A Guide to using the Silhouette Cameo Cutter

[uax6]

It's strange that you have found lemonaid to be ineffective, I now use nothing but! You can be quite generous with it and it doesn't seem to be too harmful!

 

Colin Parks has great results with Humbrol liquid Poly....

 

HTH

 

Andy G

[jonhall]

Please can I tap the collected expertise of the group?

 

I was scoring 40thou plasticard last night using the mat and found that I'd drawn too near the bottom edge of the sheet (despite being within the guidelines in silhouette studio), so that as the rollers reached the bottom edge of the plasticard they dropped off the 40thou, and it was too thick for them to climb back on - cue assorted unhappy noises from the machine -does anyone have any advice for how far short to stop the drawing to avoid this, or if there are alternative margin settings to use? It probably wouldn't have been a problem with thinner material, the rollers would probably have climbed back on with 20thou.

 

Second up, I want to use two different score profiles on one sheet, a heavy score (I'm using the 'chipboard' profile with maximum blade depth, 33 thickness and speed 1, with a double pass for the score lines) but I want to use something more delicate for a few part id's and alignment witness marks, that I don't want scored nearly so hard. Is there a way of having a lighter score 'layer' (I'm familiar with autoCAD).

 

Finally I'm finding the grid function and 'snap-to-grid' very useful, but the minimum grid of 1mm is a bit limiting, has anyone suggestions for doing a snap to end of line (as you would in a CAD package) or smaller grid squares?

 

Thanks,

 

Jon

[jonhall]

This is what I was playing with last night, PBA coke wagons - the one with Black plasticard is done the old way, the all white one is cut on my portrait cutter - the sheet underneath is the sheet I had problems with, but it got far enough to show the potential.

 

 

 

Jon

[JCL]

Hi Jon, I'm not near mine at the moment, but I might be able to help with a couple of things.

 

.040" is the top end of thicknesses that can go through the cutter, and pew are really testing the limits. The sound it makes when it drops off the edge is pretty grinding! The bottom margin would probably be the the distance between the blade and the front of the blade holder "plus a bit". A previous discussion a few months ago came up either sellotaping down a strip of waste .040" at the bottom of the sheet you are cutting so the blade holder can run over it at be same level.

 

I had two different score depths on the Armstrong -Whitworth radiator 1xdeep, 3x shallow and repeat a dozen times or so, then a cut around the outside. To do this, the deep scores should be one colour, the shallow ones a second colour, and the cut lines a third colour. Doing this, you can turn colours on and off, and run the material through the cutter multiple times with different cut settings. You must not press eject until you have done the last pass though as reregistering the sheet would be impossible.

 

I'd have to look at the software to remember the snap bit, are you talking in AutoCAD or Studio?

 

Looking good you realize what you're doing thickness-wise is cutting edge? Not many people talking about .040", it would be interesting to see how you get on.

 

Cheers

 

Jason

 

Ps. Sorry about the cutting edge thing, just realized.

Edited August 31, 2014 by JCL

[MickRalph]

Please can I tap the collected expertise of the group?

 

I was scoring 40thou plasticard last night using the mat and found that I'd drawn too near the bottom edge of the sheet (despite being within the guidelines in silhouette studio), so that as the rollers reached the bottom edge of the plasticard they dropped off the 40thou, and it was too thick for them to climb back on - cue assorted unhappy noises from the machine -does anyone have any advice for how far short to stop the drawing to avoid this, or if there are alternative margin settings to use? It probably wouldn't have been a problem with thinner material, the rollers would probably have climbed back on with 20thou.

 

Second up, I want to use two different score profiles on one sheet, a heavy score (I'm using the 'chipboard' profile with maximum blade depth, 33 thickness and speed 1, with a double pass for the score lines) but I want to use something more delicate for a few part id's and alignment witness marks, that I don't want scored nearly so hard. Is there a way of having a lighter score 'layer' (I'm familiar with autoCAD).

