![]() I love my Silhouette, even though I have not used it much yet. It all depends on what you want it to do, and how you like to work, and how much you want to spend at first versus in the long run, etc. It worked well in that I only have 3 vias where I need to solder wires, mostly to pin the top and bottom gnd pours together.In case you don't get an answer from a pazzles owner, I have a Silhouette and my best friend has a cricut. The processor is soldered to the PCB top and bottom so its pins can act as vias. It uses 805 resistors and caps along with a through hole processor. ![]() Added picturesįWIW: This is a hybrid board. I am a bit worried there is not enough paste but 3 mil mylar is what Sparkfun and one other source suggested.ĮDIT: I melted the paste for the resistors and caps using a Teflon pan on a gas range. I still have to add the parts and pop them in a fry pan (ala Sparkfun). I cleaned it but it looks like there are a few bits of paste on it. The picture was taken after the stencil was used. These is a wee bit of extra paste due to that but it will not matter. The mask was cut with the demo version of SCAL which added cuts through the work to make it unusable. I think this is due to the rotation of the knife when cutting direction is changed. Note that the holes are not exactly square. The mask was cut from half of a laminating pouch that I purchased with a wimpy Harbor Freight laminator. The pictures were taken with a Digital Blue microscope. I had to increase speed to get the plastic to cut instead of stretch. I do not have mylar but found a unused laminator pouch and managed to cut a stencil on it. Possibly a effort by Cricut to protect their investment. I did not see anyway to downgrade the cricut firmware. Especially if the SO already has the machine.ĮDIT: According to the flap on the Cricut forum the software hang was introduced by the latest firmware used on the Cricut. In that light this method could pay for itself. Pololu lasercut stencils run $20 each time you have them made. But if your SO is into scrapbooking that will offset the cost. Clearly it is not a beer budget solution. The machin can be had for $135 or so on sale. It is $75 and can be found at Craft Edge. "Sure Cuts a Lot" is a 3rd party program intended for use with the Cricut. If you try to cut without saving and loading (or maybe just undoing the zoom) SCAL will crash. Then resize it so that it is 2 inches long. Move the graphic so the left edge is on a inch line. Using the scale on the onscreen cutting board shrink the graphic such that the 2 inch line is again 2 inches. SCAL has its own idea regarding what size the graphic should be. Import the above pdf and save as a SVG (scalable vector graphic) file. In the print dialog check black and print to pdf box. VERY PRELIMINARYĬhange the tcream layer to no fill and color to black. ![]() That would let me reduce the cutting pressure which would be kinder on the knife and maybe a little cleaner. ![]() It looks like the SCal program has the option to make several passes. So far I have been making the cuts in a single pass. The SCaL program is $75 so I will use the demo version up to the point where I know this works. I did try rescaling it in SCaL but the cutting program hung up part way through the file. I can compare the actual length of that line in the cutting software and then use print scaling in eagle to get things right. I am thinking about adding a 2 inch line to the graphic in eagle. ![]() Attempts to rescale it in inkscape did not go well. That much worked but the scale was off by about 2x. Loaded the SVG file from inkscape and hit cut. To see the graphics I needed to do a VIEW>DISPLAY_MODE>OUTLINE. I used the finest setting for details when importing the pdf but I do not know that it had much of an impact. Import the pdf from eagle and save as a SVG (scalable vector graphic) file. I have made some progress.Ĭhanged the cream layer so it had no fill. It was not my intent to work on this but some things sort of draw me in. Maybe someone publish the interface specs or code. I was not looking for another project but I was offered on for free and could not pass it up. I expect that is should be good enough for stencils. I would like to use it to cut stencils for applying solder paste.ĮDIT: I have no clue regarding the accurcy of the unit. Others are talking about using it to make PCBs. One company reversed engineered the USB interface and is selling software that allows you to use TT fonts from you PC. The unit can also be controlled with USB. To get the unit to cut you have to adjust cut depth, pressure, and speed. It is designed to cut 2 dimensional objects for scrapbooking using font cartridges. Think of a plotter with a knife instead of a pen. The X is a slider and the Y is a paper feed roller. A cricut is a XY machine with knife blade on Z axis. ![]()
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