A Guide to using the Silhouette Cameo Cutter

[MikeTrice]

Any help?

 

http://www.elegantsteam.com/images/LNER-Tourist-stock-open-3rd.jpg

[JCL]

Thanks for your help Mike, I'll see if I can incorporate that into the drawing, or if my other idea will work.

[TheCuckoo]

I thought of another possibility for the cutter :- to produce outside framing to fit over the printed Hornby clerestory sides!  If I had any to try, I'd give it a go myself but others might find the idea useful.

 

This was my initial reaction tbh - so much so that I think I've convinced the wife that she would like a cutter for her card-making hobby! Time will tell.

 

Seriously though, what has been achieved here is absolutely fantastic. Organised into a standardised, free, open, library of parts drawings - everything from platform benches and station nameboards through to coach sides and bridges - this will revolutionise the hobby. Combined with the falling price of 3D printers we are perhaps witnessing the dawn of a new age of model making. And no, I'm not kidding.  

[Crantock]

This was my initial reaction tbh - so much so that I think I've convinced the wife that she would like a cutter for her card-making hobby! Time will tell.

 

Seriously though, what has been achieved here is absolutely fantastic. Organised into a standardised, free, open, library of parts drawings - everything from platform benches and station nameboards through to coach sides and bridges - this will revolutionise the hobby. Combined with the falling price of 3D printers we are perhaps witnessing the dawn of a new age of model making. And no, I'm not kidding.  

 

Armchair watching here.  I am sort of wondering if we might see an A4 15 thou plasticard sheet of parts plus an A4 piece of paper with the same layout but numbers for the parts and a third sheet with a set of instructions. Sell at exhibitions perhaps a basic kit for ??  How much of what is now a brass etch could you do as as a Silhouette? Plastic doesn't fold but if I think of a Judith Edge "Clayton" kit it doesn't seem undoable.  Something like that is motorised with Black Beetles so no risk of lubrication damage to the plasticard. 

 

For resale, what time does a 6 wheel body take to cut and so roughly what do you think a resale price might be if someone tried it commercially?  £10? £20? £30?

 

Last year was 3D, 2014 is 2D- this really is impressive.

Edited January 10, 2014 by Crantock

[figworthy]

Apologies if this has already been asked, can the cutter be set up to scribe rather than cut ?  I'm thinking in terms of "wooden" buildings, and as well as using it cut out the various panels, also use it to scribe in the planks.

 

Adrian

[uax6]

To answer the last two posts:

 

For a 48'6" HR coach I am using 2 sheets of 10thou and half a sheet of 20thou. This cost is tiny, its the cost of the machine and my tuime to draw and perfect things. So far I am on revision 13 of the said coach, and i still find things wrong with the drawings! Cutting out takes in total (on the machine, not including poping out the 20thou) about hour and half.

I am thinking that realsitically I'm making a collection of parts for about 8 to 9 quid. Obviously the more you do the less the individual cost.

 

Would i market them? Not sure. They can be tricky to put together, and you still have to spend upwards of a tenner to get all the other parts that you need to finish them. There is quite a skill level required to putting them together and getting a good looking model at the end, and real would suit someone who is a good bodger or scratchbuilder (and also knows about coaches!).

 

Scribing:

 

To scribe you can set the blade lower in its mount and adjust the pressure so that it does score. The issue with this is that the blade is very thin (I guess that it is about 0.25mm thick) so that you don't get a very noticeable score for planking. I've just been informed today that my engraving attachment from the USA has been sent, so when it turns up I'll let you know how it gets on. Otherwise you can always open up the score with another tool. (See earlier in the thread for pictures of my trial of a matchboarded coach end.)

 

Andy G

[jpendle]

I finally got my Portrait machine to cut through 5 thou Styrene, although I had to fiddle with the settings to get there. I eventually set up my machine with a blade setting of 10, a thickness of 15, and speed set to 1.

This cut some 1:148 scale door frames for me.

The smallest parts are around 0.5mm wide which I think is reaching the limits of the cutter.

So far so good, but I'd be interested to hear what settings other users are using to get their machine to cut, rather than score styrene.

