Silhouette vinyl cutter files sharing

[Andy C]

I have had my silhouette Cameo Vinyl cutter for a few months now, and in that time cut solatrim for my built slow poke, some window etch film for decorating windows and also some card with the kids for making birthday cards etc.

I am always keen to make best use out of these things but sometimes lack imagination, so wondered if there was an appetite for sharing of ideas, files etc for those who have also used the cutter.

Thanks

[Ian Moody]

I have one as well and it is excellent for printing decals for warbirds. I normally just look for the decal online then copy the image and resize it to the size I require before cutting. If you need a complex decal you can use several layers. I have made stars and bars and soviet stars as well as squadron codes and really small hatch signs. What I love most about it is the ease of setting it all up. Having said that, I have sold most of my aircraft now and will be selling it if anyone is interested in purchasing it.

[chris larkins]

I bought one of these off Gumtree a couple of months ago with several rolls of vinyl, so far I am very pleased with it and have cut a few decals for my models, I also cut out the words and picture to go on a sign for my local model club. As was already said setting up is very easy, there are also some great tutorials on YouTube that show how to do various different things. I would be happy to share any files or ideas.

[Max Z]

I have a Silhouette and very happy with it, so I'll be watching this thread and contribute where I can. I found it is also excellent for cutting (thinnish) cardboard, which you then can use as templates to cut parts from Depron sheet or balsa sheet (have not tried the latter).

Max.

[Max Z]

I tend to create the artwork in my CAD software, much easier to manipulate, like scaling, rearranging, sometimes shearing, etc.. Some examples:

[Max Z]

Also works well to cut the walls of a H0 scale chalet (near to 40 holes for windows and doors to be cut, and a number of openings for floor beams):

Edited By Max Z on 22/09/2019 19:44:14

[Max Z]

To show a real result, here are my templates for a new foamy (the "Alix", search the web), cut from 0.25 mm cardboard (discarded tab sheets):

The cutting settings:

Max.

[Broken Prop]

I am experimenting with cutting camouflage masks. I draw the outline of the pattern that I require in CAD using Bezier curves and then overlay the wing shape to scale on the pattern. The idea is to be able to lay the whole sheet over a wing and take out the parts not needed before spraying.

I need to replicate a three colour camo scheme and thought this might be a way forward. Early days yet so I cannot report on whether it works!

Pete

[Max Z]

Interesting idea, but I can see a couple of hurdles.

How are you planning to keep the parts of the mask together when you drape the whole sheet over the wing?

You say it is a 3-colour camo pattern, so presumably any two colours will come together at various points. How are you going to spray those colours? the only way I see is to take one part out, spray it, let it dry, put the mask back in place and take out the neighbouring part before you spray that area.

Max.

[Allan Bennett]

Keeping the parts together is simple; before removing them from the backing, you overlay them with a sheet or strip of frisket film. Then when everything's in place on the model you peel off the frisket (it's slightly less sticky than the masking film I use) and your masks are left in place.

For 3-colour RAF roundels I place the outer mask in place, and seal its edges with a quick spray or brush of whatever the model's background colour is. I then spray the inner red freehand, bigger than needed. Then I place all three masks, held together by frisket, in place in the outer ring, then remove the blue and white rings, leaving in place only the mask over the red centre. After sealing the edges of the red mask with a quick blast of the same red paint, I then spray white over the remaining area. After that's dry (only a couple of minutes with a hair dryer if using water-based acrylics) I then replace the mask for the white circle, put some tape over the join between it and the red mask to avoid leaks, seal its edge with white paint, and then spray the blue outer ring.

Naturally, that kind of sequence will work with any multi-colour design, though in some colour combinations you might need to modify the sequence -- it works well for me with red, white, and blue because the white covers the red overspray very easily, and blue goes well over white. Yellow is a colour I've had most trouble with when trying to cover other colours, so for a roundel with a yellow outer I would probably spray the whole thing yellow first, and then go to the red, white, blue sequence safe in the knowledge that those colours are able to cover yellow.

[Broken Prop]

I was intending to do a combination of the above with what Max has written. Using Frisket film to hold everything together is a possiblitiy and would help to place the large mask over the wing.

As Max has suggested, individual pieces of the mask could be taken out and replaced as required. The only thing that bothers me is that the cuts have a finite width and paint will bleed into them, possibly giving a false colour to the edge of a camo area of another colour.

I need to experiment before committing myself to a proper model!

[Max Z]

I know I sort of started it, but let's concentrate on the Silhouette plotter/cutter in this thread, and not turn it into a "how to" for masking / spray painting techniques, however interesting and useful that may be...

 

Max.

