Hi!

I’ve daydreamed about getting a cutter plotter without actually planning on really getting one. Too expensive and shelfspace-consuming for something that I’m not going to actually use that often.

Then I remembered that I could “just” mount a dragknife on my Ender-3 pro to do the job (maybe get one of these fancy quick-toolhead-changing systems as an excuse to tinker with CANbus, or something ;).

After a bit of online search, I found that I’m hardly not the first one with that idea. I’ve found a few videos, posts on reddit and files on thingiverse/printables, but nothing too in-depth. So I wanted to ask y’all if you know any resources to check out on this. Some github-pages style homepage of someone would be ideal, but I’m not too hopeful that there’s something out there if I haven’t found it yet.

Things I think I’ve found out:

  • Roland Cutting Plotter Vinyl Cutters are apparently the way to go. With 45° for vinyl.
  • I can use gcodetools to create gcode from svgs. The exact details aren’t clear to me, though. Probably gonna have to create a klipper macro for this.
  • I can simply attach a cutter to my toolhead, or use something like the BTT hermit crab for a more fancy approach

Things I’m still not sure how to do:

  • If I’m using a BL-Touch - how should I handle z-homing? Can Klipper use BL-Touch for z-homing with an endstop-failsafe? Should I just monitor the print by hand?
  • Is there a comprehensive guide on the materials?

Do you have any experience on that topic?

  • fufu@feddit.orgEnglish
    4·
    14 hours ago

    I went down that road first building a plotter attachment then trying to attach a knife on an ender 3. Kinda got it to run by simply extruding svgs into a 1 layer body that i could then “print” with a standard slicer. In the end i build myself a laser, and let me tell you, everything before was a huge waste of time :) the laser cuts like a beast, much faster and cleaner. Would not recomment using a knife in a laserworld.

      • fufu@feddit.orgEnglish
        4·
        11 hours ago

        Standard Vinyl that contains PVC should never be heated with a Laser. It will create corrosive chlorine gas.

        Any advanced Vinyl like PVB, PVA or any variant that does not contain chlorine can be cut with diode co2 and fiber without issues.

          • fufu@feddit.orgEnglish
            3·
            11 hours ago

            Well depends on the actual material you are using. Just google PVC free vinyl, you can buy the stuff in any form. If you find sth for your application a laser is perfectly fine.