 

John Pendlebury

[uax6]

John,

 

For 10thou I use blade setting 4 and pressure 30, speed 1. I wind out to 10 for scoring 20thou (as it woun't cut it.)

 

I wound have thought that for 5 thou you could use setting 2..... it's very thin.

 

Andy G

[JCL]

Wow, 29 people now have a cutter of one type or another, and another 33 are considering buying one over the next 12 months. While we must acknowledge that the cutter can't perform wonders (come on then, who's going to produce a chimney?), it is very flexible, and you can see the result of your hard work in your own room as opposed to sending it off to be done by a third party.

 

My next post will be exploring the ability of the Silhouette Cameo and Portrait to accurately cut around printed designs. As we have been looking at coach sides, I thought I would try to use this process to produce some plywood sided LNER tourist stock. This stock had no beading at all (that I know of), but did have windows to deal with. I'm hoping to be able to use a home printer and photograph paper to produce these coach sides.

 

I believe that this tutorial will open up new possibilities as you would be able to accurately cut out intricate designs, station clocks, shop fronts, posters, station signs, buildings, brick window arches, viaduct arches, tiles on a roof, real photos of gates, pre-printed PO wagon sides, cutting around decals printed on decal paper, and of course, coach sides such as steel sided coaches. I could go on. I think that the main experimentation and exploration will be in the materials that will make printing and cutting useful rather than a gimmick. At the moment I'm having a go with lustre photo paper (because that's what I have to hand), but maybe people have other materials to hand that will be more suitable. I can pretty much guarantee this will be the case!

[JCL]

Printing and Cutting Accurately

 

One thing that the Silhouette machines do very well is perfectly register cut lines with printed lines. This can be used in all sorts of ways. As I've just mentioned above, you could draw the sides of your buildings using your special brick or stonework, and then print them out precisely, you could draw coach sides complete with your chosen livery, print them, and then cut them out. You could photograph a building, warts and all, and turn it into an accurate kit of parts; my octagonal pinfold building in my Wainfleet thread was an example of this.

 

So far in the thread we have looked at panelled coaches and how to get the intricate moldings cut as accurately as possible and the profiles created with layers of card. But what if you wanted to create a steel-sided pr plywood sided coach. A coach that doesn't have any raised panelling or beading? What if you want to create coach sides in 2mm scale, were even panelling could become a moot point (Feb 2014 Railway Modeller).

 

This is going to be an overview of how to put together a drawing, rather than a tutorial in using a particular drawing package. To keep things easy, I’ll use Silhouette Studio to create the cut lines. There are a great number of drawing programs on the market, some expensive (Photoshop style), some mid-range (the Serif products for example) and some low end or free (Gimp, Paint.NET among others).

 

The first thing to do is find your prototype, and open it, or scan it into your favourite drawing program. If you have some strong horizontal or vertical lines, use these to straighten your drawing.

 

 

Now you can block in the colours using rectangles of colour. I used photos from the internet to choose the cream and green colours that I thought were appropriate.

 

 

After that, I added the windows, and kept the openings white.

 

 

Finally I added the insignia, I'd also add coach numbers and other signs and labels. Both sides are the same, so when I was happy that the first side was done, I copied and flipped it. Don’t forget that you shouldn’t flip the numbers, etc or they will come out back to front! Anyway, you should end up with sour side ready to cut.

 

 

I decided to forgo the carriage number so that I can get this tutorial out.

 

Once you have your drawing, save your file as a jpg or a png file. Try to make sure that it has no compression as you want to print the best picture possible.

 

Next time, importing the image into Silhouette Studio, creating the cut lines, the registration process, and cutting the image out.

[JCL]

Importing the Image and Creating Cutlines

 

If you are using Inkscape, the only way to create the registration marks is to use Silhouette Studio.

 

1. The first thing I do is start Studio and open the png, jpg or bmp file that I’ve just created.
2. I make sure that the image I've just opened is the right size. If it isn't, I resize it.
3. Then I use rectangles to trace around the various window openings for one window.
4. I group the rectangles together to create a “window unit” which I copy and move over the other window.
5. Finally I create the other openings for the small window and the window in the door and the rectangle that goes around the outer edges of the side.

