Install Inkcut

In this step of this vinyl cutter to T-shirt manual, we install Inkcut.

If you cannot use the Inkcut laptop that is usually in the vinyl cutter, you will need to Inkcut on the computer you use.

Inkcut is a program to send things to cut to the vinyl cutter. It works under Linux, Mac and Windows. This guide shows how to do this for Linux.

If you could provide these instructions for Mac or Windows, please contribute!

1 Start a terminal

On a Linux computer, start a terminal:

Press the Meta/Windows key (between Ctrl and Alt at the bottom left of the keyboard)
Type terminal

Now you have started a terminal

Copy-paste the following command to the terminal:

sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-pyqt5 python3-setuptools

Probably you will need to type a password and press enter.

You will probably be asked if you want to install these programs. Type 'Y' and press enter.

You will see a lot of programs being installed.

Well done!

Now repeat with this command:

sudo apt-get install libcups2-dev python3-pyqt5.qtsvg

Create a (mandatory!) virtual environment for Inkcut:

python3 -m venv ~/inkcut_venv

If you get the error 'The virtual environment was not created successfully', try:

sudo apt install python3.12-venv

Install the Inkcut and PyQt5 Python packages in the virtual environment"

~/inkcut_venv/bin/pip install inkcut PyQt5

Now you can start inkcut with:

~/inkcut_venv/bin/inkcut

Inkcut is now started. Well done!