Does anyone have any experience with this kind of machines? I just discovered they make affordable ($200-300) paper cutters that can make pretty detailed cuts. This might actually be more useful than a 3D printer, or one of those embroidery machines.
I’m most interested in how small can they cut - I saw in a video the Cameo could cut ~1 mm diameter circles. Is this accurate? I’ve got this idea for a business card in my head that I want to make, and by making them myself I can refine the design, instead of making 100+ at one go at a shop. Can they cut perforations? If I swap the blade, can it score? Hmm… I’m also thinking of using it to cut out screen protectors. Recently I noticed it’s very hard to cut screen protectors, because the material will warp around the edges, which means it may not stick well.
I thought such machines would be pretty complicated, but apparently not. Hey, I once printed 100 copies of a booklet with a hole cut out in front, could they have done it using a similar machine instead of custom making a die?
At least some of them can do scoring, though I’m not sure which specific models. Probably all of them.
And you can convert them to a 3D printer, too, as long as you’re willing to use paper as your print medium. Basically, cut out each layer of your object except for a tiny bit of perforation, glue the layers together, and then carefully break the sprues and pull away the excess.
Just make sure to get one that can do customized patterns. Some of them are locked to only do things from specific patterns you can buy from the company. I’m sure you can jailbreak them somehow, but it’s a hassle you don’t need.
The thing is, I want perforations in the cards themselves. I’m trying to design a card that’s a smartphone stand and can hold SIM cards, among other things.
Yeah, I’m interested in the 3D printer application too. Just thinking what glue to use (white glue isn’t waterproof) and how to support overhangs. Why hasn’t the 3D printing community caught on to this? There seems to be a new 3D printer every week on the crowdfunding websites. Cheapest, highest resolution, most portable, largest build area… It seems wasteful to throw paper away, but I suspect paper is about as expensive as 3D printing material.
I gathered the Cricut can only print their custom designs from “cartridges” (I presume they hold data) you have to buy, but Silhouette’s cutters can cut custom designs.
I saw a similar machine, somewhat larger, about 20 years ago, used by a sign maker. Not extremely fast, but produced very accurate cuts. Without using perforated stock I don’t know accurate they would be, or how practical in general for producing 100 of anything, but if you have the patience then why not? I guess my concern would be how long the knife lasts if it’s cutting heavy stock. It’s inexpensive, but for 3D I’d prefer a 3D printer.
Ok I’ve had the Silhouette Portrait for a few weeks now - maybe this will be useful to someone. It’s certainly capable of very detailed cuts. In fact the detail is limited more by the material than the precision of the machine. So if your intricate pattern can be separated from the sticky mat, the machine will be able to cut it. In fact, there’s a double-cut function for tricky materials, which I think requires 0.1 mm precision or greater. This is surprising for such a plasticky machine - don’t 3D printers have such parts made of metal?
There is also a huge range of materials and applications: paper for cards and scrapbooking, plastic for stencils and silkscreen printing, stamps, fabric and iron-on fabric, vinyl (like those my family car stickers, or even signs and titles on doors, like “General Manager”), and these are just with the blade. If you get a pen attachment you can write/sketch things, you might also be able to score/engrave with the right tools. To answer my question, Silhouette’s software supports defining certain lines as perforations in the same design, but there’s no direct way to adjust perforation spacing or style. Some people are using these machines for technical work - I saw a discussion on making stencils for solder paste on PCBs. I guess there’s a learning curve in both design and choosing materials (designing with vectors and paths is harder than raster images), that’s why this hasn’t caught on as much yet.
But I have another question - I’m looking for this craft product that’s a metallic sheet that you can rub on to your work and it leaves a metallic layer, like gold printing on cards. Like http://www.amazon.com/Martha-Stewart-32208-Sheets-Metallic/dp/B007C7XK5Q but this requires an adhesive. Does anyone know such a product? It’s hard to look for this when I don’t know what it’s called.
I get to run a more robust machine like this at work. I’ve used it to cut a design that had parts that were somewhere close to 1/64th of an inch. The cool thing is that I’m the only one at the company who knows how to use it and I always enjoy doing it. The bad thing is that we bought it for one thing we need to make and I made all the patterns when we got the machine so now when I need to make something, I load a file, cut it, and I’m done in 3 minutes. And we only need to use it for something about once a week.