How do I make this? Cutting upholstery vinyl

Ohhh, any chance you can share the stl for the router replacement? That looks better than my mdf plug I made for a sharpie.

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Oh yeah. That uses a lot of filament, but how great does that look? I was trying to do something similar at one point.

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Where did the cutter (knife)come from?

The link is in the Thingiverse details.

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Sorry missed it thanks :grinning:

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Here is a video of the first test with the new mount cutting at 75 mm a second. It really slows down on the arcs though. I wonder if I should update my firmware. It is over a year and a half old.

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Very nice :grinning: not.sure about the arcs. I’m going to be cutting upholstery fabric not backed do you think this setup would work for that?

I don’t know, my dubious expertise is 100% with this one fabric backed vinyl lol. The black plastic cap around the knife acts like a foot from a sewing machine and presses the fabric into the adhesive covered hardboard holding it down. The backing helps the drag knife cap slide nicely. I would try cutting from whichever side has the least friction.

I have also learned to let your adhesive cure for an entire day unless you like wiping each cut off with isopropyl alcohol!

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Yeah, a while back we did a lot of work on the arcs. Jamie and I both got some new code into Marlin. I made a demo video after it. Update for sure.

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I updated the firmware and it is cutting a lot faster now!

Does the firmware limit the maximum speed of the lowrider? I have it set at 75 mm a second but when I turn up the feed rate knob on the LCD it doesn’t really seem to go any faster so I’m not quite for sure how fast I’m cutting.

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It does. It retorts the current value in the response to M503. You can change it with M203.

Thanks, do you know what a safe value for a low rider is? Assumingely what it’s already set for lol

You are going to have to do some speed tests! With the assumed low load of that drag knife I would bump it up 5mm/s per cut and see where it skips.

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Big update on the project! I ditched the spray adhesive mat and made a slim vacuum hold down table!

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Do you have a link for that. How much force does it have would.it hold a sheet of ply in place?

What link are you looking for specifically? It holds mdf down so I can’t slide it. I’m not sure how to measure the actual vacuum.

Sorry just if there was a build.link with a little more direction is all

If it holds the MDF down it will work for every thing I want

Oh I understand!

The first thing I did was to get a half inch thick piece of MDF and then I cut roughly 5 mm deep grooves in it with the lowrider using a 1/4 endmill. I was wanting to remove the vacuum table when I wasn’t using it so that’s why I went with 1/2 in. so it would be lighter. If it is going to be a permanent fixture 3/4 might give you more flexibility to resurface it.
I left a little border around the edges where I knew I would be gluing the hardboard to it.

You can see in the video above how there is a little square pocket cut where I knew the vacuum hose was going to come up from the bottom. I did this so there would be a little bit more connection to the grid that was going to form the vacuum tunnel.

I would have placed the vacuum hole in the center of the board but the supports on my lowrider table wouldn’t allow it. If you search YouTube for MDF vacuum tables you can get very fancy with multiple zones and valves.

Next I removed the MDF which now had all of my grooves cut in it. I put a piece of 1/4-in hardboard that was the same size as the MDF on the lowrider with the smooth side facing up.

I cut a hole pocket through the MDF and through the top of my lowrider table with a long quarter inch endmill and went pretty slow because of how much stick out there was. I made the hole just tight enough for a slip fit connection with the shop-vac pipe I was going to use.

After I cut the hole, I kept the hardboard exactly where it was and covered the entirety of the top surface with a thin layer of wood glue.

I then turn the MDF sheet upside down with the grooves facing downward and laid it on top of the piece of hardboard.

Then I turned on my shop-vac and let it run for a couple hours so that the suction would pull the MDF down onto the hardboard while the glue dried. I also piled a bunch of 5 gallon buckets of paint and other weight on top of it.

Next I painted the edges of the MDF to seal them from losing suction. You can see the white paint in the video above.

Some people suggest skimming a millimeter off the top of the surface of the MDF because there is a harder outer layer. I would suggest trying your table out first to see if it provides enough suction without it because it is a huge mess to mill off a millimeter from the entire board. I felt like I needed more suction so I did go ahead and do that with a 1-in clearing endmill and the entirety of the shop had a thin layer of dust on it when I was done :slight_smile:

And that’s pretty much it, sorry that I didn’t take more pictures along the way. You might think about milling out two different pockets to connect two shop-vacs or a black box hurricane vacuum which you can find online, depending how serious you need to be.

Let me know if any of this needs more clarification and I hope it works really well for you!

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