Once I’ve finished all the rectangles that will be cut I change the line colour and draw in all the lines that will be scored as per the illustration above. Now it’s up to you on this, you might be happier doing your score lines yourself with an empty biro or an embosser before starting the cutting process.

 

So the file is now almost set up to print and cut, the only thing you need to do before printing is turn on the registration marks.

 

1. At the top right of the Studio screen, click on the button that contains three corners.
2. Click on Show Reg Marks. The machine will not be able to cut printed objects within the hatched area, and as you can see, this will be a problem for me. Zooming out I see I’ve plenty of space, so I select everything and move it down. Now my image is in a clear area and within the red margins so I’m ready to go.
3. All I need to do now is print onto the material of choice using my home printer or a commercial one. The materials could conceivably include printer friendly plastic sheet, glossy photo paper, or card from the stationers. The image will print, as will with the registration corners bottom left and top right, and the square top left.

Note that there are no fancy-pants colourspaces or rendering intents.

 

 

Cutting your Parts

 

 

Once my print is dry and ready for the next stage:

1. I tape down the printed image onto the backing mat.
2. I make sure that show registration marks is still switched on.
3. I click on the cutter button and choose the appropriate settings (speed, thickness, blade depth, etc)
4. I press the big cut button.

That is almost it! The first thing that happens is that the cutter will look for the registration marks are on the paper tol enable it to work out where the drawing is. Then it will cut the shapes out as normal.

 

 

 

Finally, I don't really need to do it here, but you might want to go around the cut edges with a felt tip pen or watercolours to hide the white thickness of the material you are using.

 

I hope that helps. I'm a bit allergied up, so it might not make sense in places, or indeed, at all. If that's the case, please don't hesitate to ask me questions and I'll answer any that I can.

 

cheers

 

Jason

 

p.s. Next up will be cutting a coach side where the side is taken from a photo rather than drawn.

[MikeTrice]

Brilliant. This is what I tried to do earlier in the thread with the NER Clerestory but had problems using Inkscape to create the artwork for printing. The problem was that when exporting or printing a bitmap it insisted on aliasing the edges. This probably would not have been apparent when scaled and printed however I had hoped to use Silhouette Studio's trace capability. Perhaps I need to revisit it.

 

The major benefit of this approach is the ability to reproduce a complex livery that otherwise might be difficult to paint.

[MikeOxon]

Another excellent tutorial, JCL.  As it happens, i (along with many others, I expect) have been exploring along similar lines!  My method was different from yours, in that I started from a cutting diagram and then added colour to that.  I have posted about it in my blog at http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1405/entry-13122-instant-chocolate-with-cream/

so will not duplicate here.  I have suggested various ways for getting the image of the cutting lines into Photoshop.

 

As MikeTrice pointed out, the livery details and all the natural wear patterns are brought over from the photograph!

 

Mike

[figworthy]

Scribing:

 

To scribe you can set the blade lower in its mount and adjust the pressure so that it does score. The issue with this is that the blade is very thin (I guess that it is about 0.25mm thick) so that you don't get a very noticeable score for planking. I've just been informed today that my engraving attachment from the USA has been sent, so when it turns up I'll let you know how it gets on. Otherwise you can always open up the score with another tool. (See earlier in the thread for pictures of my trial of a matchboarded coach end.)

 

Andy G

 

Thanks.

 

If it will produce some guide lines that can be enhanced by hand, that would be a good start.

 

Adrian

[JCL]

Hi Mike, that's another interesting way of doing it, and keeps the work outside of the Silhouette Studio software until the very end. I hadn't thought of colourizing black and white photos. Of course, your coach really will be unique with a prototypical leg accurate colour scheme.

 

One thing to think about when using photo paper is that photo paper, especially the glossy stuff, is comprised of layers of different materials. You would have to be happy that it won't delaminate. It will be really interesting to see what types of materials people will print on and whether they will be able to produce preprinted panelling on a par with the styrene coaches!

