any ideas on making yor own vinyl cutting machine?

Ty for this new forum - Looking to build a large scale marking pen plotter now that can carry multiple pen heads. The scale of these machines look cost prohibitive for anything but rack and pinion - any suggestions?

Anyone ever break into thier inkjet and mount it on a larger frame?

Found a site you might like - http://www.halfbakery.com
Here are three semi-relevant items from the bakery.

Fell in love until I saw the price.
http://www.pixation.com/

The anarchist
http://www.appliedautonomy.com/gw.html

Hmmmmmmm....
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Mural_20Printer#1023648543

The plotter at work appears to not use a ball screw. The cutting head hangs from an overhead bridge and is clamp mounted onto a pulley suspended smooth cable.

If this is the case then the servo is direct mounted to another pulley hidden in the case and bypasses the cost of the ballscrew.

Anyone ever try this? It would seem to suffer from a lot of slipage but I cut precision small letters all the time over 10' runs.

I have to wait until everyone clears out of the vinyl room before I can take the case off to get a good look. They have already seen me eyeing it and promised mayhem after the air compressor incident.

I lack the electronics know how to do this but with help I could build it. Let's take the printer head off the linear rod and extend it to a width of thirty two inches and then extend the paper drive to the same length. Essentialy cutting a printer in half and adding twenty four inches to it. Feed the paper in as normal and print full size, (1:1). and print on. Any comments

Apparantly, a person can create they're own Vinyl Cutter using an old HP Pen Plotter and a custom built knife attachment for under $100.00.

I found this link to support my claim.
http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000713073667/

If you DIY a plotter/cutter - like the hack-a-day site, Taus on the 'Zone here has some neat cutters. He built me one and it works great - price was fair and he was very helpful.
http://www.cuttingedgecnc.com/vinyl.htm
:cheers: Jim

The vinyl cuter at my work has a knife that looks like a pen plotter pen, but with a knife insead of the felt tip. It is on a pivot so it orients itself as the direction changes. The only porblem is you cant change directions sharply...if you do it puts a little circle on the end so reorient the knife in the right direction so it doesnt tear the vinyl. The plotter is made by Roland and im sure you could get the knife/pen as a replacment part for use in your own machine. I can get the model number from the machine if anyone is interested.

I found this site about how to make you vinyl cutter using a pen plotter.. was looking for encoder info..

http://www.luberth.com/help/pen_plotter_vinyl_cutter_swivel_knive_drag.html

not what Im into - just passing the info along.

Tek

I used the www.luberth.com site to build mine. I will tell you what though, for as cheap as the vinyl cutters are now. Buy one! It was a great project and I learned a lot about about the process, but to do production quanities, buy one!!!! You can get a 15" for about $399 and it comes with software from Signwarehouse.com (I bought a 24" and I love it)

I will say, the process of building the vinyl cutter has helped me greatly on my plasma cutting table. A lot of the same principals are involved.


Jon, luckeycnc