Now that is an awful lot of money!!! Donek Drag Knife - Sheet Materials - CNC Machine - Genuine I guess I'll make one when I need it.
I happen to be looking into this stuff yesterday and found this: Drag Knife / Vinyl Cutter There's a review of it here:
(; just make one Drag Knife Plans Also, you dont need Vectric, cam.openbuilds.com has corner-swivel CAM under the dragknife operations (;
If the one I posted works as advertised, I'm okay with spending $10 instead of making one That's great news about OB Cam.
Colin; I was thinking that myself. I know the important thing using drag knives is keeping the tension on the material to stop it gathering up in front of the blade.
Tell your cam software its an end mill with a diameter of (say) 0.1mm but don't turn your router on. Alex.
I asked my wife if she would want to use it.. she laughed at me (she sews). Except for small bits here and there, many of her patterns while width wise would easily fit within the CNC machines, length wise not so much, 5 to 6 feet in some cases.
In the textile industry they use a reciprocating knife (like a jigsaw) with several layers of cloth to cut lots of items at a time. It would be difficult to keep woven fabric under tension to work with a drag knife and some threads would be pushed aside rather than cut. Alex.
I wonder if the right implementation of some kind of vacuum thru the spoiler board would hold a single layer or two of fabric in place while the drag knife worked?
Not for a woven fabric - some threads would be pushed aside rather than cut. A drag knife would only cut threads that were under tension and at an acute angle to the knife. The knife rotates in it's holder so the knife would also be deflected by threads at a shallow angle. Alex
The only way I can think of doing it (if you really, really had to) would be to paste the material to something like a piece of card, cut it and then wash the paste out afterwards. Might be quicker to use a pair of scissors. Alex.
I wonder if using transfer tape (the stuff for applying vinyl decals) would work. Apply the tape to the top side of the fabric and then suck the whole thing down on a vacuum table, compressing the fabric in between.
This is how the 10$ tool is actually used . Also for fabric there is sticky pads used to hold it while cutting . Also an interesting read . DIY CNC Graphics Cutter Hack