 

Finally I'm finding the grid function and 'snap-to-grid' very useful, but the minimum grid of 1mm is a bit limiting, has anyone suggestions for doing a snap to end of line (as you would in a CAD package) or smaller grid squares?

 

Thanks,

 

Jon

Hello Jon,

 

Your questions got me thinking, as I too was wondering how close you can cut to the edge of the A4 sheet.  Previously, I had done a cut which lost the top edge (on a landscape drawing). 

 

I assume that you are using Inkscape and then converting the drawing to dwpolyline DXF format for opening and cutting in Silhouette Studio 3? I think most people do this (if they aren't suing a CAD program they are already familiar with).

 

I created a grid of 4 straight lines at 5mm intervals on each edge of the sheet, starting at the very edge (see also the answer to your question on grids).  I then exported this as a DXF file to Studio and then used the pen holder to draw the lines.  This suggested that the Portrait cutter cuts to the limits shown on the Studio drawing pad on the longer sides, but the shorter side starts cutting about half way on the arrow on the backing sheet.  Remember that the protrait only cuts to 8 inches wide (slightly smaller than A4).

 

For different scoring profiles, you can use different colours for the different requirements.  Jason has usefully show how to do this in his thread on building a class 114 (see the last three or so pages). Then, when you have the drawing in Studio 3, choose the advanced cut mode for setting the cutting settings; then, for the cut order, you can turn on or off the various colours and you can create your own material types for each type of cutting/scribing you want to do, and set different values for the speed, thickness and double cut for each of the materials.  You can also put a pause between each colour, allowing you to make any necessary changes to the blade depth before cutting the next colour.

 

On the issue of grids, in Inkscape, the grid can be set in the document properties on the file tab and you can go as small as you like for both the horizontal and vertical lines of the grid (is 0.1 px small enough?).

 

Mick

[uax6]

My experience is that the max width that you can use on the portrait is about 205mm, which is annoying as a 52ft 4mm coach is just too long to fit across the sheet (This has implications when it comes to using Amy to score matchboarding, which seems to work best when done from top to bottom of the sheet for some reason). I think this is actually the width of the cutter on it's carriage that limits this.

 

Andy G

[jonhall]

I'm using studio V2.9.45 because the netbook I'm running the portrait with is XP, and because I cannot get either disc or download to install on my win7 desktop.

 

I don't really want to download Inkscape if I can get away without, but I do see the need to accurately snap to lines, and with a better resolution than 1mm.

 

A bit of experimentation this afternoon suggests that the bottom 'margin' is limited by the distance from the cutter to the rollers (plus a safety margin) and that it needs to be about 18mm (on the sheet) to avoid roller 'drop-off' - I did stick a short length of 20thou onto the bottom edge of the mat to act as a step-up, but fortunately my revised drawing didn't need it.

 

I went back to JCL's demo on page 3 and saved two versions of the file, a 'light pass single cut for the letters, and a double pass for the score lines, without taking the parts out of the machine between 'prints' and this worked well, but the indexing on the letters was not critical anyway.

 

Jon

[JCL]

That's great Jon, I was just about to post how to do it in Studio 2, so I'm pleased you found it.

[uax6]

BTW version 3 works ok on a netbook running XP, although it is a bit strange after using V2 for sooo long!

 

Ag

[JCL]

It certainly took some getting used to (and I think it took me two goes to be able to download it properly), but it was definitely worth it. Personally I only use it now for cutting and not for creating drawings as the file format is proprietary, and you can't export your drawings to a different file format. To me, this means that it isn't future proof. I think the biggest difference for me is, as Mick says, the ability to do all sorts of different cuts as a part of the same job and use the pause. I also use the pause function to take the blade out of the holder and blow the chaff out of it if there have been a lot of cuts in a particular colour.

