A Vinyl Cutter that Works with Linux

In the UK we have a well known crafting store. I have a look around now and again and buy a few things there. One of the things I always look at is a range of vinyl cutters that are sold there. They look very useful, and the 3020 CNC can't cut paper very well. I have the Can transformer for thin sheet metal, but the inability to cut paper and card was irking me.

I had a try at using drag knives on the CNC3020, but whatever I tried just didn't work. I now know that was probably due to the lack of a sticky sheet for the work piece (lack of research on my part I think) and maybe insufficient knife pressure.

After walking past the insect based cutter again, I decided to see if it could be attached to Linux. After a lot of hunting about on the web, I came to the conclusion that it probably was just about possible but that it wasn't a sure thing. Then I decided to research vinyl cutters. Then things looked up. I bought one of these:

It's a Smurf. Presumably because it has blue cheeks. I bought it here. It's great. It's about the same price as the other cutters, it can cut A3, it is a trade rated build, not hobby so is sturdy and it does work with Linux. The interfaces that it has are USB to serial, RS232 and a USB connector for a memory stick. Oh, and it comes with a pen holder so you can use it as a plotter as well. It was supplied with an A3 sticky mat and cables. There's a menu driven control panel on the top of the machine, a power panel at one end and an IO panel at the other:

There's good, bad and neutral news here. Good news is that I have tried the USB to serial and it works, as long as you send the file a certain way. There's bad news: I haven't managed to get the USB memory stick interface to work, but it turns out that I was formatting the stick wrong. The neutral news is that I haven't tried the RS232 at all.

The memory stick requires all files to be in the root directory of a FAT-formatted stick. I think it also requires the file names to have the PLT (or plt, I'm not sure) file extension. I've not tried it since I got the USB to serial working.

The protocol used is either HPGL or DM-PL. I use HPGL and a script that I wrote to send the files as there were a wrinkle or two when sending files straight to the cutter. I'm not sure what was happening but I suspect it was to do with auto detection of the protocol that was being used and buffering. I have a script on my github here. It's a basic script but it works for me. There's a terminal emulator so you can drive the cutter manually if you want to.

My work flow is a bit convoluted, but I found that InkScape can generate HPGL files that work with the cutter, so I use that to export files either from Inkscape itself or from files imported from LibreCAD.

The cutter has an ARMS auto contour mode, but I haven't managed to find any protocol for it, or really understand what it is. It looks like it's an auto registration feature for pre-printed material. It seems to need host help so without the protocol that isn't going to be available.