Vinylcutter/plotter

cameo 2 3
maxresdefault

Standard in the MIT inventory is the Roland CAMM-1 GX-24 wide vinyl cutter, it cuts 60 cms wide. Price around € 2000

If 30 cms wide is sufficient, then the SILHOUETTE CAMEO is great for less than € 300.

The Cameo3 has a double carriage, so blade plus pen, and bluetooth.
The older Cameo2 has USB and an SD card, and when you replace the knife blade by a pen, it doubles as a plotter .

The Silhouette Studio software is extremely friendly and intuitive It is free, not open source and will import .dxf files from any 2D package.  Mac + Windows. A $ 50 software upgrade will also directly import .svg files, saving you the conversion from svg to dxf in inkscape. It is a fun thing to take to schools, as it also can print stand alone. Cameo2 from an SD-card, Cameo3 from USB.

Silhouette also has a smaller cutter, the PORTRAIT, which is a revamped version of their previous SILHOUETTE SD.
It accepts 20 cm wide, A4, and uses the same software: $ 180
silhouette-portrait-3t_01-xlAn overview of 11 small cutter/plotters can be be found here.

Then there is the more craft-oriented Brother ScanNCut, family of four. With a built-in scanner. Starting with the CM300 for € 275 incl VAT. Good value seems the CM700 for € 399, available for € 359. Accepts .svg directly.

Top is the ScanNCut SDX1200 for € 584 with its automatic sensing heavy knife. It will run stand-alone.

GCC released its i-Craft 30 cm cutter / plotter. Its cutting speed is 3 times of the Cameo. At about the same price: €299 incl VAT. Not yet tested.

141154677822X501

If 30 cms wide is not enough and you need 60 cms, have a look at the CGC Expert 24, which cost about € 575 ex VAT. Windows only though.

Schermafbeelding 2017-12-29 om 15.17.32

A note of software: most cutters can be addressed open source via Ubuntu – Inkscape – InkCut extension.