SIM card cutting

[Joachim Steiger]

Harald Welte wrote:
> There are big machines for professional/industrial ID-0 card punching,
> I've seen them on alibaba.com and other chinese trading sites a number
> of times.  Unfortunately a bit too large for our purpose.

i think there were 'pliers' like cutting tools when we moved from
fullsize to id-0 size.
currently i could only find the kind of pliers to 'put 2 sims into a
dualsim-adapter'

> As for a laser cutter solution: Roh, I believe your Berlin hackerspace
> Raumfahrtagentur now has a laser cutter.  Is this one capable of cutting
> through the smartcard plastic?  If yes, that could be an inexpensive
> solution at least for the German OsmocomBB / OpenBSC hackers...

we could cut through it without any problems i guess, but such plastic
cards are usually made from PVC which contains chlorine, which sadly is
a really bad idea to use a laser cutter on (generates chlorine gas)
since it can not only damage humans but supposedly also the machine.

but if we cannot find a source for the 'cutting pliers' style
equipment.. we got a cnc mill also, and could use that to make some kind
of metal stamp kit.

what do you guys think? i would say: lets have some working sim code
first and use some pair of scissors for cutting the sim till we need to
stamp out volume ;)
just print out some alignment-help on paper, glue it to the back of the
chipcard with doublesided tape or spray-on and use paper-scissors. its
only thin pvc and gives nicer edges than the cutter only. just be
careful not to bend the chip but the rest of the card.

regards

--

roh