Cricut Vs. Silhouette

[StevenBills]

What kind of low tack vinyl did you use for this? I am looking for a couple of different options. I am thinking about trying some Tamiya masking sheets. Not sure which I want to try.

It's just whatever work had in the scraps bin. Not sure exactly which one, sorry.

 

[CosmicQuest]

It's just whatever work had in the scraps bin. Not sure exactly which one, sorry.

No worries!! Thank you!

 

[Astyanax]

I've been think about investing in one of these to make custom masks. Those of you that have one, how small of a mask can you cut? Can it do a circle smaller than 1mm?

No, I don't think it can do a circle smaller than that. Maybe that diameter, though.

 

[CosmicQuest]

I thought I'd share one of the sheets that I just cut tonight. It is .030 styrene. It scored the sheet nicely, and makes for easy snapping of the pieces out of the main sheet. It took maybe 10 minutes to do this sheet. The thing I think I'm going to love about this is how each piece will be almost exactly the same! This one ran at a speed of 1 and ran it 3 times for a nice clean score line.

 

[CosmicQuest]

Here's a pile of the strips.

 

[Carlb]

Cuts look good Russ.
Will you be experimenting with .04" styrene as well?

 

[CosmicQuest]

Cuts look good Russ.
Will you be experimenting with .04" styrene as well?

Hey Carl. Yupper... I'll give the .040 a try soon and post the outcome. Still learning a bunch about the machine for sure

 

[Rulebreaker]

I thought I'd share one of the sheets that I just cut tonight. It is .030 styrene. It scored the sheet nicely, and makes for easy snapping of the pieces out of the main sheet. It took maybe 10 minutes to do this sheet. The thing I think I'm going to love about this is how each piece will be almost exactly the same! This one ran at a speed of 1 and ran it 3 times for a nice clean score line.

I was also thinking about getting a shilouette thing, but did you cut from a "dxf" or did u need to "make" the shapes with their software?

and the most important question is, how are the corners?
are corners sharp or round?
do you cut it with their cutting mat or i heards some machines dont need the cutting mat?

 

[CosmicQuest]

I was also thinking about getting a shilouette thing, but did you cut from a "dxf" or did u need to "make" the shapes with their software?

and the most important question is, how are the corners?
are corners sharp or round?
do you cut it with their cutting mat or i heards some machines dont need the cutting mat?

Hey Rulebreaker, some good questions for sure!
1. I ended up creating and cutting right from their software. I do have Affinity designer but haven't created any files with it yet to import into their software. My files have been dirt simple, and I haven't needed to do that yet. I do know that if I want to import .svg files, I'll need to purchase the cutting software upgrade to do so.
2. The corners on my basic strips are pretty square and sharp. I am happy with how they turned out. If you zoom into the photo I shared of the cut strips, you can see the corners are pretty decent.
3. I used their cutting mat, partly only because I watched a YouTube video from Sublight Drive, where he was using a Silhouette and started without the cutting mat, and everything started out good, then he had one go askew. He used the mat after that, so I haven't tried yet without the mat. If I try some without the mat, I will post the results. It is supposed to be able to be used without it, so not sure

 

[CosmicQuest]

Cuts look good Russ.
Will you be experimenting with .04" styrene as well?

Hey Carl... I got the chance to do some cutting on .o4 styrene tonight. I just set it up to do 1/2 inch strips. I started by doing two runs at the lowest setting, then two runs at 3 steps deeper for the cut. It worked pretty decent. I probably could've gone a bit deeper on the cut. But here are the pictures of the finished product. If I were to do more intricate shapes, I'd probably do a couple more runs with a bit deeper setting to make it easier to pop the pieces out.

 

[Carlb]

Thanks for the test Russ.

When you say "runs", I assume you mean the blade is going over the same cut lines multiple times?

Also, how long did the Cameo take to do all the work to complete the sheet?

 

[CosmicQuest]

Thanks for the test Russ.

When you say "runs", I assume you mean the blade is going over the same cut lines multiple times?

Also, how long did the Cameo take to do all the work to complete the sheet?

Yes indeed. I did two runs over the same lines with the lowest blade depth setting, then did two runs at a deeper setting. The first two runs were at the slowest speed, and can take a bit of time, The last two sets of lines were done at a faster speed. I figure these kinds of runs can just be set up when I'm doing something else, so they can go in the background. I would say the overall time to do the lines took about 10 minutes. It is definitely a bit faster with the .02 and .03 styrene, with the .04 being thicker, it definitely took more time as I wanted to go slower with it. I did put a piece of .06 in there and started to scribe some lines with that, but I had it in the machine incorrectly and had to stop the cuts. I feel it would also do that but would take longer due to having to creep up on the cutting depth over time. I feel the real draw for this machine to do this stuff is the accurate repeatability of the cuts.