Vinyl cutter wont talk to me :(

[DrBwts]

Anyone know why the vinyl cutter comms have stopped working? 

Not seeing it connected via USB any more.

The cutter itself seems fine just wont connect to a PC.

Nic

[Mark Wainwright]

It was working fine last week

I’ll have a look when I’m next in

Kind Regards Mark

Leeds Hackspace

https://leedshackspace.org.uk

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[Gary]

On my vinyl cutter i have at home, sometimes the com ports settings get
messed up, especially if something else has been plugged into the usb
port the vinyl cutter usually uses,

on my vinyl cutters display there are a couple of settings on the
machine for com settings.... baud rate, data bits, flow control
(Xon/Xoff) etc
They can easily be changed accidentily when clicking through the menu's
to do things like lining up a print to cut it out, or even adjusting the
feed and pressure settings if you don't realise it's jumped into the com
settings and you have pressed the arrow keys.

Obviously the settings need to match on the computers com port and on
the machine,
.

Another thing i found is a lot of vinyl cutters do not like high com
port numbers,
usually each time a new usb device is plugged it in gets assigned a
virtual com port, so you can end up with COM40+ on some computers,
But most vinyl cutters use old usb to serial boards that were designed
to operate on COM1 or COM2 only,

So i always set my vinyl cutter to COM2 (my Tech2 vauxhall diagnostic
computer needs COM1 or it won't work at all)
I found that going over COM5 with my vinyl cutter stops it responding.
.

Atatched a screen shot of my vinyl cutters com port settings if it
helps, most chinese cutters use the same settings.
.

OH, and before trying all that, try a new USB cable, i've had the
internal conductors in a frequently used usb cable break many times,
especially one that gets wound up around the machine each time you
unplug it and wheel it to it's storage spot.

On 09/07/2026 16:30, Mark Wainwright wrote:
> It was working fine last week
>
> I’ll have a look when I’m next in
>
> Kind Regards Mark
>
> Leeds Hackspace

> https://leedshackspace.org.uk <https://leedshackspace.org.uk>

>
>
> On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 at 15:59, DrBwts <drb...@gmail.com
> <mailto:drb...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Anyone know why the vinyl cutter comms have stopped working?
> Not seeing it connected via USB any more.
>
> The cutter itself seems fine just wont connect to a PC.
>
> Nic
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Leeds Hack Space" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
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> To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/
> leeds-hack-space/771ea33c-f6b0-4fdb-

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> msgid/leeds-hack-space/771ea33c-f6b0-4fdb-
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[Gary]

Pressed send then immediately remembered something,
My vinyl cutter is an old one, bought around 2008, newer ones typically
use a baud rate of 38400.