A Guide to using the Silhouette Cameo Cutter

[Chubber]

Hullo,

 

I have tried to get 'old dog' head round the 'new tricks' of this thread, as I'm interested in cutting window frames and glazing bars for signal cabins and round or ornate windows etc.

 

I already use A4 self adhesive paper label sheet to hand cut windows, but do so by sicking the printed paper onto the acrylic prior to just cutting through the paper,

 

I can't imagine cutting the window frames from the SA paper and THEN trying to peel away the framework to stick it to the acrylic as it would tear/distort,

 

Similarly, cutting out a thin card framework before gluing it to acrylic could be problematic [misplaced/smudged glue].

 

My question is 'How does one use a Silhouette cutter to produce glazed windows?'

 

 

If this has already been discussed/explained, would you be kind enough to point me in the right direction?

 

 

Doug

 

 

PS My window frames here

 

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/22368-a-welsh-warehouse/

 

 

 

were cut from matt photo paper then fixed to CD crystal case material using mekpak.

Edited October 11, 2014 by Chubber

[JCL]

Hi Doug

 

I think there could be a couple of ways to do this.

 

Firstly, you could use the printed labels and stick them to the acrylic Then you can use the pressure settings to cut just the labels and not the glazebefore picking off the squares between the frames with a cocktail stick or similar. This would depend on the thickness of your clear glaze. I believe we've found that the thickest material that the cutter can cope with is about .030".

 

The second option is to do what I did on my signal box, which was to set up a square edge, then cut the frames out of pre-coloured thin card that I bought from a hobby shop. Then butt the glaze up against the square, put glue on the card sparingly, leave it to go tacky, and finally lay it down onto the acrylic starting with the corner of the card that butts to the corner of the square. Obviously the whole lot can then be added to the building afterwards.

 

There are no curved window frames in your attachment, so I'd say that you would create a file that is basically just a number of aligned rectangles within a huge rectangle that denotes the outside of the frame.This post shows the signal box windows: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/79025-a-guide-to-using-the-silhouette-cameo-cutter/?p=1239585 this post shows the windows I cut into styrene on the shed tutorial. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/79025-a-guide-to-using-the-silhouette-cameo-cutter/?p=1245100

 

I hope that helps.

 

cheers

 

Jason

 

p.s. I'm slightly embarrassed showing these as your buildings are fantastic Doug.

[sleeper]

Hi Jason,

 

I've been plodding through the 33 pages of this thread for the past week and finally I've reached where we are now. I'd like to say a big thank you for the knowledge you've passed over to us and also a thank you to the guys who've risked damage to their machines in order to see what its true potential is.

I'm taking delivery of a Portrait on Monday and I'm looking forward to when I will be able to use it, but first the learning curve with Inkscape.  

I once did a Metropolitan Metro Vick, (the link to that blog is somewhere below) in card with a balsa wood roof, it's surprising how sturdy it was when finished, but what a pain cutting out the various openings and louvres by hand. I'd like to return to that project and get it right this time. For similar reasons I've fought shy of diesels and coaches in the past, it seems now the future is much brighter,

thanks again guys. 

 

 

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1250/entry-12114-my-metro-vick/

[Chubber]

Thank you for that, Jason.

 

I wonder if you could take A4 thin card, glue-stick that to A4 SA paper then feed the sandwich through the machine?

 

It might be easier then to take the stiffer card/SA paper fret off of the sticky mat, peel off the SA backing and stick that straight to the acrylic sheet.

 

Using your suggestion of coloured card it could save a lot of the fiddly frame painting...

 

Just 'finking....and you wouldn't have to pre-print the card first, just let Silly Etty do it from a drawing in her head.

 

Have you tried that, or have I missed something? It's the sticky glue everywhere syndrome I'm trying to avoid.

 

Doug

 

PS just want to revoice the various thanks for taking the time to post all this.

Edited October 13, 2014 by Chubber

[Ken Anderson]

A great thread. Spent over an hour last evening in reading it!

Has anyone produced any semaphore signals or gantries using these techniques?

[JCL]

Hi Doug,

 

On the card/as paper, that would work, as long as the sandwich wasn't too thick for the cutter. Another alternative would be spray mount if you are gluing to thick card - spray mount is rubber based, so doesn't add any stiffness.

 

Does that help?

 

Cheers Jason

[JCL]

Hi Ken

 

I'm afraid I don't know, they would be pretty delicate if they did as the max thickness the cutter can cut reliably is .010", thicker than that and you would have to help ease out the parts with a knife. It's an interesting idea though as we have been making very narrow parts such as church railings in styrene.

