Cutting fabric?

[sansbury]

I'm looking at building a machine to cut fabric--small to start but eventually I'm looking for an envelope up to say 36x60". From my research so far, I think the first approach to try is to use a rotary cutter (similar to a pizza cutter) driven like a tangent knife.

What I need is software that can generate appropriate g-codes to rotate the cutter and also to calculate lead-in and lead-out cuts, starting from something like a DXF. Vinyl cutting seems to be the most closely related activity, so I figured this would be a good place to start asking questions.

[gkunzig]

Hello Sansbury,

Any updates on your project?
I am also interested in this type of Project.

Gkunzig

[High Seas]

You might get some good ideas from this site:
http://www.carlsondesign.com/
I seem to recall the cutter rotates about the vertical axis - and if the wheel is small enough maybe no lead in/out required?
Neat project - what do you plan on cutting/making?
Jim

Oops! Just noticed on the shareware page:
http://www.carlsondesign.com/#Professional_Shareware
about 1/2 way down a good shot of the mount for the cutter - its directly mounted to a stepper! (well it sure looks like it anyway). That should take care of lead in/out - the blade would always be tangent to cutting line - an interesting 4th axis to solve! -- Jim