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·
    il y a 11 jours

    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·
        il y a 11 jours

        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
            4·
            il y a 11 jours

            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.