Vinyl cutting with my homemade dragknife.

[Tweakie.CNC]

Pics show…

1. Dragnife positioned in centre of vinyl blank
2. X – Y Axes set to zero
3. After cutting and weeding unwanted vinyl
4. Transfer tape applied
5. Logo ready to be applied
6. The position one will be fixed on the finished product.

Now I have to cut a wooden oval, use a different machine to 3D print the 96 (all different sizes) pyramid pieces, glue then to the wooden oval and finally apply a vinyl logo – the easy part.

Tweakie.

[Greolt]

Tweakie

Do you have some pics of your dragknife?

Did you base it around one of these?

Or another way?

[Tweakie.CNC]

I made it from scratch, including the blade (made from a drill bit), many years back when the only available vinyl cutters were made by Roland and incredibly expensive. Times change and now the blades and holders from China are cheap so I would buy rather than make this part if I was starting out again. Overall, my cutting head is pretty much the same as the picture you posted – tiny blade with small offset ball bearing mounted.
Perhaps the interesting part is that the cutter arm pivots and is spring loaded so when setting up, the Z zero has the blade set just above the work surface. I then set a cut depth of 2mm in the Gcode and the arm spring compression (which is adjustable) is sufficient to apply just enough pressure for the blade to cut the vinyl and not the backing paper.

Tweakie.

[Tweakie.CNC]

Just for completeness, the finished product.

Tweakie

[Greolt]

Thanks for the pics.