Is anyone using a Cricut for model building? Curious about cutting styrene and wood and what its capabil are. My wants one for cutting stencils and I am thinking dual use.
Thanks,
Jim
My wife is an artist and has been learning how to use hers, or rather I should say, learning what it can and cannot do, for a month or two now. It has been a frustrating process since she has no real interest in using the “canned” Cricut designs and materials but it seems the machine is biased in favor of those. Several times she had to “abort” a cut after a long long time because it became clear it wasn’t doing anything.
Admittedly in one case she thought she was trying to cut thin basswood and it turned out to be micro-plywood, not thick (sort of what you find in many laser cut kits) but evidently the resins in micro-plywood were enough to defeat the cutting tools in the Cricut. Her bad. But she keeps trying and has had more success with the right materials. She is interested in the capabilities because when it works it certainly produces clean and rather elaborate cuts.
She does not use it to cut styrene and I do not want to gum up or wear down her tool by asking her to try. But based on her experiences, my hunch is that there is a thickness of styrene beyond which it would not cut through and it is likely that thickness is one we’d like to use for structure scratchbuilding and such. But having said that, what she seeks is a complete cut while with styrene even a fairly shallow cut can be used for “score and snap.” So it might be more useful than I have been assuming but I have the distinct impression I’d need to get my own CriCut in order to give it a try (stated another way, happy wife = happy life). [A]
Dave Nelson
You might check with a local Joann Fabrics Store, they had a demo machine in their Bakersfield store a couple of years ago. I took a file and a thin sheet of Basswood to try. I wasn’t impressed. Even using the deep cut blade it took 4 passes to cut 1/32” Basswood.
I figured that I was stressing the machine to its max and it probably wouldn’t last very long cutting thin Basswood which was my reason for buying one.
I had drawn a HO scale structure wall with windows and a door, it came out perfect.
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
Turned 84 in July, aging is definitely not for wimps.
According to the internet it seems the cricut can cut only 2.0 mm deep, maybe a bit more. 3/32" is 2.4 mm so would be at the limit of the device.
It appears to be designed mainly for fabrics, thin plastics and veneers. Any kind of plywood is likely not doable because of the adhesives now used in most plywoods.
Depending on your needs you can get a decent laser cutter for under $500 for hobby use from a company with support and of course the moon is the limit on the other end.
I have used the Silhouette cutter to make a number of scratch built N-scale structures. I usually use relatively thin (0.020) polystyrene materials, allow the cutter to scribe the plastic, and then either snap the parts to separate them or use an X-acto knife to finish the job. It is very easy to create shapes in the software and manipulate them until you get the structure just right. I got the Silhouette at the time (about 5 years ago) because the software was supposed to be better then Cricut for making your own designs. I have not been disappointed, though the Cricut software may be much different now.
About 19 minutes into the video:
there is a limit on the thickness of the styrene you can cut.
Yes I do. I have an explore air 2. It does a nice job on styrene. I just run it multiple times over for thicker styrene. Works very well.