Using the Vertex as vinyl cutter

Hi,

My apologies for this braindump, but while searching for a cheap SMD solder paste stencil service I realised maybe the Vertex could be modified to to a little laser cutting?

I saw this article (link here) and found a lot of stuff similar, except the printing head of course.

What would be required? Here’s what I came up with for now:

  • Obviously a laser
  • A laser lens
  • A laser housing or mount (<- hey, we could 3d-print this thing right?)
  • A laser driver
  • Firmware patch

I read that laser in the article needs about 450mA max. To drive the laser we could use a spare GPIO on the main board, and a little firmware patch would do the trick. Maybe with the right modification you can install this cutter permanently if it’s not in the way of the extruders.

Writing the firmware patch would be easy (at least for me, as a developer)

Any thoughts?

[quote=“robv”]Hi,

My apologies for this braindump, but while searching for a cheap SMD solder paste stencil service I realised maybe the Vertex could be modified to to a little laser cutting?

I saw this article (link here) and found a lot of stuff similar, except the printing head of course.

What would be required? Here’s what I came up with for now:

  • Obviously a laser
  • A laser lens
  • A laser housing or mount (<- hey, we could 3d-print this thing right?)
  • A laser driver
  • Firmware patch

I read that laser in the article needs about 450mA max. To drive the laser we could use a spare GPIO on the main board, and a little firmware patch would do the trick. Maybe with the right modification you can install this cutter permanently if it’s not in the way of the extruders.

Writing the firmware patch would be easy (at least for me, as a developer)

Any thoughts?[/quote]

What Laser do you want to use?
Where do you source that?

The article above mentions a LPC-826

ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid= … &_from=R40

Other links I found on the topic (for a K8200)

Perhaps it is worth to note that I only need to cut VINYL, not wood or steel! Because I realise I would need much bigger laser to do that stuff.

[quote=“robv”]The article above mentions a LPC-826

ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid= … &_from=R40

Other links I found on the topic (for a K8200)

Perhaps it is worth to note that I only need to cut VINYL, not wood or steel! Because I realise I would need much bigger laser to do that stuff.[/quote]
Thanks, i missed the link in your original post.