Rob P's Silhouette Cameo Cutter Workbench

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Hello all,

My birthday has a come a couple of weeks or so early this year. - Chris has bought me a Silhouette Cameo cutter and because it arrived and the warranty is now running she decided to let me get my hands on it early.:thumbs:

I am not sure if I should place this here in CAD Corner or along side my workbenches but I wanted to record my beginner's efforts in this field away from my build threads.

So far I have unpacked and plugged it in run through the set up and updated the Silhouette Studio software package that I had previously installed without doing anything with it beyond opening it initially.

I have also started to read through the following threads on RMweb.
http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/in...a-guide-to-using-the-silhouette-cameo-cutter/
I am currently up to page 17 of 45

The other thread that I have viewed is the tutorial by Mike Trice on using InkScape - another package that I had downloaded in anticipation some time ago.

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/in...n-to-using-inkscape-to-produce-cutting-files/

The first few pages of Jason's Silhouette guide list places to get alternate blade holders and significantly cheaper blades which I have ordered and expect in the next couple of weeks or months - they are from China via eBay.....

My plan is to create wagons and coaches bodies using the cutter but I will no doubt move on to buildings when I get to re-starting on the layout at Christmas.
 

geoff_nicholls

Western Thunderer
I've seen it mentioned a few times in the French press. Loco-Revue had an article where someone printed and cut a Metro in card in HO.
Does it also work with styrene or acrylic?
 

BrushType4

Western Thunderer
Hi Phil,

I would have thought that it would be a doddle to someone with your drawing skills:thumbs:

Thanks Rob. I've been learning how to use Inkscape but I've been playing catch up on the laser drawings.

I think the silhouette cutter could be a useful tool and complement my laser stuff.

Will be interesting to see what you do with it.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Before I take the plunge and have a go at drawing something I thought I would share what the postie brought this morning.

IMG_9051_zpszjhje5au.jpg

This is the CB09 Cutter holder that will hold the alternative cheaper blades.

IMG_9052_zps1nxpu9pm.jpg

This is the two cutter holders together as a comparison - no spare blades have arrived yet.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
The journey has begun.

I followed Mike Trice's Inkscape tutorial and drew the hut pretty much as described except I used the Holywood Foundry Scale converter to covert the measurements from 4mm to 7mm or so I thought:rolleyes: more on that later.

Having created my drawing I needed to cut it to cut straight from Inkscape you need to install a printer using the print driver that's included in the driver folder on the Silhouette Studio software CD that comes with the Cameo (there are a couple of other CD's with fonts and other things that I haven't investigated yet.

I installed the driver by clicking on the setup exe and let it run through the set up. When I went to find the printer it wasn't there:( - My laser printer installed itself by doing the same process.....

So having worked out how to add a printer in Windows 10 I tried allowing it to autodetect the Cameo - plug and play more plug and pray but still nothing doing.

Next I manually added the printer using the local LTP1 port and when browsing for the driver it had it in the list as installed so I selected it and off I went and created the printer. With the printer created I went in to properties\preferences and change them to suit those set up in Inkscape and tried a cut (to cut from Inkscape you send a job to the printer as if you are printing a document or photo with only the layer that you wish to print visible) nothing doing but a printer error.

Back to square one, I deleted the printer and then set up another this time opting to create a local port instead of using LPT1 . This got rid of the error and popped up a dialogue box asking me to click OK to cut. Whoopee but still nothing happened so I went through all the settings and while checking things in the printer folder I noticed the USB Print support which only appeared when the Cameo was turned on.

USB%20Printing%20Support_zpsd9l5a5wg.jpg

As a last resort I planned to re-install the printer driver but when I was going through the properties tabs looking for the update driver button I noticed that the USB Print Support appeared in the list of available ports. I switched the printer to use this port and we were in business.:drool:

Now me being a tightwad I elected to cut the first cut using some 'free' card rather than risking wasting styrene sheet on my first go.
So I set the blade setting to 2 (it goes 0-9) and the pressure is done by Inkscape (this is not adjustable in Inkscape but it is if you print through the Silhouette Studio software). I also elected to cut the job three times to ensure that the cut was cut through. The tutorial describes how to set multiple cuts.

I got a successful cut but not without error as alluded to above. First of all instead of appearing to the left of the sheet it's well over the centre line to the right and secondly it's come out a fraction of the size that I was expecting:(

IMG_9053_zps4ahhle3d.jpg

IMG_9054_zpsjxjamvrv.jpg

IMG_9055_zpsxxitgimm.jpg

IMG_9056_zpsnktumtvy.jpg.

I am fairly sure that the reason it's not where I expected is due to me selecting landscape in the printer properties instead of portrait but until I try again I can't confirm that. The "shrinkage" I still need to investigate.....
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Well I think that I have located the shrinkage problem. Further reading of the various topics on the subject on RMweb suggests that Inkscape has an annoying habit of revereting it's measurement back to pixels despite changing things in preferences etc. Sure enough when I opened up the layer that I cut last night it was measured in pixels not mm.....
 

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Robin, are pixels from the Rhubarb Triangle smaller than pixies from other places? Just asking because on the Isle of Mann there is a small culvert / bump someway round the TT course and the locals call that Fairy Bridge - so maybe pixies are about 15" or so?
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Robin, are pixels from the Rhubarb Triangle smaller than pixies from other places? Just asking because on the Isle of Mann there is a small culvert / bump someway round the TT course and the locals call that Fairy Bridge - so maybe pixies are about 15" or so?

