A Guide to using the Silhouette Cameo Cutter

[JCL]

I wonder if the answer to your question is to be found here:-

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/84868-scratchbuilding-a-msjar-3-car-emu/page-4&do=findComment&comment=1439130

 

Best wishes,

 

It does look like a good idea. I'm looking at starting something new so I'm going to use Ron's method for my rounded rectangular windows. The good thing is that as the windows are the same, although it is more involved than simply drawing a rounded rectangle, I only need to draw one and then copy it along the side of the vehicle. I also make sure that all cutting that I do is set to a speed of 1 as I found early on that any faster than this and the cutouts start to get a bit wild.

 

Also, for breakdown on methods, have a look at Ron's thread in HAB's link above, and Mike Trice's thread here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/81902-completing-the-4mm-ner-6-wheel-coach/

 

Finally, I've been using Silhouette Studio 3 that includes an "overcut". In the illustration below it's set to on.

 

 

On another thing, and I know I'm cross posting here (my thread and the D9 thread, anyone that follows both of those will be getting bored of seeing this), but this is an example of something I've almost finished that used the Silhouette to give you an idea. The plans are available for download if you want them.

 

[JCL]

Talking about Version 3 of the Silhouette Studio software, it has had a minor upgrade and has removed some of the problems associated with version 3.0. I've used it for most of the loco above and I've found that, overall, it is much better than the previous version. In my original email about it I said:

• The software crashes if I try to save a dxf file. That said I've only had time to try one dxf file. - this was remedied after a reboot
• If you use Studio as your drawing software, you will not be able to open files saved in version three in older versions of the software. This is important if you decide to roll back your version to the previous one. You can get around this by saving the file with a new name but you won't be able to access any changes you made using that file in the older software. - I can't see this changing, so if you upgrade, but still want the option to go back, then save any file you have with a new file name (you could add v3 to the end of it or something)
• It doesn't seem to allow you to get back to the origin (top left) at the end of a cut, so you can't do a load of cuts. - Mike sorted this out for me
• When cutting, you can insert a pause between cut commands (i.e. colours). Unfortunately, the origin seems to change after a pause and the cuts are then offset - this doesn't happen to me anymore.

For my money it's worth upgrading.

 

Unfortunately Inkscape is still languishing with its old version. Hopefully the new version with better cutter control will be out in the not too distant future. It will be interesting to see if I carry on using Silhouette Studio for the cutting phase once the upgraded Inkscape is released.

[outcastjack]

All on here and especially JCL you have driven me crazy with the quality of modelling and I have been "forced" to buy myself one.

It should arrive tomorrow, I am absurdly excited to join the club and have been drawing up plans in preparation! 

[JCL]

That sounds great! I'll look forward to seeing what you do with it. There seem to be 54 of them out there at the moment, does anyone else have anything they can show us that was done, even in part, with computerized cutters?

[raymw]

 

does anyone else have anything they can show us that was done, even in part, with computerized cutters?

Not yet, but I bought the blade, very cheap, from a local tool supplier, who knew not from whence it came. I'll be fitting it to one of my cnc mills. Ideally I would need to make a weighted sliding sleeve, to apply a reasonable pressure, but I think initially I will do something simpler. I am not very impressed with the 'bearing' in the unit, and most likely if the technique works, I will make a different holder arrangement to take more readily available/cheaper blades. I'll let you know how it goes, but it will initially just be some test cuts, squares, circles, etc. It will be something like this, but with more finesse, and safer to use! (btw, drag knives have been around for years, I don't know what they have patented,)

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

[raymw]

Hi,

 

I don't know what happened to the link in my previous post, but it was to a company that is trying to/already has patented a drag knife, something that has been in common usage for years http://donektools.com/

 

But then, Amazon has also recently patented a common photography studio setup.

