates. saw an old inkjet printer and instead saw a smooth gantry and feed mechanism, the perfect platform to build his own DIY vinyl cutter. Some might look at a cheap inkjet printer and see a clunky device that costs more to replace the ink than to buy a new one.
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