Silhouette Cameo 3 cutter?

[chessie system fan]

Drag orientation was more what I was talking about.  Regarding curves, I'm curious what you do.  This is a curve really zoomed in.  The program converted my corel draw curve to small straight lines. 



I see three options.

1.  You haven't zoomed in enough to see what I'm seeing.
2. There's a setting I don't know about.
3. Some sort of unknown unknown something or other.   

Any ideas?

 Old blades are still useful, btw. I use them for things that need more texture.  Right now I'm experimenting with brick sheet and rail joint bars. 

[peteski]

These cutters are driven by stepper motors. So, there are distinct steps in either X or Y direction for each movement of the blade. Just like with pixelation, curves will be rendered or cut as small staircase steps. But what you are seeing seems to be something else where a curve is converted to a longer set of lines.

[Mark W]

I can't say for Corel Draw, I do all my designing directly in Silhouette Studio.  There is a setting in Sillhouette Studio "Curve Quality".  The default settings was "2" on scale 1-12, this is how curves show for me. 

I cannot zoom in any further than 1/10th mill.

[3DTrains]

Regarding curves, I'm curious what you do.  This is a curve really zoomed in.  The program converted my corel draw curve to small straight lines.

I believe if you were to use a program capable of vector graphics (Illustrator, Paint Shop Pro, etc.), that you won't see the segments and can be scaled to any size without loss of detail. You could try something like Inkscape which is free and open source.

Cheers!
Marc - Riverside

[peteski]

I believe if you were to use a program capable of vector graphics (Illustrator, Paint Shop Pro, etc.), that you won't see the segments and can be scaled to any size without loss of detail. You could try something like Inkscape which is free and open source.

Cheers!
Marc - Riverside

Corel Draw *IS* a vector-based program drawing/publishing (similar to AI but less expensive).

[Lemosteam]

Bump on this thread for a question- can these machines scribe completely off the edge of the "print area"?  Looking to see if styrene can be scribed into snap off strips of specific width.

[Mark W]

How long of strips are you thinking?  For the Cameo, the cutter mat is 12x12 inches, however the software includes a 'margin' zone.  While the blade can go all the way to the boundary edge, the thicker the material, the higher the chances of the blade snagging the material and causing a mis-alignment. 

If you only need, say 8" strips, you can position your material well within the boundary, but again for thicker stuff, moving the cutter head across the material edge is risky. 

I would recommend using a sheet slightly longer than your end strip length (if less than 12"), then plotting in a boundary edge around your material, doesn't need to be much, 1mm even.  This means the cutter head starts and ends it's 'cut' on the material, then you can trim the scribed material to length post cutting, and snap off the strips. 

[Maletrain]

Going back to the thickness of material that the device can cut, the MicroMark catalog has a "deep cut blade" that they say can cut "through extra thick materials, including foam board, craft foam and more."  The material thickness specified for this blade is stated as "0.1 to 2.0 mm."  That is 0.004" to 0.079".  But, it is not necessarily styrene, which I would expect to be harder to cut than foam.

So, does anybody have experience that will provide the actual capability with respect to thickness of styrene material that can be cut well?

What I would like to make is lightweight passenger car sides, or at least window strips for "modernized" windows on heavyweight passsenger cars.

[Lemosteam]

@Mark W ,

Thanks, that kind of sets me straight on this.

For funzies, What I am trying to do is make glazing strips for passenger cars out of 0.005" thick clear styrene, and rather that actually cut them manually, I was thinking that a tool like this could do that job much more professionally and accurately that I could with a knife and straightedge.

Provided the styrene sheet would fit, now I am thinking that a border and with scribes across between the borders would work.  Snap off the borders first and then snap off the strips.

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[Mark W]

@Lemosteam that's how I'd do it.  And for .005" material, no snapping needed, the blade will easily clean cut that for you. 

@Maletrain see reply #3.  For passenger car sides, I'd go with either .01" or .015", you should get a nice clean and precise cut with that thickness with only minimal edge cleanup required.

[Lemosteam]

Another question for you.  Is the platen that the material sits on soft or very hard?

Could rivets be depressed into the surface of the styrene with a different point on the cutting tool?

[Mark W]

I doubt it, but might be worth a test.   The cutting mat is a hard density plastic sheet with a sticky surface over the cutting area to hold material in place. 

You could stick a layer of craft foam to the mat, then Super77 one side of your styrene and stick that to the foam to give a soft underlay.   

[CNR5529]

The mat is pretty dense, yet fairly flexible, but I am not sure how well rivets would come out. They do sell different tools such as a stippling tool which would work for making rivets, but it is designed for use on the curio, rather than the cameo machines.

Also, Silhouette sells an extra long 12" x 24" mat, to accommodate longer sheets.

[wcfn100]

Even if it was able to emboss rivets, you would want a backing material that was fairly hard in order to focus to point of the embossing tool.  Something soft like foam just spreads the forces out.

Jason

[Lemosteam]

Thinking self healing cutting mat density.