Difference between revisions of "Equipment/VinylCutterOld"

Revision as of 23:17, 20 August 2010

Status

I have had a certain amount of success running the cutter with a serial connection from Inkscape under Linux. More messing around is needed.--Artag 13:32, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Model

Roland CAMM-1 PNC-950. PDF manual, FAQ.

Specifications

It holds up to 610mm (24") media and cuts up to 584mm ( ~23").
Length is essentially unlimited as it can use roll-feed media but seems to be restricted to 25m.

Instructions

Quick setup guide

Set inkscape to hpgl output
draw figure and print to a file
set serial port to 9600 8n1, crtscts.
connect blue cable (a 9-pin gender-changer is needed at the PC end)
load vinyl, switch cutter on. cutter should park at right hand side
press Setup, cutter parks at left. Move cutter if necessary with cursor buttons, press Origin Set to mark lower right corner of drawing
cat the inkscape output file to the serial port

It should be possible to enable the serial port as a printer and print direct to it, but I found this produced cutter errors (flashing power light) and no cut.

The following file was generated by inkskape for a star shape. This almost works : the first leg is replaced by a poorly cut arc. May imply a need for some sort of initialisation data.

IN;
SP1;
PU3999,6429;
PD2693,5186;
PD929,5557;
PD1707,3932;
PD809,2369;
PD2596,2606;
PD3805,1269;
PD4131,3042;
PD5776,3778;
PD4191,4636;
PD3999,6429;
PD3999,6429;

Tips

Sometimes the cutter refuses to print or respond to any buttons. This hasn't happened since I opened a door in the bottom of the printer and poked an EPROM there, so may be due to some poor internal connection.

Serial cable

The serial cable (blue, with a 25WD at one end and a 9WD at the other) is connected as follows :

Cutter, 25 pin male D	PC, 9 pin female D	Use
pin 2	pin 2	PC RXD from cutter
3	3	PC TXD to cutter
4	n/c	cutter pin 5, RTS CTS loopback
5	n/c	cutter pin 4, RTS CTS loopback
7	5	ground
20	8	cutter DTR to PC CTS, flowcontrol

This provides for hardware (rts/cts) handshake. Software flowcontrol may be OK but the cutter manual suggests overrun may occur.

Consumables

There is a pledge running for the purchase of more vinyl.

See http://github.com/muz/Ruby-PNC950

@@ Line 63: / Line 63: @@
 There is a [[Pledges/Vinyl|pledge]] running for the purchase of more vinyl.
-==Example code==
+See http://github.com/muz/Ruby-PNC950
- require "rubygems"
- require "serialport"
- if (!ARGV[0])
- 	puts "Yo dawg, I need a file."
- 	exit
- end
- plotter = SerialPort.new("/dev/ttyUSB2")
- plotter.baud=(9600)
- plotter.flow_control=(SerialPort::HARD)
- plotter.rts=(1)
- plotter.data_bits=(8)
- plotter.stop_bits=(1)
- begin
-         File.open(ARGV[0], "r") do |inFile|
-                 while (line = inFile.gets)
-                         puts line
-                         plotter.write(line)
-                         # sleep(1)
-                 end
-         end
- rescue
-         puts "Failed to open #{ARGV[0]}"
-         exit
- end