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

[outcastjack]

That sounds great! I'll look forward to seeing what you do with it. There seem to be 54 of them out there at the moment, does anyone else have anything they can show us that was done, even in part, with computerized cutters?

yep, my first play with the new toy, it is the prototype for a run MoD PFAs I intend to make, its a bit basic but went together nicely, I am so impressed with the Portrait, it is allowing me to make shapes so quickly and easily. I have made a large number of changes to the drawings since this first attempt. If i was cutting by hand I would simply have bodged it together and made do.

 

 

If anyone wants the cut file/ instructions to assemble then PM me, it takes no time at all to assemble, it is only for the basic shape as pictured (Minus container) and obviously a lot of work is needed to add brake detail etc not shown.

 

Edited May 13, 2014 by outcastjack

[JCL]

If i was cutting by hand I would simply have bodged it together and made do.

I think that is one benefit that hasn't been mentioned, and I think you are right. I know that I would make do with more bodging if it was a toss up between turning a blind eye and starting again.

[etendam]

• It doesn't seem to allow you to get back to the origin (top left) at the end of a cut, so you can't do a load of cuts. - Mike sorted this out for me

 

To make multiple cuts, it is always possible to draw 1 part and the copy paste the part multiple times. A Dutch guy did this to make tiny holes (0,5 mm) in 0,3 and 0,5 mm sheet.

he draw the item with holes and copy/pasted it 5 times. Then on the silhouette with the double cut the knife did 12 runs.

 

The result with his cameo can be seen here:

 

http://forum.beneluxspoor.net/index.php/topic,58521.180.html

 

See pics in the middle of the page.

 

Ed

[JCL]

Thanks Ed, the loco on that page looks great! My Dutch is limited to two words, was it built with the Silhouette?

[etendam]

It isn't a loco. It is a car used behind a loco to provide heat to the coaches behind the loco. It is entirely build with the Silhouette cameo. If you start in the beginning of the tread you can see how things are build up from styrene.

 

Ed

[outcastjack]

Ed, that car is stunning, something to aim for to be sure.

 

All, to clarify one point, if I want to score and cut the same piece is there a way I can put this all into one cut file or do I need to run two cut files with different settings for pressure etc?

[JCL]

Depends how you do it I think. My method is to have the cut lines in one colour, the score lines in another colour. In the new Silhouette Studio software you can assign different cutter settings to each colour. The Silhouette will then go off and run the whole job in one go.

 

I don't know for sure, but I would guess that if you are using the Silhouette Driver in Inkscape you could have your score lines in a different layer, then only show that layer then run the cutter to score. When it's done, hide that layer and rerun the cutter to do the cutting.

[Jonathanj]

Hi All,

 

So I saw the thread, read it from one end to the other, and then went out and bought a cutter (a portrait for now), complete with spare blade from when I knack'd the first one experimenting. 

 

Couple of Questions -

 

1) How do you get it to cut pieces longer than 24"?  I'm drawing in autocad, exporting as dxf and then importing that into studio.  Studio seems to re-scale the dxf file to suit current page width, but I've got around that by putting an outer box of known (imperial) dimensions on - I simply rescale in silouette so that's the right size.  But I can't get it to go longer than the 12"x24" cameo matt.  Selecting 'none' for mat seems to restrict the cutting area to 8.5" x 11", which makes no sense to me, and I can only see 4 other options, Portrait 8x12, Cameo 12x12, Cameo 12x24 and Stamp6x7.5.  I'm on a laptop and it's just occured to me that the menu box does run down to the bottom of the available area, are there more options I can't see?  For reference the software thinks I'm running v3.0.293ss, I haven't updated it in case that proved to be a bad move.

 

2) How are people finding the CB09 blades last?  I reckon I've killed my first silhouette blade after a few hours - not confident enough of this to actually try stabbing my finger with it - so I'm either going to need a boxfull, or some nice longlife CB09's.

 

3) where's the serial number?  I'm trying to register for the warranty, and silhouette won't accept any of the numbers I can find on the machine...

 

J.

