Vinyl decal cutting on CNC Mill with Roland drag knife

I finally gave a go at vinyl cutting on the CNC milling. I saw a lot of video on youtube of a drag knife installed on a small scale cnc machine but there is no video of it being done on an industrial machine. Decided that I should record it!

I am using a Roland 60* blade and a Roland chineese copy holder that I got on ebay for 25$. Using Inkscape to draw the outline of any image I like over the internet, I export a dxf format that I open in Feature Cam.

The vinyl used in this test is really cheap and that did not help us either. A good quality vinyl is much easier to weed out and will have more grip to the paper it came on. This particular one was really hard to keep the graphic intact.

In this video the machine cut at about 200 IPM but due to the crazy amount of line the machine has to read it can not always keep that feed.

After that test, I modified the holder so it's now spring loaded. These kind of tool sells for between 100-150$ but can be made with basic tooling.

I since then bought a real Vinyl Plotter but I am happy I did those test years ago. Always a nice feeling to leave the paved road!