Vinyl Cutting with LulzBot

General Software
1

I have a Mini and vinyl cutter attachment. Wondering if anyone here has managed to cut vinyl with their LulzBot machine? If so, can you share your experience? I can whip up an attachment, but wondering what software I can use and any tricks to get the z height correct and how to get the right g-code into software. Can Cura do this? Slic3r?

Side note - I managed to modify my CNC with a printed attachment and had some success (using Mach3 and CamBam) but it kept messing up the cuts / catching the vinyl. So, I can produce the correct gcode but not sure how to get this into the Mini or if it will work right (would need to manually zero Z).

2

I use my laser cutter that I printed on my Taz for that!

You could use one of those on a 3d printer a couple of ways. You can use Inkscape to generate a gcode path for a cutter, and set it up so that the printer lifts on non cut passes. You could also use a solinoid to lift the cutter and use the fan PWM output to retract it on non cut areas. Either way is going to take a bit of code to figure out though.

3

Thx for the ideas… Although I could probably figure that out, I’m getting lazy in my old age… Hoping for a simpler soln… Lets see if others have tried.