So has anyone picked up the Cricut Explore yet?

[Adam Baker]

Was curious to see if anyone had gotten one of these things yet.

I've decided to use the last bit of my tax money to get one of these since my wife & I can both get use out of it. I've got a 1/32 Tornado I want to do, that will require custom paint masks that I figure will be possible now w/ something like this, and my wife does quite a bit of scrap booking, so I think it'll be worth it.

 

[Skinny_Mike]

My wife has one that she used to make custom masks for etching wine glasses. Worked well for that. I never thought to use it for models.

Mike

 

[Adam Baker]

Yea, there are lots of model related things it can be used for. My biggest one is being able to make custom paint masks. There's a Tiger Meet Panavia Tornado that I want to build that no one does decals for, so it will require making masks for it.

It can also cut all kinds of materials, including balsa & bass wood, and sheet styrene.

 

[Gator]

Mine is made by Graphtec. If you need artwork, just let me know the type of file needed. No charge.

 

[TomN]

I read on another forum about some of the short comings of the Circut and it
was advised to save your pennies (thousands of them) and look into one of these...

http://silverbulletcutters.com/

Ouch.

Tom

 

[Adam Baker]

There are always pros & cons of anything, and its all according to what you can afford and what you're looking for.

That Silver Bullet machine is more inline with a professional level type machine, and really more than I'd be willing to spend.

A more realistic comparison to the Cricut Explore would be the Silhouette Cameo, which has about the same capabilities and runs about the same price.

One thing I do like about the Cameo over the Explore is that the Cameo can do up to 10' long cuts, so I could make my own vinyl windshield decals & that kind of thing, along w/ doing them for a couple websites I help run.

I think the Cameo can do thicker material like sheet styrene, and bass & balsa woods, but I've not looked into it enough yet. I'm just leaning toward the Explore b/c I know it can do it.

What I really need to research is how each of them handle importing images and tracing them out and cutting from those. Thats what I really need for making custom paint masks.

 

[Gator]

Adam,

From someone who makes paint masks, I use the Craft ROBO/ Silhouette and CorelDraw to make my masks. While it is not my prefered brand, Roland, it is a solid little machine and has made it's money back and then some. At work we use 30 inch Rolands, a nice workhorse of a machine that I have cut letters down to 1/8". What is also great about this machine is that I can run my paint mask vinyl in right off the roll on it's own backing paper. Eventually I will upgrade to the Silhouette Cameo to gain the extra 3-4 inches in width.

Now, I run this off of CorelDraw. I like it and when I started using it back in 90-91, it was very similar to Adobe Illustrator 88 that I learned in college. What's great about Corel is that you can import your .jpeg image and create your vector file right there and use any font on the computer. The key is making sure your artwork is very high quality. You are going to find that what looks good on the screen is junk when you enlarge it.

That being said, this is another reason I prefer not to use the outline feature in Corel. I end up putting more time into editing the image than if I would have traced it myself using the drawing tools. But after 20+ years using computers/plotters in the sign industry, I've gotten pretty quick at tracing. I'm old school. I learned sign making from my Dad when we hand drew a scale drawing and then enlarged it using an overhead projector to make our patterns and the hand lettered the sign, vehicle or whatever.