[Adam1701D]

Just as an aside, I have decided to part with my Silhouette Cameo and have listed it in the Classifieds. Since outsourcing my vinyl production to Norfolk, it has been sitting on a shelf.

[tomp]

New owner of a Silhouette Portrait, I'm mostly going to use it to cut out Card Tramcar kits on Plasticard, my question is do I have to use the cutting mat when using 20 thou card?. I don't need a complete breakthrough cut just deep enough to push out the windows etc. 

 

Thanks 

[JCL]

In theory the Portrait can be used with certain materials without a cutting mat. I tend to use one though tomp, so that the rollers have something to grip as they are moving the sheet backwards and forwards. In the past the texture on the rollers have made indents in plasticard (I don't remember if .020" was thick enough to withstand this). Now I tape the sheet down 1" in from the left, and then take this into account when siting the drawing in Inkscape.

[JCL]

Just as an aside, I have decided to part with my Silhouette Cameo and have listed it in the Classifieds. Since outsourcing my vinyl production to Norfolk, it has been sitting on a shelf.

 

Hi Adam

 

I've just had a look at your website, wow you have a huge range of vinyls there. There must have been a lot of work to get to where you are now.

 

I hope you have some good luck selling your Silhouette.

 

cheers

 

Jason

[jonhall]

New owner of a Silhouette Portrait, I'm mostly going to use it to cut out Card Tramcar kits on Plasticard, my question is do I have to use the cutting mat when using 20 thou card?. I don't need a complete breakthrough cut just deep enough to push out the windows etc. 

 

Thanks 

The cutter will also have a lower edge margin (between the blade and the rollers) where it cannot reach to cut, with the mat the blade can reach the bottom of the sheet to be cut because the rollers are still in contact with the mat.

 

Jon

[MickRalph]

Well ....  having previously cut parts for a station, engine shed and some covered vans in 5.5mm scale for the Tramways of the Correze (all still WIP with pictures to follow when further advanced), I arrived home from grandparent duties in Northern Ireland with the completed plan for the first of my 4mm coaches (an LSWR 30ft PBV (destined to be followed by the four 48ft coaches to make up a "4 1/2" set).  I did some tidying up of the design and then converted the 10 thou layer to DXF format with both ROBOcraft and DWPolyline boxes unticked and opened the file in Studio 3.  I then sent it to the cutter in pen mode to check the output

 

Disaster ....  as you can see from the upper two drawings below, the cutter frequently returned to an origin before moving back to draw the next line.  The same thing happened both when I used the file as imported (left) and with the compound path released (right).  Also, the various parts of the drawing were slightly misaligned.  I thought that the "return to origin" mainly occurred in the blue colour used for the holes for hinges, grab-rails and handles and that perhaps it was due to the holes being too close to the lines, but with closer examination of the scanned images, I am not so sure.  Anyway, I then exported the file with the DEWPolyline option enabled and this resolved the issue, as seen in the bottom two drawings.  There does not seem to be any difference between cutting the file as imported, or with the compound paths released.  In the lower drawings, the thin lines are caused because the pen I was using was lightly touching the paper - you can see the path taken in making the drawing.  When I tried with the ROBOcraft option enabled, the misalignment of shapes occurred again.

 

 

I then cut the shapes in 10 thou plasticard and am very happy with the result.  Thus, contrary to one of my earlier posts, it seems that the export to DXF must be done with DWPolyline enabled. The latest Studio 3 program is very good, with the ability to vary the order for cutting different colours and for for setting different cutting parameters for different colours.

 

See my next post for some exciting news about CutWizard.

 

Mick

Edited September 3, 2014 by MickRalph

[MickRalph]

CutWizard Extension for Inkscape

 

CutWizard is a program which is installed as an extension to Inkscape to allow the design to be sent to the Silhouette cutter straight from the Inkscape SVG file without the need to convert the file to DXF format for opening and cutting from Silhouette Studio 3.  It works also with Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw (but not with Draw 9 which is installed on my computer).  Back in January in this post (and some earlier and later posts), Jason considered whether CutWizard is suitable for our needs, the conclusion being that it had a flaw in that it cannot deal with shapes which are not closed. 