[JCL]

Hi Jonathan, welcome to RMWeb

 

Here are the bits I can answer:

 

 

1a) There's a difference between the mat and the media (page). In Studio v3, you seem to be able to specify a media length up to 120", but you can only get mats that are up to 24" long, so if you go longer you would have to either cut without a mat, or make your own mat out of some sort of thin plastic. The screen shot shows those settings. That said, I've not had to do this myself, so if it doesn't work that way, can you let us know?

 

1b) In edit preferences, click on import options, and choose centred or as-is. "Fit to Page" is the option that's resizing your drawings. I choose centred otherwise I may have to zoom out to look for my drawing.

 

2) That's for someone else. However, I'm surprised that your blade died so quickly. I know that over here in North America you can contact them to let them know you have a duff blade, they've been known to send out replacements.

 

3) I'm afraid I honestly can't remember - anyone?

[Jonathanj]

Hi Jonathan, welcome to RMWeb

 

Here are the bits I can answer:

 

studio.jpg

 

1a) There's a difference between the mat and the media (page). In Studio v3, you seem to be able to specify a media length up to 120", but you can only get mats that are up to 24" long, so if you go longer you would have to either cut without a mat, or make your own mat out of some sort of thin plastic. The screen shot shows those settings. That said, I've not had to do this myself, so if it doesn't work that way, can you let us know?

 

1b) In edit preferences, click on import options, and choose centred or as-is. "Fit to Page" is the option that's resizing your drawings. I choose centred otherwise I may have to zoom out to look for my drawing.

 

2) That's for someone else. However, I'm surprised that your blade died so quickly. I know that over here in North America you can contact them to let them know you have a duff blade, they've been known to send out replacements.

 

3) I'm afraid I honestly can't remember - anyone?

 

1a) That's what I'm doing, and it doesn't work beyond 24".  Even that seems to be dependent on what mat you last used.

 

Started up the software and let it open a new file, no content.  Cut the media width down to 8" to suit the portrait cutter, and you get :

 

 

Extend the media area to 30", and you get :

 

 

Red box is the cutting area, 24" long.  I've tried put things on that extend into the last 6in, and all the lines simply stop at the virtual 'edge'.  Normally this red box would still be only 12" long, but I'd previously had it set to a 12x24" mat, and I think it had retained those settings.

 

Too 'prove' this was the issue, I then selected the Portrait 8x12" mat, which cut the cut area down to suit (sorry, forgot to grab a screenshot), and then selected 'none' again.  As if by magic the area stayed at 8x12" as determined by the now unselected mat :

 

 

I can flick it back to 8x24" by choosing the 12x24" cameo mat again and then deselecting it, but I can't get anything bigger than that.

 

I've been in the silhouette website, and while it says in several places that you can run up to 120" long for materials that don't need a mat, no where can I find instructions on how.  Ditto the manual.  If no one else has done it, I guess it's time to email Silhouette.

 

1b) Thank you, done.  Haven't tried it yet, will tomorrow when I have something new drawn up to cut.

 

2)  It has done about 6-8 hours of actual cutting, all at slow speed and 'high' depth settings on 20 and 30thou material.  So I'm not totally surprised.  After about 4 hours there was the very distinctive sound of a stepper motor stall, and the line it was doing at the time was short, displacing everything else it did afterwards.  I'm reading this as the blade being too blunt to drive through the material at the rated torque.  I'm still using the blade, having dialed it down to depth to 7 with no repeat of the stall, but I think it's on it's last legs.

 

As an aside, I don't quite agree with the idea of setting the depth to 10 for thicker sheet.  After the initial stall, I fitted my unused spare blade and cut a series of identical rectangles in a range of blade depths from 10 down to 3, all in 30th material. Then I tried snapping them out to get a measure of how deep the score was.  I could detect no difference 10-9-8-7, a slight change to 6, and then it got noticeably different (harder) each time.  Hence choosing 7.

