Cameo Silhouette

[Wulf111]

just got a Cameo Silhouette as a late Christmas present. (Michael's has them for $179 right now). i am looking forward to testing this thing out. anyone else have one these, any words of advise on how to use it to the fullest?

[SCEtoAUX]

Check out the Papercrafter Tips on the WorldWorksGames site. There is a section on the Silhouette and CraftRobo. They use those machines to cut out gaming terrain, but perhaps there are some tips you could use.

[Pgtaylorart]

I have one and it's great. But to get the most out of it I recommend purchasing the Silhouette Studio or Silhouette Connect software which you can download from their site. This will enable you to create and edit your cut paths with much better control. If you have Illustrator, the Silhouette Connect software will add a direct link right inside Illustrator so you can edit and send your cutting file from inside Illustrator. I have found the print-to-cut feature to be very accurate at cutting in perfect registration on a full color printed image.

[sgoti]

Originally Posted by Pgtaylorart

But to get the most out of it I recommend purchasing the Silhouette Studio or Silhouette Connect software which you can download from their site. This will enable you to create and edit your cut paths with much better control. If you have Illustrator, the Silhouette Connect software will add a direct link right inside Illustrator so you can edit and send your cutting file from inside Illustrator.

Unfortunately, Silhouette Connect will not work with any version of Illustrator prior to CS4 (and I have CS3...).

The same software will work with CorelDraw as well, but only full versions- No "Home" or "Student" versions. Seems like they are missing the boat on this one...

Anyway, a few tips:

1) The cutting mat is VERY sticky. To make it less sticky, stick a T-shirt or other cloth to it and remove. The effect is the same as using a lint roller, and the stickiness is greatly reduced. Otherwise, you may find yourself tearing parts when you try to remove them.

2) Speaking of cutting mats, the ones for the Cricut machines can be purchased for far less than the Silhouette ones. I bought a two-pack of Cricut 12" x 24" mats for the same price as a single 12" x 12" Silhouette mat. By the time I cut the Cricut mats in half to 12" x 12" size, my cost per mat was one-fourth the Silhouette cost. The Cricut mats are thicker, but more durable. I did have to adjust my cut settings, but after that things worked flawlessly.

3) Make yourself a cutting test file (what blade and cutting settings do what), and take notes! I use the Studio program settings as suggestions, and go from there (especially after switching brands of mats).

4) You can assign different cutting settings to different colors. EXTREMELY useful if you want to make a very light score and a deeper cut on the same sheet of material. Or if you want to cut the inside of a part before cutting the outside.

5) Remove the mat from the parts, not the parts from the mat. Place the mat with the paper side down, and peel the mat back from the parts. This will help keep your parts from tearing/distorting.

6) Double cut is your friend. Rather than trying to make a cut in one pass (especially on thicker material), select a lighter blade setting and select "Double Cut". The machine will make two passes for each cut that way.

Hope yours is as useful as I've found mine to be!

[Wulf111]

Thanks for all the advise very much appreciated. got the machine working perfect with PDO files with the Pepakura viewer for Cameo. had the thing go wild once and cut a couple of small slashes in my mat but nothing that would make it unusable. anyone know a good tutorial for laying out and tracing BMP files and such in silhouette studio i dont have illustrator of anything like that.

[sgoti]

You can also design in Inkscape and export as dxf, then import into Studio. Might have to look up DXF exporting from Inkscape to find out how. Last I checked, it needed a bit of help.

[Michael Mash]

Do any of you have some good close-up images of the parts you could post?
I am curious to see how they look out of one of these machines.

Thanks!
Mike

[Wulf111]

i will see what i can do Michael.

[zot]

I just got one too. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it though.

[Vermin_King]

There are many folks using these at the Cardboard Warriors forum.

You can probably get a lot of your questions answered by perusing the threads at Craft ROBO/Silhouette automated cutters | Cardboard Warriors forum