 

Other Mike now, when you export from Inkscape, can you specify the dots per inch that you are outputting with? If now, output it to a large size and shrink it in Studio. Would that work?

[MikeTrice]

Other Mike now, when you export from Inkscape, can you specify the dots per inch that you are outputting with? If now, output it to a large size and shrink it in Studio. Would that work?

Too many Mikes. Originally the artwork was 4mm exported at 600 dpi. Although the software keeps reseting the resolution to 600dpi later it will let me export at 1200 dpi which is much better. Better still is to enlarge the original drawing before exporting (then shrink in Studio) which does make a big difference, so thanks for the suggestion.

[MikeOxon]

Better still is to enlarge the original drawing before exporting (then shrink in Studio) which does make a big difference, so thanks for the suggestion.

That's a good point.  I shall try re-doing mine at a larger size and then shrink as you suggest!  The lettering and logos were a bit fuzzy on my initial attempt!

 

I wonder if there is anything one could coat onto 10thou plasticard, in order to make an ink-jet printable surface?

 

Mike(Oxon)

[MikeTrice]

I have tried printing direct on styrene in the past with some success. The problem would be the slightly raised edges created at the cut line (my mind has gone a complete blank as to its name - call it a senior moment) that you would not be able to sand down.

 

Mike(Trice)

[Buhar]

Burr

[TheCuckoo]

Burr

Yes, it's bl@@dy freezing isn't it?

[MikeTrice]

Burr

That's the word. Thanks.

[JCL]

Printing on Styrene

 

The forum posts on the internet range from "you've no chance" to "this is how I do it". I found this thread http://www.starshipmodeler.net/talk/viewtopic.php?t=97467&sid=b7bd2c504a6a224cd71ecea12cb5b9ea that appears to show someone that's given it a go with the use of hairspray and Krylon satin clear coat. I haven't tried it, but you might find it interesting.

[jpendle]

I decided to use the cutter to have a go at creating the front wall of one of the paltform buildings at Bolton Trinity Street.

 

Here's what I am aiming for.

 

 

Unfortunately all my pictures and all the ones I can find on the web show these buildings at an angle. Ideally I would have used a perfectly composed front view of the building and then just resized it and then printed it off. I didn't have a good shot of the front so I took the best view I had, which was an end wall and imported it into the Silhouette software, I then resized it and cropped it to give me a section of tan brick and another section of the darker brick. I then created guide lines on a scale wall and overlaid the different brick colours. I also created window and door frames and added a blue door to my print section. I ended up with 3 files, one to cut a rectangle of clear styrene to represent glazing, one to print and cut the wall and the door on card, and one to cut out another wall along with all the window frames and the door frame, but this time in styrene.

 

Here are the cut pieces before assembly

 

 

And here is the assembled front wall.

 

 

I've had to sacrifice some detail in the upper window frames and also on close inspection you can see that my brickwork slopes down to the right, but at normal viewing distances this isn't noticable. I wasn't able to reproduce the fancy brickwork over the arches,but on my next trip back to the UK I'll be taking a lot more photos of Bolton station. I'd also like to get a better colour match on the door, its too flat, but other than that I'm pleased with the result, especially as this is the first time I've tried to scratch build anything.

 

Now I just need to get the other 3 walls done.

 

John Pendlebury

 

 

[JCL]

That looks great John! I feel for you about photos. I can think of a dozen photos I should have taken but didn't in Wainfleet the last time I was there. Basic stuff too. It's a good job my mum lives down the road in Skegness. Hi mum if you're reading this.

[MikeOxon]

Printing on Styrene

 

The forum posts on the internet range from "you've no chance" to "this is how I do it". I found this thread http://www.starshipmodeler.net/talk/viewtopic.php?t=97467&sid=b7bd2c504a6a224cd71ecea12cb5b9ea that appears to show someone that's given it a go with the use of hairspray and Krylon satin clear coat. I haven't tried it, but you might find it interesting.

Thanks JCL.  I have some HP Inkjet Transparency Film, so I'll give that a try.  Another thought was to apply a film of Inkjet Transfer film to the plasticard before printing and cutting.  I'll let you know how I get on!

 

Mike