 

This sort of makes sense to me mechanically - as far as I can see there's no very sophisticated pressure mechanism, just locked up and down.  So if your blade on 10 (1mm protrusion) is failing to penetrate 20thou/0.5mm material, that means the tip of the blade is at the bottom of the cut, rather less than 0.5mm down.  If the blade is 'out' more than that the top of the casing must be correspondingly 'up', ie you're deforming the  machine crossbar to provide the downward pressure. That's fine within limits, but there'll come a point where more deformation ( = more pressure) doesn't result in meaningfully greater cut depth, it just increases the machine friction.  Which I think is 7 on my machine.

 

3) I'll have another go just in case I missed one.  If that doesn't work I'll ask the mob what sold it to me.

 

Thanks,

 

J.

 

PS : Oh, and I've lurked here for a long while, just rarely post anything.  Anywhere, ever.

[JCL]

"you're deforming the  machine crossbar to provide the downward pressure" - interesting, that makes sense.

[Metalhip]

Blade stick out will only determine the maximum that the blade will cut through,it's the pressure that determines the depth of cut,not the amount of blade sticking out.

The ideal pressure will just cut through the material and leave a faint line on the mat,if you can feel score marks on the mat with your fingernail then the pressure is too high.

 

I only generally cut card and paper and don't alter the blade stick out,just alter the pressure and use multi passes if required because each pass is accumulative.

 

Allan

[JCL]

Blade stick out will only determine the maximum that the blade will cut through,it's the pressure that determines the depth of cut,not the amount of blade sticking out.

The ideal pressure will just cut through the material and leave a faint line on the mat,if you can feel score marks on the mat with your fingernail then the pressure is too high.

 

I only generally cut card and paper and don't alter the blade stick out,just alter the pressure and use multi passes if required because each pass is accumulative.

 

Allan

Hi Allan, my laziness means I do actually set my blade to the same depth each time and vary the pressure. I've not cut into the mat except for that faint line. This works for card and styrene up to .010" for me. It's a shame about the .020" not cutting through, esp when there's enough blade there. I tried 16 passes once but it wasn't happening. That said, Silhouette America know about this thread now, maybe they will take our discussion into account when thinking about their next machine.

 

You have the Silver Bullet Allan, have you experimented with different thicknesses of styrene with your machine?

[Jonathanj]

Since it looks as though I am following the instructions for longer cuts more-or-less right, I've now emailed the UK importer, graphtecgb, with my screenshots showing the problem and asking how you do it. I'll post their reply plus my results up here when I hear back.

J.

[Metalhip]

Hello Jason,

 

The only styrene I've cut has been 0.25 which I cut a about 40 holes in to make a holder for Valejo paint bottles.

 

I know it's not the same settings as a Silhouette,but I used speed 200,pressure 50 and three cuts.The blade was a 45 degree blade.

All the cuts were clean and the centres just dropped out.

 

I haven't done any cutting for several weeks now because of a personal bereavement,but I'm gradually getting back into making things.

 

Allan.

[JCL]

I'm sorry to hear that Allan. Thanks for your reply.

[Dave Searle]

That sounds great! I'll look forward to seeing what you do with it. There seem to be 54 of them out there at the moment, does anyone else have anything they can show us that was done, even in part, with computerized cutters?

Hi,

 

I'm another one who bought a Portrait inspired by this thread.  I've used it to create the side frames for an N gauge foot bridge for Hinksey Yard:

 

Add some 100tpi stainless steel mesh and assemble:

Next time I'll include all the verticals holding the mesh in rather than adding some later as plastic strip (all part of the learning curve). 

Add the main span over the tracks:

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[MikeOxon]

Don't forget that if you bought a Silhouette for railway modelling, it has many other potential uses as well! 

 

The rectangular diaphragm washer in my loo cistern failed yesterday. I scanned the old torn one, copied it with the Studio software, and cut out a replacement with my 'Portrait' machine - quite a complex shape with four holes of different sizes. 

 

Works perfectly - quite a relief

 

Mike

[JCL]

Good stuff Dave, that's a great looking footbridge.

 

Fantastic Mike. I was going to write "photos or it didn't happen", but I'm happy to take your word for it:) Andy G of this parish cut a new gasket out for his car a couple of months back.