Post by flybynight on Apr 14, 2011 20:24:02 GMT 1
Most of you I figure know what a Cricut is. It's that machine that cuts lettering out of paper for your wives and girlfriends to make fancy scrapbooks. Well I bought one yesterday. No not to make fancy scrapbooks, but to make decals for my planes or whatever else I want.
You are limited to one font type on a cartridge. It comes with one, but each additional one is around $50 CAD. The machine itself was $180 CAD. So three font cartridges and you have almost payed the same amount as the machine. What a rip off!! So why did I buy it? There is a simple work around if you are good with torrents.
There is a printer type USB port on the back of the Cricut that allows you to hook it up to a PC or Mac. If you download Cricuts program Design Studio trial (this program is not worth buying. It only allows you to design on you PC with the cartridges you already bought) the trial updates the Cricut firmware which you need to run Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL for short)
I downloaded and installed SCAL. SCAL opens your Cricut up to be able to cut a lot more. For example any font on your PC is usuable. As well as any you download. Svg files are common for CNC plotters and are readily available on the net. .SVG files are a type of image file.
They max size of paper or whatever your cutting is 12"x6". Which is small but not very limiting seeing ass you can cut a 12" tall letter. I tried a cutting plain paper first to get used to the program and machine. It cut through the paper with ease. So I figure I would see how it would cut covering film. If the design or font is simple with out to many fancy lines it will cut nice. Next I tried vinyl. Cuts nice! Very nice! So I proceed to cut a couple things for my 1/4 scale Yak 54. I think this little machine is a keeper.
Example of a .svg file of a skull
You are limited to one font type on a cartridge. It comes with one, but each additional one is around $50 CAD. The machine itself was $180 CAD. So three font cartridges and you have almost payed the same amount as the machine. What a rip off!! So why did I buy it? There is a simple work around if you are good with torrents.
There is a printer type USB port on the back of the Cricut that allows you to hook it up to a PC or Mac. If you download Cricuts program Design Studio trial (this program is not worth buying. It only allows you to design on you PC with the cartridges you already bought) the trial updates the Cricut firmware which you need to run Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL for short)
I downloaded and installed SCAL. SCAL opens your Cricut up to be able to cut a lot more. For example any font on your PC is usuable. As well as any you download. Svg files are common for CNC plotters and are readily available on the net. .SVG files are a type of image file.
They max size of paper or whatever your cutting is 12"x6". Which is small but not very limiting seeing ass you can cut a 12" tall letter. I tried a cutting plain paper first to get used to the program and machine. It cut through the paper with ease. So I figure I would see how it would cut covering film. If the design or font is simple with out to many fancy lines it will cut nice. Next I tried vinyl. Cuts nice! Very nice! So I proceed to cut a couple things for my 1/4 scale Yak 54. I think this little machine is a keeper.
Example of a .svg file of a skull
But the wife wanted it so we got it! So now I'm gonna design some SC stripe kits for my 1 year old SC! Thinking Paint it yellow with red stripes and my AMA number in red as well. Or maybe a dark blue cub with white stripes! The wife has tons of different colored self adhesive vinyl. With the 12X24 max size, wing graphics should be a snap on this thing! This should be fun!