3DPrinting

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3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

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Any resources on using a 3D printer as a plotter cutter (slrpnk.net)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

True... but i mean lasers are cooler by virtue of being lasers. 😁

Personally, I'd be worried about subjecting the printer to the lateral forces and torques a knife would put on a printer that was never designed to contact the workpiece, if you ever wanted to use it for FDM printing again. But maybe that would be a good project for a printer that was already beat up a bit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Alright. After I've built my Voron, then. ;)

Tap for spoiler

I'll get back to you in 2036. /j