Overview

The Foison C48 vinyl cutter is a 40 inch vinyl cutter. The vinyl cutter executes HPGL instructions sent by a computer.

Windows

To use the vinyl cutter on Windows, a driver needs to be installed to drive the vinyl cutter's CH340 USB to serial chip. We have had success sending SVG files to the vinyl cutter using the InkScape open source drawing package, which has a built in capability to send HPGL data to the cutter.

Software setup

CH340 driver installation

The Foison vinyl cutter requires a driver for the CH340 USB to serial chip.

The driver can be found here .

Once the file is downloaded, open it and run CH34x_Install_Windows_v3_4.exe. The installer is a single dialog. When it opens, click the INSTALL button

Once the install is complete, click OK, and then close the installer.

InkScape installation

Grab the latest version of InkScape for Windows starting here (click Download->Current Version->Windows-><Windows architecture>). The current version of InkScape at the time of writing is 0.92.4.

Run the installer. The first screen is the language selector:

Select your language and click OK.

This opens the installer splash screen

Click Next

This opens the License dialog

Ignore the license agreement like everyone else does and click Next. You don't care what it says, you just want to use the software right? It's unlikely there's anything truly evil in there anyway...

This opens the Components dialog.

I suggest installing the Optimal install, but we need the Additional Files->Extensions option to be able to export to the vinyl cutter. Click Next

This opens the Install Location dialog

Change the install location if necessary and click Install

This will start the install...

Once completed the completion dialog is shown

Choose whether or not to open InkScape and click Finish

Setting up the vinyl cutter

For more detail on the Foison vinyl cutter, check the File:Foison c24 manual.pdf

Equipment/Foison C48 Vinyl Cutter