Slashdot Mirror
Vinyl Sign Cutting Software for Linux?
prpplague asks: "a large but often over looked business in the United States is that of making vinyl signs. A Windows application to do the layout and run the plotter/cutter will cost you at least $250. I've been unable to find a Unix based application that does the same thing. Anyone out there working on something to replace this business sector's dependency on Microsoft based products?"
My aunt works for a sign company in California. They usually just print cardboard forms, then stack up a rather large amount of vinyl sheeting and use a laser to cut 50+ sheets at a time. the system works the same way one of those old mechanical pencil enlargers works to guide the laser. I know I am over-simplifying things, but thats basically it.
I am assuming you are doing vinyl cuts which will then be glues to metal. You didn't leave much info.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I did a stint in technical support for a vinyl-cutting plotter manufacturer in 1996, so I can at least give a brief idea of what this is all about.
This sort of sign does not involove cutting and then glueing (as mentioned in another comment), but the use of these big rolls of adhesive-backed vinyl. You load this on to a plotter, which basically has a knife instead of a pen, and set your job going. When finished, you have to weed the unwanted portions (basically remove any vinyl that should know be a negative area) and apply the thing to a sign, glass, your car, etc.
A lot of the fancy striping on cars is done this way, and you see the vinyl sold as "laser-cut" or "die-cut" stickers (even though they don't use lasers or dies.) All those bootleg Calvin-peeing-on-whatever-stickers could be used as an example.
At least back in 96, the big manufacturers were Roland, Summagraphics, and Anagraph. (I worked for Anagraph, and those were the only other names I heard. We could've been piddly small, I never cared enough about the sign-making industry to find out.). Our plotters basically worked by hooking up to the serial port and just throwing an HPGL file at it. Nothing too hard. The *nix equivalent would be "cat art.hpgl >/dev/ttyS0'
So if you can put together a *insert your favorite vector graphics format here* to HPGL converter, it could be done. Around the time I left, they were all wetting their pants about printing other images on the vinyl before cutting, but I don't know how that works.
-transiit
That's exactly what the guy is looking for but open source or *nix based... anything that can do vectors would be a start and hpgl is definitely the output you want. The only other thing I can think it needs to do is control the feed of the vinyl.
I don't know of any software on Linux for this but it doesn't seem like a very difficult problem to solve.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
How about http://www.qcad.org this will allow you to take dxf files and output to hpgl. There are a load of hpgl gpl programs out there. Try a search on http://www.freshmeat.net for hpgl.
If you are using something like a Roland printer/plotter or a Gerber Edge you're in for a bit of trouble though. They use special print profiles for colour matching and it can be hell trying to get the colours right. Mind you haven't tryed doing it in about 6 years.
sic transit biscuitus
I operated a vinyl cutter for a while in the late
'80s. Quite frankly, most generic drawing tools
(vectorized or not) won't cut it (pardon the pun).
Production sign work is all about throughput. 90%
of what you do is text with maybe the odd logo.
You want to get the data and layout entered while
the plotter is doing a run so there's not a lot
of time to screw around with a UI. The simple
things have to be really simple while the
hard things have to be doable.
Most graphics tools
have a focus on making nifty effects easy, but most
of those nifty effects don't translate to cut vinyl.
Blurs, color effects, alpha channel stuff, etc are
all useless. Strong text transforms are critical,
and vectorization of pretty much everything is
good. Strong layout capabilities would be good
for reducing waste. Plotter control tools would
also be really good so you can cope with things like
running to the end of a roll halfway through a job
(or encountering a splice in the middle of a roll).
c.
Log in or piss off.
I'm not trolling, but I'm not sure I see the point here. I used to do a lot of vinyl sign work, and I don't really see the 'dependency on Microsoft products' being an issue in this sector.
... but instead to get sign software for free. Maybe you can get in touch with the maker of a piece of cheap sign software ... and offer to partner with them to do the porting to linux for them.
Typically, the sign design stations are dedicated boxes as when they're not in use designing, or driving the plotter, they're not making money. Your typical setup will cost you thousands of dollars for a good plotter - so the OS really doesn't add a lot to the total cost.
If your problem is that there isn't any free sign design software - that has nothing to do with MS. MS doesn't make ANY sign software - but most sign software is written for Windows (some Mac too).
The Roland cutter I used to work with would accept HPGL files that were sent to the serial port, so you may want to start there, but the problem isn't just getting data to the cutter. It's in having a good design program to work with to generate the information.
If your purpose is to get rid of the 'reliance on MS' then maybe you can get an older copy of FlexiSign, CASmate, or CADLink Signlab (which all started as Win3.1 apps) and get them to run under Wine.
If that doesn't suit your purpose, then it means your question was mis-stated and that your care isn't in removing a dependence on MS software
I think what is boils down to is the guy doesn't want to pay the 250 bucks. I can understand wanting to save money, but 250 isn't too bad, hell Photoshop is twice that and Macomedia Director is twice that still.
;)
Another point, this sounds like "Veritcal Market" type stuff, not too many people out there in need of the software. Odds are there aren't going to be any true out of the box Open Source products to do exactly this, you could probabaly develope one on your own in no time with a couple of things people have mentioned, but then you weigh that against the 250 it would cost to buy the software and the fact that I can't imagine the majority of "sign cutters" being super computer savvy and hence not understanding Linux or compiling their own programs etc etc, so maybe it boils down to a matter of, no it doesn't exist, most of the pieces are there, so if you need it write it. If you can write it then pay the 250 bucks.
Lastly, this is a pretty retarded "Ask Slashdot", I don't mean to troll or complain, but come on dude, a search on Freshmeat and Google would get you an answer, or have you tried Usenet, might even be a comp.signcutting (you never know
Many graphics programs will output HPGL. As an odd suggestion, you might want ot look at PCB layout programs for programs that will generate Gerber plots. Also, I seem to recall several HPGL to Gerber tools.
The client that I installed the Dell Notebook for bought it before XP was released. (But during the free upgrade period. I advised them to install W2K on it, instead of ME, which they accepted. The only problem was that a few of their applications did not run on W2K. So Dell swapped the W@K license for ME, and everything was well except for the crashes. XP did run those apps, so they upgraded as soon as they cool. It was mostly the same for them except that had a few less crashes.
-Brent