Edited By Max Z on 25/09/2019 10:26:47

[Max Z]

I made these roundels today:

It proves to be very difficult to assemble the different colours without little gaps and overlaps. In my opinion it is at least partly due to the inaccuracy of the cuts.

I left the white rings on the backing as they were cut, and transferred the red dots and the blue rings and positioned those as best as I could to avoid gaps and overlaps. I had to cut the blue rings at some point as it proved impossible to get them in place without leaving a wrinkle or having to stretch them. And I took great care to butt them up on the inside edge, but it still resulted in an overlap at the outer edge, hardly visible but clearly noticeable as a ridge by rubbing your finger over it.

What I did not do, and probably should have, is to match the orientation in which they were cut in the Silhouette.

Does anyone have a similar experience? As for size indication, the larger roundels are 94 mm in diameter.

Max.

Edited By Max Z on 26/09/2019 11:31:05

[Martin Gay]

I found this method quite useful for layering different colours:

**LINK**

Martin.

[Max Z]

Posted by Martin Gay on 26/09/2019 12:44:29:

I found this method quite useful for layering different colours:

**LINK**

Martin.

Yes, that could be useful, especially for more complicated multi-coloured items, but it is done by layering different colour vinyl. Something I wanted to avoid, and I doubt if that method is accurate enought to place inset colours that way. And you would still have cutting inaccuracies resulting in the same thing I described.

In case of the roundels, I was wondering if building the rings up from the center would be better than trying to insert some between two others, since you could stretch each one slightly to get a perfect butt joint.

Max.

[Martin Gay]

Max,

I have used it to insert one vinyl into a cut-out in another with some success. Works quite well with aligning paint masks.

Martin.

[Max Z]

Martin, I will try that someday then.

I went to my local plottershop yesterday to get some sticky vinyl, and they had the new Cameo 4 on display so I had a quick look at the new features.

It has a fold away roll holder. Now, I leave my rolls of vinyl resting on the table in front of the plotter, which is no problem, so not interesting for me.

There is an improved cross cutter on the rear. Now that is an improvement, I tried the old one on my Cameo 3 on several occasions, but never managed to get a straight cut. That becomes a problem when you are feeding in that end of a roll again next time. The new crosscutter has better guiding of both the cutter and the material. It is still operated manually though.

The Cameo 4 has cutter pen type recognition. The downside of that is that the new pens are a different size, you need an adapter to hold your old pens. The old auto-adjust pen (the clickertheclick type..) does not fit at all.

The claimed downforce is 5000 g. ! I understood from the shopkeeper that is used with the new "rotating knife", but she did not have that available yet so could not demonstrate.

For my purposes, I do not see a reason to upgrade from my Cameo 3 to a Cameo 4, but hey, you might well be interested, so I thought it useful to report my observations.

Max.

[Max Z]

My recent experiment:

It worked well, considering that the stripes are only 1,5 mm wide. I struggled a bit with transferring it. I still have not decided if I need proper transfer film ( I need to buy a 20 m roll!), so after a few experiments regular Scotch tape worked best. I still had to pry the end of some stripes to unstick them from the backing.

Weeding was ok, helped by the fact that I did make some strategic extra cuts (I think), except for the very narrow top and bottom stripes. But I grabbed those in the end.

For those interested, here is my cutting pattern.

Max.

[Max Z]

Not much going on here these days? I thought starting a thread like this (not by me) was a good idea .....

Max.

Edited By Max Z on 29/12/2019 12:35:08

[chris larkins]

Not modelling related, but it continues to impress me how the cutter works. I just made this decal to stick on the wallet that contains my daughters car paperwork. Some of the lines are only about 1mm thick but it came out great.

[Max Z]

Cutting narrow lines is fine, but they have a tendency to lift from the backing when prying the surplus bits loose, at least with the vinyl I am using (Hexis). What are you using Chris?

Max.

[Steven S]

Have you tried reverse weeding Max?

Edited By Steven Shaw on 31/12/2019 18:35:14

[Allan Bennett]

Thanks for that Steven. I'd never heard of reverse weeding, or even the term "weeding" in this context, I've checked it out on Google, and will try it next time.

[Max Z]

Yes thanks for that Steven. It is news for me too, and I will give it a try next time. But first I have to stop messing about with regular tape for transferring and buy some decent transfer film

Max.

P.S. to save readers of this topic having to look it up: Reverse Weeding is lifting your design off the backing with transfer film, including all surplus bits, and removing the latter from the transfer tape instead before you stick the design in place..

Edited By Max Z on 01/01/2020 09:16:54

[Ken Lighten]

Every day’s a school day! - cheers Max