Vinyl cutter stand for cheap

I have a Roland Stika-12 plotter cutter.  I use it to cut large numbers to put on the sides of cars for the dealer I work at.  I'm cutting one number at time, then line them up when I put them on the cars.  When I go to do a car, say "$35,900" on both side of a car, I cut "3", then "3", then "5" then "5" and so on.  After I cut six numbers I cut the length of vinyl, weed and apply the tape.

What I had been doing is just supporting the vinyl with a broom handle and hang it under a bar stool.  The problem was the plotter cutter is not strong enough to pull the vinyl off the roll, the plotter cutter's rollers would slip on the vinyl.  I would always pull out some slack, or at least try to remember to.  If I didn't pull out slack, the start point and end point of a cut would not meet, thus a waste of material and time.

I needed a cheap and easy fix.  I had some spare patio door rollers I picked up for a CNC mill project and it dawned on me I could use them to solve my problem.  I just needed a few other parts

Step 1 Items needed for this

Items I already had:

 - TV tray that is made of wood.
 - patio door rollers (Lowed or Home Depot, under $10 for a pair)

Items I needed to complete this:

 - 3 foot length of aluminum L strip
 - 24" length of 1/4" all thread
 - four 1/4" X 20 nylon lock nuts
 - eight #12 X 5/8" sheet metal screws.

Aside from the TV tray, all of the other items was less than $20 total.  

Tools used were a drill and set of drill bits, a pair of pliers, hand saw, small clamp, and a box wrench.

Comments

[rimar2000]

Good work!