alt Hacker NewsIt's a vinyl cutter. I've used those. TechShop used to have them. Theirs seem to be repurposed large-format HP plotter designs.
Vinyl cutters are good at doing one thing - cutting out patterns in vinyl or similar materials. You can make signs, stickers, and similar stuff. Some also be used as plotters. They're rather limited devices, though. At TechShop, they were not used much.
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kennywinker • yesterday at 11:27 PM
Try doing a run of like 10x of the same design in cricut software...
Yup, they even speak HPGL.
Originally, people put knife blades into HP plotters, by modifying the pen holders. Then Roland started making heavy-duty plotters purpose-built to run blades, but they spoke the same HPGL as the plotters, for compatibility.
Then everyone and their brother knocked-off the Roland designs, and of course copied the HPGL compatibility. Along the way, some special extensions crept into the dialect, for setting the downforce (the !FS; command) and maybe other stuff.
And for a long, long time, all vinyl cutters were basically the same. You could use any software with any cutter.
Then Cricut came along and hosed it all up.