Vectric: Creating drag knife toolpaths from the drawn features

Drag knife gadget

Vectric VCarvePro comes with a pre-installed drag knife gadget that will enable you to create paths for cutting vinyl. A drag knife toolpath is needed as we need to accomodate for blade offset, explained below.

Blade Offset

The tip of a drag knife is offset by a small amount from the pivot center of the tool. This allows it to swivel as it cuts. This offset value specifies the distance between the central axis (B) and the tip (C).

NOTE: The offset we will use is 0.2mm

A: Vinyl cutting blade

B: Central axis

C: Tip offset

Creating the toolpath

Click on every shape while holding the Shift key on the keyboard to select all of them. Selected objects outlines will change to dotted magenta lines. 

Then click Gadgets > Drag Knife Toolpath

The Dragknife Toolpath window will open

We now need to define the parameters for the toolpath as below:

• Cut depth: 0.1mm

• Swivel depth: 0.05mm

• Passes: 1

We now need to define the knife Settings:

• Blade offset: 0.2mm *

• Tolerance angle: 10 degrees

For the tool, we can select ANY tool available as this will act as a dummy to control feeds.

We can now press OK and the toolpath will be created.

You can view the toolpath in the 2D View tab