I have an older craft cutter/plotter (cricut style) The software CD is lost and Pazzles doesn’t support it anymore. Current state is effectively dead in the water.
How difficult would it be to swap out the factory board for something like a WEMOS as a controller and just put GRBL on it so it works again?
What model is the cutter/plotter? Sometimes they use a graphic language like HPGL or similar and other programs can generate the code for cutting. If it is a priority controller then you might have to gut the thing and you really need to decide if it is worth it, but those haven’t been around for years. I picked up an old HP 7550 plotter and with some tinkering, taught it to cut t-shirt vinyl. I had to find a program to generate the HPGL but that was all I needed. Anyway, if all it needs is software code, that might be a simple solution. Just depends on the cutter/plotter.
I’ve spoken with Pazzles and they no longer support the software for the model. They moved onto the Vue and discontinued it in 2015. I was able to replace it with a new cricut, but now I have an idle determination to hack it as a learning experience in my robotics journey
FTD (Future Technology Devices, https://ftdichip.com/) makes the CDM drivers that create a USB Bus and VCP Drivers in Windows that allows it to talk to Win10. Latest version is CDM_2.08.30.exe 7/5/2021. The site has the manuals and the files but you have to hunt diligently for it. It’s worth searching for.
After a clean install of CDM_2.08.30.exe, you’ll see this in your advanced system settings.
It will show up as a device, not a printer. Some of the cutting software products need to see your craft cutter a printer rather than a device.
To publish the device to appear as a printer, create a new printer with the manually set it option. You can choose the ports the cutter is listenign on, such as Virtual USB, USB, COM etc.and map it to an HP Universal Printing PCL6 driver. Give the printers you create the name of the port you are using.
Good luck,
Brian
User of versions 1 of the Pazzle Inspiration Creative Cutter and CriCut Expression.