 

Cheers

 

Jason

[MickRalph]

Isn't the combination of Inkscape and the Silhouette cutter great?  Having prepared and cut the sides, ends and floors (the latter from 2 layers of 30 thou, not shown in the kit of parts) for a pair of bogie coaches of the Tramways of the Correze,

 

 

I managed to cement the parts for the ends in the wrong order, so I fired up Inkscape, deleted the sides from the 20 thou and 10 thou layers, corrected an error in the original drawing, and then recut the ends.  The state of play in building them is shown below.  These coaches have verandahs at each end, which will be built up on the underframe.  Next will be to build the bogies (from Bill Bedford sprung 6ft 6in etches) and draw up and cut the frame, spring and axlebox overlays (following the ideas in another of Jason's threads).

 

 

This brings me to the main reason for my post.  Back in post 792, I reported on the new version of CutWizard, which has corrected some of the issues which earlier caused us to reject it.  However, the latest version drives the Silhouette cutter based on the fill-colour of lines, rather than the line-colour; for our type of drawings, this creates much extra work in converting every line to have a fill-colour, so that different lines can be cut with different parameters.  It also requires much checking to ensure that no lines have been missed (if no colour is set the default is to treat it as a black fill).  However, I really like the operation of CutWizard, which allows you to set the drawing precisely on the page for cutting and also allows different colours to be omitted from cutting (eg so that they are scribed first but not then cut) or to be cut with different "thickness" or number of repeat cuts.  I asked the German software designers whether they could add the option to cut by line-colour rather than line-fill, but I recently received the response that they have no plans to do so.  Thus, the usefulness of CutWizard is diminished because of the need to convert the drawing.

 

I have had some problems when converting the Inkscape files to DXF format and importing them into Silhouette Studio for cutting.  I now note that one can buy an extension to the latest version (v3) of Studio to convert it to the Designer Edition, which is claimed to work with SVG files and with layers.  My question is: is anyone using the Designer edition and does it properly open and cut Inkscape SVG files?  If so, it will be worth me buying this program to see whether it is easier and better to use than CutWizard (it is also about £10 cheaper).

 

Mick

[Dave at Honley Tank]

Hello all,

I'm new to this thread and am about at page three with the yard office tutorial.

Thanks Jason!

I've also worked through Mike Trice's thread in this forum, using Inkscape.

Santa has come early - looks like I'll get an empty box on the day!

Ordered a 'Portrait' from Yolo on Saturday, took delivery and cut first bit of card on Tuesday, using 'Studio'

I hope to start doing my own thing using Corel-Draw when I'm happy that 'dipping-my-toe' in via the tutorials has worked.

Thanks to all on here and on Mike's thread too,- the tutorials and the other inputs have proved very very helpful

 

Dave

[jonhall]

I'm thinking of demo'ing my portrait on the club stand at Tolworth Showtrain this coming weekend if anyone would like a look in the flesh.

 

http://www.hamptoncourtmrs.com/showtrain/showtrain%202014.html

 

Jon

Edited November 5, 2014 by jonhall

[ed7]

Jon

 

I would be interested to see your Portrait - when do you think you will be at the show?

 

Edward

[jonhall]

I'm down to be on the Hampton Court MRS club stand the majority of both days so it should be on the stand doing its stuff most of the time - I guess I will slow down production on Sunday if I have done all the sheets that I think I will need. The exhibition manager thinks I'm going to be demo'ing buildings for Hamworthy, which isn't high up my list of things I want to do...

 

Jon

[ed7]

Jon

 

I hope to be there on Saturday afternoon.  With any lick will see you then.

 

Edward

[sleeper]

Hi Jason,

I've finally completed Mike's inkscape tutorial and have managed to create something to be cut, I saved it as a PDX file and opened it in silhouette studio, sent it to the cutter and after altering the cut settings clicked the cut button but there was no response from the cutter.

The settings window said the cutter was ready and despite many attempts it still wouldn't cut but the bottom of the menu dropped down and the words 'cutting complete' were in the window.

A while ago I saved an image as a DXF file and imported it and tried cutting with it but of course it didn't cut but the machine did go through the motions of trying to cut so I know the machine works to some extent.

Can anyone put their finger on what I'm doing wrong please? 

[JCL]

Hi there. The first thing I did when I got my cutter was open up Silhouette Studio, draw a square, a letter and a circle and cut them on standard card settings on card. Have you done that test at all?

[sleeper]

Hi Jason thanks for the prompt reply,

I hadn't tried that so I've just drawn those three things and sent them to the cutter, it tried to register and came up 'registration failed' I've tried several times with the same result. I unplugged the machine, waited ten and reconnected, same result. I've checked the calibration but there were no red marks on the page next to A-B and 1-2 although the distance over the 4 crosses measured 200mm in line with the setting in the menu so I guess the calibration is correct, length ways anyway.

