Hi... I'm new to the list, was wondering about those who are interested in or have done work on a Linux driver or any such program to control the Graphtec plotters that go by the name WishBlade, RoboCraft or CraftRobo. http://www.graphteccorp.com/craftrobo/about.html Actually, these are small USB interface home use "paper cutters" that cost hundreds of dollars by Graphtec. A company who's primary product involves vinyl sign cutters that cost thousands of dollars. http://www.graphteccorp.com Their primary use is for cutting out paper figures for scrap booking. However, they can probably be used to cut small vinyl signs. An imaginative use of such a cutter (which might appeal more to this list) might be to cut a printed circuit out of vinyl to be used as an etch resistant pattern. It occurs to me that these small cutters may use the same protocol as their larger cousins. And, that there may already exist Linux based software to control the larger vinyl sign cutters. Does anyone know more about this? The two features that these small cutters have over normal X-Y pen plotters are (1) the larger mechanical force (which apparently can be varied by printer command) exerted by the cutting solenoid and (2) optical scanning of the media to be cut such that the cutting pattern can be autonomously registered with an image previously printed on the media. Several versions of these cutters exist. I am interested in what I think is the first generation (blue WishBlade) cutter. Apparently this generation is no longer supported as the software to control it is not upgradable to Vista. In contrast the next generation (pink WishBlade) software has a patch which makes it compatible with Vista. Also, apparently, the controlling software for these two generations of cutters are not cross compatible. I am making this point in case the Linux drivers have to be uniquely designed for each generation. ...thanks