 

In May I raised the problem with the German company from which I had downloaded it and they asked for a sample file, but I then heard no more from them.  A  week ago I checked their website and saw that a new version had been released and so I downloaded it, but I found that it still did not deal with straight lines; accordingly, I raised it again with the company and got an immediate response that they had failed to implement it for the Silhouette version and that the revised version could now be downloaded.   

 

This time, the extension worked properly, so I first used it to plot the design on paper to check before cutting and as this was successful I then cut the design in 10 thou, with a great result.  I will now have two PBVs, when I have completed them, one cut with Studio 3 and one with CutWizard.

 

From the initial trial, the program works very much the same as Studio 3, with one improvement and one significant downside.  The improvement is that CutWizard allows even better control of cutting by colour.  You can create new materials, as in Studio 3, so I have created Plastcard Score (Sketch Pen, speed 1, thickness 15, single cut); Plasticard Cut 1 (Blade, speed 1, thickness 5, double cut); Plasticard Cut 2 (Blade, speed 1, thickness 20, double cut) and Plasticard Cut 3 (Blade, speed 1, thickness 33, double cut).  Then, when you come to cut, you can select which of these you want, but can alter them for any particular colour without resetting the general setting for that material - thus I used the "score" setting for all the colours to give a light score to guide future cuts, but the green colour was only to scribe the door outline, so I altered the setting to thickness 33 for just the green lines.  You can also pause between each colour to allow any adjustment or cleaning of the blade.

 

One slight downside is that you can't reorder the colours as you can in Studio, but there was no difficulty in switching off one or more colours and then doing the next cut with just those colours.  For my drawing, I have red and black for horizontal and vertical lines on  the inner shapes, yellow and purple for the outer lines, blue for holes and green for score lines.  I first used "score" with all colours selected, but with green modified as above; then red, black and blue using each of the three of the cut settings; and finally yellow and purple with each of the settings.  The result was perfect alignment of all cut lines.

 

CutWizard has very a facility for very precise positioning of the drawing on the sheet, so that when you have worked out the practical margins you can use on your machine, you can position it to minimize wastage.  However, like Studio, it won't deal with layers, nor will it deal with registration marks.  I believe that it does deal with both these issues in Illustrator and Draw.

 

The major issue, which I will take up with the German company, is that the cuts are based on the fill of the lines rather than the stroke of them.  Thus with the drawing having been made with no fill colour, I had to spend an hour or so going over the drawing adding the same fill colour as the stroke colour for each line.  It is not difficult, but you do need to check in CutWizard that all lines have been converted.  It is possible to do this at the time of creating the drawing, but the drawing may look odd, as solid shapes (eg a rectangle with or without rounded corners) will be filled with the colour, while a rounded rectangle which has been converted to a path with the path then broken apart to create separate lines and corners will have "shadows" at the corners.  I have only modified the previously drawn plan, so will need to see which is the best way forward.

 

If you just use CutWizard on a drawing where the the lines have no fill colour, then it defaults to black lines rather than coloured ones.  This is usable, but lacks the control of the colours.  In the attachment, the upper drawing was plotted in this way and the lower one is done from the colour-filled version.  There is an error in the panelling in the drawing which I corrected before actually cutting it.

 

  

 

Thus, it does seem that CutWizard will cut files at least as well as Studio, but I need to see whether the time spent in ensuring the drawing has fill colours is worth the benefit of cutting direct from Inkscape.  Of course, the writers might develop it to deal with the line stroke colour.  Strangely, the preview of the file in CutWizard looks just the same as the normal line drawing in Inkscape.  I will send them a sample cutting file to show what we are using it for.