At one stage it said 'cutting in blue in the status window but the machine wasn't actually cutting. I'm going to try re-installing the software as it might not have done so first off.

 

Thanks again

[MickRalph]

Hi Jason,

I've finally completed Mike's inkscape tutorial and have managed to create something to be cut, I saved it as a PDX file and opened it in silhouette studio, sent it to the cutter and after altering the cut settings clicked the cut button but there was no response from the cutter.

Hello Sleeper,

 

I'm confused as to which file format you have used.  I can't find "PDX" as a graphics format and it is not in the Inkscape.  If it was PDF, then Inkscape will export this, but the Studio manual says that only the Designer edition will open pdf files, for tracing an image.

 

Otherwise, I can't help, as I haven't had this problem, but I would start by checking the "cut settings" page to check that everything is set to cut (eg is it set to cut by line colour and are all the colours ticked - they are in the "Cut Conditions" > "Advanced" setting).

 

I hope you sort it out.

 

I was at Tolworth Showtrain today and Jon Hall had an interested crowd around his demo of the Portrait cutter.

 

Regards

 

Mick

[sleeper]

I cracked it!

It's to do with the registration marks. I tried sending it to the printer, this prints only the registration marks, which I tried sending the piece of A4 card through the printer which promptly jammed so I printed them on to paper and stuck that to the mat and it cut out the shapes I'd created, alas in my hurry I forgot to alter the thickness setting and now have a square, number and circle cut into my mat, fortunately not right through?

 

UPDATE

I printed the registration marks onto a piece of A4 0.2 plastic card and it won't register again, you tell me!!

I'm thinking it's because the marks are smudged (wet ink on plastic) I'd fixed them with hair spray (not mine) too, I'll try again

 

Thanks for the tips Mick I'll try them too

 

PDX was a typo should have been DXF, sorry

Edited November 8, 2014 by sleeper

[JCL]

Try turning off the checking for registration marks (I'm afraid I can't remember where this is off-hand). They are only necessary if you are cutting some card that you have already printed a design on, for example MikeOxon's coach sides.

 

cheers

 

Jason

[Smiffy2]

I did that by mistake when we were trying out my wife's Silhouette. Caused much head scratching until we realised.

[sleeper]

Hi Jason,

I'd already found that out but thanks all the same. As soon as I turned off the registration marks it cut with no problems other than faults in my artwork which I've been trying to correct, without success at present

 

cheers Roly

[Dave at Honley Tank]

Since Tuesday I've drawn a Silhouette file produced by following Jason's tutorial and on Friday cut some plastic.

End result I have a tiny shed. Photographed it, then found that I don't know how to load the pic here. Blasat!

[JCL]

Fantastic! Erm, nearly.

 

You need to make sure your photo file is less than 1Mb in size. I generally shrink my photos so that the longest side is between 800 and 1000 pixels.

 

Assuming you are using the basic uploaded, and not the Flash uploader, to upload a picture:

 

1. Click on the reply with attachments button

2. Click on "choose file"

3. Locate the file on your hard drive

4. Click on attach this file

5. Click on the Add Post link

 

This will upload the pic at the location of your cursor. If you don't do step 5, the photo will be appended to the bottom of your post.

 

Cheers

 

Jason

[Dave at Honley Tank]

Fantastic! Erm, nearly.

 

You need to make sure your photo file is less than 1Mb in size. I generally shrink my photos so that the longest side is between 800 and 1000 pixels.

 

Assuming you are using the basic uploaded, and not the Flash uploader, to upload a picture:

 

1. Click on the reply with attachments button

2. Click on "choose file"

3. Locate the file on your hard drive

4. Click on attach this file

5. Click on the Add Post link

 

This will upload the pic at the location of your cursor. If you don't do step 5, the photo will be appended to the bottom of your post.

 

Cheers

 

Jason

 

 

Do you mean like this Jason?

 

Thanks a bundle for that, and for starting this thread, and your tutorials and,  .........?

Anyway, THANKS - sorry for shouting!

 

Good luck

Dave

[cromptonnut]

I've just changed my vote from "Planning to buy" to "Own" as the Amazon van arrived around lunchtime with a Portrait cutter.

 

It "does things" but as yet haven't had a lot of success with anything really simply down to not having any suitable materials in stock to cut.

 

I'll be picking up some card and plasticard over the next week or so as I have a few things I would like to experiment with.

 

I have a lot of reading to do...