They must be if the size of that door is anything to go by:))
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
I have just re-opened my project again in Inkscape having set the measurements to mm and saved before closing and upon opening it has reverted back to pixels. something to note each time you print from Inkscape.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
I made more progress last night.

Having worked out the changes in measurement and reset to millimetres I double checked and I have still done something wrong with the sizing of the drawing so some time was spent resizing a couple of the layers.

I decided to move on to cutting styrene rather than card but utilising some smaller pieces of sheet so I set the document size to a custom size and made sure that my drawings sat within the page boundaries.

Hut%20layout_zpstjpkthfp.jpg

Not the best photos in the world but hopefully this will give you the idea.
I laid them out expecting it to cut in the same orientation but having run the cut I ended up with this:

IMG_9057_zpsjayznylg.jpg

IMG_9058_zpsaao9vsla.jpg

This let to more reading of the pages on RMweb - I am onto page 25 of 45 so far with a lot to take in.
One thing that I did learn was more quirks of Inkscape and Silhouette Studio (apparently they both do the same thing) and that is reorientate the drawing when printing.

Inkscape%20Portrate%20print%20orientation_zpsba2r45hi.jpg

Inkscape%20Landscape%20print%20orientation_zps5pcyusfb.jpg

So for my second cut I changed the orientation in InkScape to portrait but left the orientation in the print driver to landscape - the screenshot below shows what I mean apart from the page layout is still landscape (that's because I forgot to save the changes:( and just mocked this up for the photo).

Hut%20layout2_zpse5hcsegx.jpg

When cut this gave the result below - the correct orientation but part of the cut was missing so I need to move the drawing 'up' the drawing area to get it to cut completely. That said it's done a much better job of the cuting but I did increase the blade depth from 2 to 3 for the second cut.

IMG_9059_zpsxg8x3kdy.jpg

IMG_9060_zpsyb4ffdov.jpg
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
A trip along to Keighley 7mm Festival yesterday (where I glimpsed Warren but apparently missed Steph) saw me leave with a couple of Kirk 51 1/2' Full Brake Parcels vans.

When I got home I dug out some info and having looked in the contents realised that there were no duckets included in the kit.
It seemed like something fairly simple to get my teeth into as a next step. I imported a drawing and scaled it then drew a square around it to get the size of the ducket when it was made up.
I then remembered the rather nice MJT etches that Dart casting sell for LNER duckets. So a quick look on the site got me a small photo of the etch which I cropped and resized to draw around to get the unfolded ducket shape.

Which brought me to this in Inkscape.

Inkscape%20Ducket_zpsuexvgkfn.jpg

I then exported it as a DXF file and imported it into Silhouette Studio for cutting rather than cutting direct from Inkscape because it give you more options to control the cut. Upon import I checked the size and it was bigger than it needed to be despite it being correct in the still open Inkscape window but it was a simple job to select all and resize.
I duplicated the image and did a couple of cuts to work out where on the sheet it would come out in relation to what it looked like on screen and then I started with another cut on some scrap plastic dividers from a note book using a "vinyl setting within the Studio package.

LNER%20Ducket_zpsoavhe5ox.jpg

Using the "vinyl" setting didn't seem to give me any real control over the cut other than allowing me to cut different line colours separately - I had used Green for scoring cuts and Red for full cuts.

A quick check in the manual and I realised that you need to set a custom material to get sight of all the cutting options. This done I took a chance and loaded a sheet of bought in styrene.

I ran the cut again having selected the double cut option and duplicated the duckets until In had a full line of 10 across the leading edge of the styrene.

Ducketx5_zpsfrztwygm.jpg

Ducket_zpsiwolnbya.jpg

Although they didn't cut right through because I was still erring on the side of caution they snapped out quite easily - except the windows which I will need to nick with a scalpel but I didn't have my reading glasses to hand so I couldn't see to get them out tonight.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Just for completeness, here are a couple of duckets with the viewing slits removed.

Final%20trim_zpsxvbuu4fg.jpg

I will take them up north at the weekend and assemble them - no solvent at home in Wakefield.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Moving rapidly on I have started on a proper project.

While attending the select meeting for Railart 2015 I met fellow O gauge modeller and artist David Halliwell. While chatting David was telling me about an NER Bogie CCT van that he had scratch built using Kirk parts as a basis (for anyone wishing to have a look it can be found in the Guild gallery Here).

He mentioned a drawing and I asked if I could have a copy which he sent though as promised and when I was looking for a project for the cutter I thought that it offered potential. However while looking through Historic Carriage drawings vol one for the info on the Kirk parcel vans I noticed that there was a section on NER CCTs and not only was there information and a set of drawings for the bogie versions (there are two with different window/vent combinations) but there was a 4 wheeled version which I thought might be a better bet than jumping straight into the bogie van.
Tuesday evening was spent scanning the drawings and resizing them etc. and then yesterday I made a start. and this is where I got to.

CCT%20Side%20view%20inkscape%20drawing_zpsyk857nev.jpg

CCT%20End%20View%20Inkscape%20drawing_zpsz0vo3pjz.jpg

Hinges%20and%20Washerplates_zpsgfwfntrj.jpg

From the drawing the ends look to be the same on all three so if I move on to one of the bogie versions I can re-use the end drawings.
 

Puddlejumper

Western Thunderer
That looks like a rather interesting project you've started there Rob, don't suppose you would fancy sending me a copy of the drawings when they are done?? ..........I think one of the 4 wheelers will look right at home on Seahouses :thumbs:
 
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