Illustrator is a program that allows you to design 2D things and send them to the vinyl cutter or the laser, and likely other projects that do 2D projects. Our first project was the laser, where we cut key chains out of acrylic. The second project we did was the vinyl name tags, which was Ms. Proctor's demonstration.
Illustrator Screenshots of Set-up
To use the laser, you have to first upload the file to a flash drive. Then, you plug the flash drive into the computer connected to the laser. Once you open the file on illustrator, you have to click File, then print. Once you "print" it, it should go into the USP program, just like the first image. Once that is done, you have to callibrate the laser to the image and cut it out. You hit play and then the laser cuts.
For the vinyl, you have to put the image or text on inventor and adjust the print settings so it will fit on the vinyl sheet. Then, the vinyl cutter will cut the vinyl out. You have to squeegy the vinyl to the notebook with transfer tape and pull it back carefully.
In the end, I learned that illustrator is much easier than Inventor, and it is used to create 2D items with the laser and the vinyl cutter.