Pleasant surprise

This rather blurred image comes from an Ebay auction I won about a week ago. I say won, I made the first bid and nobody else bothered. Why? Well this is a vinyl cutter but a rather small one and it was sold as not working plus apparently it rattled. But I like the sound of a rattle, that is mechanical and probably easier to fix than electronics full of bespoke or obsolete parts. 

Plus and importantly it was only a tenner! I got to have a look at it last night and indeed it does rattle. It looks like someone tried to force feed it some thick material and broke the mount for two springs that tension a feed roller. The springs are gone (I guess they shook them out) but the other bits are still there. It should be an easy fix. It might still be broken after that of course.

What really surprised about this machine is that it includes a scanner and what's more it actually drives over the thing you are scanning!! (edit no it doesn't you have to push it, this is what happens when you tae things apart after midnight!) So if you want to copy a logo or create a cut from a sketch you place it on the sketch and it drives a long with a little feed roller  (and you push it along, a roller connects to an encoder to synchronise the capture). That is cool! (edit: it is still cool!) You then use the scan in software to create the cuts for your vinyl. I've downloaded the software but need to make a cable too, also need to do the "simple" repair.