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You can also google for Craft Robo & Wishblade. These are all the same machines (CR, WB, Sil) manufactured by Graphtec, but rebranded through the different distributors. I have a Craft Robo and love it. Its the best cutting machine on the market for its size in my opinion.
I use Adobe Illustrator (which was expensive, but I bought it a while ago for something else) to draw my images, and then a third party plugin called Cutting Master II (which was free) to send them directly from Illustrator to the cutter. It's so much fun to draw my own stuff! You don't have to though. You can buy the cutter images online from a variety of different shops, as well as from the Silhouette company itself. They are not expensive. In general 3 dollars or so buys you 5 or 6 related images.
There's a great product comparison chart for cutters here: http://www.paperthreads.com/bonus/pa...re_112008.html
I bought my machine from this shop. They have a huge collection of images for sale, as well, and an active team of designers creating more all the time.
I love my Silhouette too! The biggest plus for me is not having to buy expensive cartridges and getting only the shapes I want and and .99 cents each it's great!
I just got my Silhouette last week and finally got to play with it on Sunday. I'm in love. I have nothing to compare it to except for the Slice (which I hate, but really wanted to love), but I'm very happy. I loved that I didn't have to buy SCAL or MTC in order to use my fonts and that I can buy graphics piecemeal.
It doesn't cut anything thicker than cardstock and only does 8.5 inches wide (but up to 30 inches long), but I'm willing to live with that.
Overstock.com has a good price on the machine right now.
I love mine too!. The biggest plus point for me was that it can cut any font on your pc, in a huge range of sizes. This also means it will cut 'dingbat' fonts, so you can cut out all sorts of things- cool site for a vast range of fonts is: [url=http://www.dafont.com/]dafont.com[/url]. When you consider that the average font cartridge/die set costs about the same as the silhouette, theres no contest. I would seriously recommend it to anyone, and the new software they have just released is great. The other cool thing is that you can weld letters/images together, so you can produce names,sentiments etc for cards & scrapbooking. http://www.silhouetteamerica.com/training/section1_1.aspx gives you all the help you will need, and if you need to contact them to ask for help they are very quick to respond, and always very helpful.
I am so crazy about my Silhouette that whenever I think about designing something, I first go to My Library and the Silhouette Store to see what I can use for a project.
Has anyone purchased the Accugraphic Blade Assembly with the "deep cut blade?"I read up about it on Paperthreads yesterday and was very impressed. I would certainly like to be able to cut thicker stock and chip board.
I downloaded the new Silhouette software yesterday, and I like it. As far as I can tell, it solves some issues I had with the old software. I think they saw what people are doing and made creating your own projects easier.
I use Adobe Illustrator to create some designs and bring them into the Silhouette as a JPEG. Hoped that info might help someone.
I don't know about all of you, but I sure feel sorry for people who purchased those other cutters. I can't imagine spending so much money for cartridges!
I haven't really had time to play with the new software either but I agree, I think it's going to make things even easier.
I'd LOVE to be able to cut thicker material, I really want to be able to cut shrink plastic with it and chipboard would be amazing! I'll have to look into that blade assembly.
I sure hope you ladies can help me. As you can see from my user name, I am a new silhouette user. As I write this I am almost in tears because I can't figure out what I am doing wrong. I'm trying to cut vinyl and the blade keeps cutting all the way through the vinyl (sorta like punching out instead of cutting). I am using the blue cap as indicated by the program. The first piece of vinyl I tried to cut started out ok and then started the cutting through the vinyl which caused it to bunch up and tear my paper. I am not using a mat with the vinyl because the tutiorial said you didn't need to.
Problem #2: I was able to salvage one of the words I printed so I put the transfer paper over it and placed it on the spine of my book and used the scraper tool to try to get it to stick to the book. No luck. The vinyl was stuck more to the transfer paper then the book. I ended up peeling the letters off the transfer paper and sticking them to the notebook.
I like to consider myself semi-intelligent :rolleyes: but I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong.
I'm so afraid that I've wasted all this money on this machine and supplies!!
Thank you in advance for whatever advice you can give me. If I don't get this figured out I'll be selling a brand new machine and a bunch of supplies very soon.
You need to make sure you're using the right thickness setting for the vinyl as well as the correct blade. You are correct to not use the mat. I had trouble the first time I tried vinyl too, so don't feel bad. I also discovered the vinyl will only stick to certain things, it's not super sticky. You might want to try the iron on stuff for a book spine, although that would be permanent.
Thank you for your reply, Heather. I watched several silhouette tutorials on you tube last night and one said that you need to set your speed and thickness to 1 and 3 respectively for vinyl. I did that and it worked like a charm. I'm wondering if I misunderstood the original directions because I could have sworn that it said that the thickness and speed would automatically set itself when you chose the medium you were using. When I clicked on vinyl it had my settings at 8 for speed and 12 for thickness. No wonder I was getting such a mess!!!
As for the vinyl, do you know if it will stick to car windows? I'm gonna run a test this weekend but thought you may have already explored this.
Thanks again for your help. I'm learning quickly how much I am going to LOVE this machine!
I love my Silhouette! I love the ease of use. The new software is great too.
I've only cut paper. I'd like to etch with the cream, but do any of you know if it can cut through contact paper? If so, do you know the settings/speed?
Sillouhuette
Silhouette: It Doesn't Get Any Better
