Creality drag knife mount [vinyl cutter]

Last crawled date: 4 years, 2 months ago

Turn your Creality printer into a drag knife cutting machine for less than $15. Great for making vinyl stickers and t-shirt iron-ons. This was designed for the CR-10 but it should work with Creality printers with the same X carriage.
What you need:
Drag knife from Amazon/eBay search 'vinyl cutter blade holder Roland'
rubber band
you might need a longer M3 bolt
Follow this tutorial:https://www.instructables.com/id/Use-3D-Printer-As-a-Plottercutter/
Additional notes:
-It's a good idea to smooth the bottom edge of the blade holder so it doesn't snag on cut edges
-The hardest part is getting the correct depth of cut. Try doing it with the knife holder [keep it vertical] in your hand and drag it across a scrap. When the vinyl is cut and the backing is not, you are good to go.
-When calibrating for "work Z coordinate" have the knife holder push up against the rubber band about 1mm. This will compensate for a warped/slightly unlevel bed.
-The Inkscape extension needs strokes to create gcode. When saving, the error "no points" means you have no strokes [only fill]. Text needs to be converted to paths. Make it easy to see the cuts by turning off fill and turning on strokes (set width to .1mm) for each object.
-The CR-10 connects through COM 3 @ 115200 baud rate
Remove knife holder when 3D printing