For the HN crowd, I'll suggest an AxiDraw over Cricut. Cricut tried adding a subscription fee just for people to continue to use the machines they already bought[1]. It was reversed over public outcry, but the fact stands that they're capable of bricking your machine with a dumb policy decision.

The AxiDraw has a high build quality, and you can use their open source software to drive it or other software that uses their published USB spec. EMSL are good people, but even if they weren't, they physically aren't able to remotely brick a machine once they ship it to you.

[1] https://www.utahbusiness.com/cricut-announced-a-new-subscrip...

Yeah, screw Cricut and their policies. When they sued Sure Cuts-A-Lot into removing support for Cricut machines, I completely swore off their heretofore-interesting hardware.

Get any old Roland clone. You can often score an old USCutter on Craigslist for similar prices, the hardware is way more durable, and it's all simple parts you can replace without vendor lock-in. They speak HPGL and there's a million softwares to drive 'em, including Inkcut which sorta sucks but it's free.

Don't buy a Cricut. They are an insanely shitty company. The Oracle of vinyl cutting.

Get a Graphtec Silhouette Portrait 3. £180 and you can use open source software with it.