[nikolatesla20]

I was playing with the idea in my head of trying to build a CNC clothing cutter for patterns.. of course it would be more work than a small machine since it needs a large swing.

I'm not sure about what cutting head you could use though - perhaps the typical rotary cutter for cloth? (The same type of rotary blade you can use to cut by hand).

I don't know what they use in the industry. Probably some might use laser cut too.

-nt20

[Jayson]

Hi nt20,

I have done a little work for a company that has a CNC fabric cutter and the one I have seen uses just a straight blade with a slight point on the end so that it can pierce the fabric then cut it. The blade goes through the fabric and then the head moves along cutting the fabric. Fairly regularly the machine stops, retracts the knife and sharpens it, then proceeds on its way. The head can rotate 360 degrees (controlled by a stepper) so that the knife is always pointed in the direction of travel. The bed consists on many inserts that have thousands of plastic/rubber fingers sticking up to hold the fabric but allow the knife to go below the surface, between the fingers. The fabric is layed out on these fingers and then a sheet of thin clear plastic is rolled out over the top of this. Once the plastic is in place a vacuum pump is started which holds everything tight in place ready for cutting.

I hope this generalised explanation helps to understand the way a commercial unit works. This is just an explanation of how one type of commercial machine works. I have been told that abrasive waterjet cutting is also popular.

Regards,

Jayson Wallis.

[joabarrera]

I want to revive the idea of creating a cloth cutting table.
I if seen a design where instead of vacuum holding the fabric two set of track (the with of the table) roll back and forth pushed by the cutting head.
this is with the goal of not having to worry about the high power blower that will be need, so the machine will be very silent.

[PaulMakesThings]

The automatic blade sharpening sounds like the trickiest part, the rest I can see doing.

[damauk]

I am very interested in this idea as well. For my particular needs the blade direction and the automatic sharpening are not completely necessary and for this very reason I plan on using a Cricut (paper cutting machine) blade holder. The replacement blades are readily available locally (rural Wyoming) and all I need to do is make a holder for the blade housing.

Another option for the hold down of the material other than vac. table is the use of spray adhesive.

I also found an alternative blade holder design discused elsewhere in the forums http://www.cnczone.com/forums/printi...pdate_4_a.html

Hope this helps.