Bed surface for (vinyl) cutting?

[sungod3k]

Hi,

I installed a vinyl cutter on my delta. Its one of these drag knifes you find on ali. The smart effector actually lends itself perfectly to an installation like that.

I also got the gcode generation figured out via gcodetolls in inkscape and everything works out.

I'm just struggling a bit with the cutting surface. It has to be as flat a print surface, if not more and ideally has a little bit of give to it, so whatever is being cut has a chance to move slightly if the cut is a bit too deep.

I tried:

• one of these green cutting surface one usually used for excato knifing. -> mine is a bit uneven of year of use, too much for the mesh bedlevelling to compensate.
• a silicon kitchen/baking sheet. -> that has a bit too much give.
• plain paper sheets -> that works but is very wasteful, because it scores multiple sheets in order to cut the top one.

Does anyone has some experience with a 3d printer cutter-plotter and can recommend somethingß

[arhi]

@sungod3k I actually used glass back when I tried that but the knife I was using was springloaded so the knife could go up/down if the Z was not perfect .. It's one of those designs from thingiverse, not the one from the shop. I'm sure you can rig the holder of the cutter to have some springiness into it? If not, why not make a glass plate sit on 3 springs on top of your bed? or if you don't need that much give but less you put a 1mm (or 2mm or 5mm depends on the give you want) kitchen silicone sheet on top of your bed and glass on top of it?

[Wally]

Have you tried using a Cricut cutting mat ?
My wife uses a Cricut and the mats last a long time and have a low tack adhesive to hold your cutting material (paper, vinyl, gasket material) while the knife passes around the path.

[sungod3k]

@arhi interesting. glass would certainly be the best material to get a straight surface.
my cutter is indeed not springloaded, but i probably can build that functionality into the mount.

@Wally yes ill get a new one, they are cheap enough to try that.

[A Former User]

Interesting, how small features can you do with this? Would it be usable to electronic stencils?

[Dougal1957]

@sungod3k Could you glue the green cut map (A new one) to a flat surface?

[sungod3k]

@Dougal1957 yes, the cutting mat on a mirror should be sufficient. and im working on springloading the whole mount, maybe then a flat piece of wood or melamine would also work

@bearer thats probably the lower limit of what the knife could do, but worth a try.