I saw on another forum that some people are using a Robo Craft cutter for cutting out cardboard building carcasses,has anyone on this forum any experience of using one?

This sort of thing,basically a vinyl cutter I think.
http://www.mdpsupplies.co.uk/craftrobo-silhouette.asp?gclid=CNOj6qb_tq4CFVAhtAodkWkbpQ

I'll have a lot of card buildings to make later on and I find the cutting out is the tedious part,especially when I make one of my usual 'male chicken' (changed by forum) ups and have to redo the whole thing.
I also hope to make totally scratch built buildings later.

Allan

I've been using a Robo cutter for the Electra vinyls for a couple of years now. It would be ideal for cutting out building kits.

Basically what you would need to do would be to scan the kit, export it as a bitmap image and then load it into the Robo software.

Once loaded, you can trace the cut-lines over the bitmap. Then print out the bitmap with registration marks and then feed into the Robo to make the cuts. There are different settings depending on the thickness of the card, so you may need to practice a bit first.

I mainly make the Scalescenes kits so at the moment and all I really need is an easier way of doing all the tedious window and door cut outs,but I can see a Robo cutter being handy for scratch building as well,especially getting several cut out in one session.

I thought I could probably draw the walls etc. in a cad program and export the line drawings as a bmp. and go from there.

Allan

Quote from: Bikeracer on February 24, 2012, 04:13:32 PM
I saw on another forum that some people are using a Robo Craft cutter for cutting out cardboard building carcasses,has anyone on this forum any experience of using one?

They are not very good at any thickness of material. They'll cut the very very thin (30thou or so) plasticard and they'll cut very thin card but not anything of any substance.

They are very useful for cutting vinyl including printed vinyl and that actually provides a good way to build a lot of things by printing on printable white vinyl then cutting out all the windows and sticking it to clear plastic to form the building structure.

I think the thickest card I can normally get is just under 0.5mm or about 0.020" but is in big sheets not the normal A4 size so it could well be okay,but mostly the one I use is around 210 gsm A4 which from memory is around 0.25mm.
I'll definitely make enquiries about the capabilities before I consider a purchase of one.

Allan

You can of course cut multiple layers of thinner card and stick them together for the thickness you want. That also means you can etch different details in each layer (such as trellises, window ledges etc.) too

Quote from: EtchedPixels on February 24, 2012, 09:28:41 PM
They are not very good at any thickness of material. They'll cut the very very thin (30thou or so) plasticard and they'll cut very thin card but not anything of any substance.

True EP, but then they were designed for crafters. Card making, scrap booking etc...
The company actually make a whole range of cutters, different sizes and prices.
Some are designed more for sign writers than anything but will cut quite thick stuff.
See their website below for more details.
http://www.graphtecgb.co.uk/shop/default.asp?sort=price&category=20111026112750_GRAPHTEC&menulevel=

From what I can see the new Robo Craft Silhouette can cut 350gsm and up to A3 size card.
I'm getting really tempted now because I need to make a few different buildings to see what fits where on the goods yard so I can get that track down.

Allan

Quote from: captainelectra on February 24, 2012, 09:04:10 PM

Once loaded, you can trace the cut-lines over the bitmap. Then print out the bitmap with registration marks and then feed into the Robo to make the cuts. There are different settings depending on the thickness of the card, so you may need to practice a bit first.

Hi Adam,

My photo editing software doesn't support the old bitmap file format in Windows7,it does if I load old XP files to convert,but I downloaded three new buildings from Scalescenes yesterday had to convert them to PNG format because I can't save in the old bitmap format.
The PNG format however seems better and sharper than the old bitmap format.

I'm busy at the moment tracing the cut lines out and then hopefully I'll just print the sheets out,feed them to the cutter and voila....a Metcalfe type building kit.

Allan

Discovered a benefit using the Silhouette Cameo today.

I use a laminate of 160gsm and 210gsm card to give me the heavy card for Scalescenes model,cut the parts out and glue two together to get approx one mm thickness.

I'm making the engine shed at the moment and there are a hundred oblongs of card to cut out to get the required thickness of four parts for the wall buttresses,shoved the A4 370gsm sheet through the cutter....ten minutes later I've got a hundred parts to laminate up,if I'd had to do it by hand I'd have been ages and a bit fed up and there would have been a variation in sizes as well.

Allan

Just want to add my thanks for this thread.  I have a Cricut machine (intended for the American hobby of "scrapbooking") and a cartridge that will make a shape that might just look like a window in a wall.  Quite expensive at $400 but it does deep cutting with the special blades.  But what a faff to use, and buying a cartridge for $90 for a new font is a bit outrageous.

These robo Silhouette 'printer' cutters look like the way forward for scratchbuilding as soon as the price of a 'thick cut' machine comes down from $1200 to a few hunded.  Print any font, any shape you can draw.  Brilliant.

However, in the meantime I think I will explore the laser cutting service I read about recently on here (Laserlab or Ponoko) - you draw it, save it on line and your pre-cut plasticard arrives in the post.  That plus etching at PPD.  The price of a cutter will have to come down a fair bit to sway me to buy the cutter, but I will be looking out for them now I know they are a realistic proposition.

Something I've been playing,window frames with for the engine shed I'm building.








Allan