 

CutWizard has a 14 day trial and the program costs 39.99 euros.  My trial period has long since expired, but by altering the system date on the computer, I am able to run the trial version.  Anyone who has previously tried the program can presumably do likewise to test it.  I assume that the full licence which Jason purchased will allow him to use the current version without changing dates.  The program can be downloaded from here.  The program does come with an English language option, but the manual is in German only.  I have used Google Translate to get a version I can work with (after interpreting the rather odd translation).

 

I hope that this is helpful and look forward to comments when others have looked at CutWizard again.

 

Mick

[jonhall]

Has anyone tried cutting wood veneer? I've just remembered a pack of veneer offcuts I bought and the G scale monster box wagon I was building...

 

Jon

[jonhall]

to answer my own question, 0.5mm veneer on max thickness speed 1 single pass dosn't quite cut through but the bits can be popped through - ideal!

 

I've also worked out how to improve the snap to grid in sillouhette - the spaceing can't drop below 1mm, but you can then add 'divisions' so 4 divisions gives a snap to of 0.25mm

 

Jon

[JCL]

That's good news Jon. Andy G has some matchboarding to do, I wonder if he can be persuaded to do it in veneer.

 

Would the type/species of veneer you use make any difference, I wonder?

[MikeOxon]

I've just received one of the 'new style' Silhouette pen holders, which uses collets to hold the pen.  This method seems far preferable to the previous use of two set-screws, which quickly strip in the plastic body of the holder and don't clamp a circular cross-section pen very effectively.

 

Unfortunately, though, I have not managed to use this holder successfully with any of my small collection of diamond dressers that I use as scribers.  There are two problems: (i) the range of diameters covered by the collects is fro 8mm to 11.3 mm and most of my scribers are too small  (ii) there is a long 'snout' on the pen holder that does not allow the point of the larger diameter scribers to emerge from the holder, as shown below:

 

 

The ball-point pen I show is just under 8mm diameter but is held with the collet screwed fully home.  I think I shall cement my 6mm scriber firmly inside my original set-screw type of holder.

 

Mike

 

 

[JCL]

That's useful to know Mike. Can you fix the thinner ones accurately inside some styrene/brass tube to increase it's diameter?

[brack]

I've been thinking about the same thing Mike - I don't have an old pen holder, but the new one (and a 9.52mm dia scriber) arrived in the last week and I've been wondering how to sort them. I'd ordered the fatter scriber having read the specs for the collets...

 

If it helps anyone else, the Snout's internal diameter is 5.7mm on mine.

 

As I only bought it for scribing, I'm not so sure what to do now. Modifying the snout isn't so easy as it seems to extend back inside the holder as well as extrenally.

[MikeOxon]

I've been thinking about the same thing Mike - I don't have an old pen holder, but the new one (and a 9.52mm dia scriber) arrived in the last week and I've been wondering how to sort them. I'd ordered the fatter scriber having read the specs for the collets...

 

If it helps anyone else, the Snout's internal diameter is 5.7mm on mine.

 

As I only bought it for scribing, I'm not so sure what to do now. Modifying the snout isn't so easy as it seems to extend back inside the holder as well as extrenally.

I haven't done it to mine, as I'm continuing to use the old type of holder, but I can only suggest cutting away the whole front end, forward of where the collet grips, something like this:

 

 You would need to measure where to position the scriber within the holder, so that it lifts off the work when not actually scribing, and it might need some packing at the front, to steady the tip.

 

As I said, I've not actually done this but would be interested to know if you decide to be 'guinea pig'

[jonhall]

to answer my own question, 0.5mm veneer on max thickness speed 1 single pass dosn't quite cut through but the bits can be popped through - ideal!

 

I've also worked out how to improve the snap to grid in sillouhette - the spaceing can't drop below 1mm, but you can then add 'divisions' so 4 divisions gives a snap to of 0.25mm

 

Jon

 

The result of my wood cutting experiment

 

 

Jon