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Post by adjutantgeneral on Jan 3, 2021 17:56:32 GMT -9
I'm not one of these old curmudgeons who thinks that nothing can ever be done better than it was in "the good ole' days" but, from what I've read, these things seem to be more hassle than anything else, and on a number of levels. Or am I wrong? Is there a cheap, reliable/sturdy automated cutter that doesn't require a computer science degree to get and keep it functioning?
Perhaps, more specifically, I am going back to school now (really a home study program) and can happily see myself modifying .png files of paper toy soldiers,cutting them apart with scissors, assembling their bases, etc., while listening to my courses online.
Of course, it might be better if I didn't HAVE to do it that way, as it is easier to learn while focusing on one thing at once.
Kinda half-musing / half-questioning here. Please answer in whatever terms you think make the most sense, including anything my question might be missing.
Thanks
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Post by oldschooldm on Jan 4, 2021 21:23:12 GMT -9
I love my cutters (I've had two). Yes, like any machine with moving parts, they want a little love. Mine have lasted longer than any printer I have ever owned. I hear you though, that's why I'm still not ready for a 3D printer. But, if you like cutting things out, go nuts! If I had to hand cut minis, I'd have about 0 of them. :-) Fortunately, the hardest part of using cutters is getting the cutfiles together, and there are many of those made by people here free, and for a little patreon money thrown at folks like mproteau (Paper Realms) ... To each their own. At least if you get one, you'll have a support community here!
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Jan 5, 2021 12:40:07 GMT -9
Sorry I tend to ramble...
First, the ONLY brand of machine I recommend is a Silhouette. I get nothing from them for that loyalty. There are technical reasons why I prefer the Silhouette machines. If you buy a Cricut, a Brother, or some other machine, you will be able to do cool things to, but you'll be missing out on a lot of support and free resources - you'll be in for more work.
As oldschooldm said, there's always some effort that goes into learning a new machine. You need to get some basics under your belt, like what registration marks are for, and how to dial in the correct blade depth for good cutting. Understand this - the machine operates by dragging a razor blade around the page. The page is typically stuck to a cutting mat, so the blade can go through the paper and nothing moves around in the process. So, you might imagine three major things to sort out: 1 - are you cutting too deep and digging into the mat so much that the blade can't move easily, or not deep enough and not cutting through the paper? 2 - is the cutting mat not sticky anymore after a lot of use, and the paper is shifting around a bit or pieces are popping off during cutting, or is it TOO sticky (a common issue with new mats) and it's really hard to get the paper off? 3 - has the blade gotten dull, and so it's not able to cut through the material easy enough, or maybe it's tearing in some spots.
You learn these things, and you become productive. I use my cutter maybe 2-4 days a week, every week, all year long. I use it for paper minis, terrain, prototyping, birthday cards, anniversary invitations, holiday decorations... It's in constant use, and I enjoy it all the time. I even use the free software that Silhouette provides - Silhouette Studio - as part of my design process for making new 3d models.
The Silhouette Portrait is a great entry machine. You'll get a great cutting area out of it for Letter and A4 sized print outs, and there's a TON of cutfiles already available for it. There's a sub-forum here for cutfiles where you'll find a lot, and my Patreon has hundreds of cutfiles - I release more every week. The Silhoutte Cameo models are great too. They're wider, support multiple tools, and... well... I don't know what else. Some folks use the machines for t-shirt making, glass etching, and other cool projects. I personally just use it for paper.
Some days, I screw up and use the wrong cutfiles with something I've printed out. Some days, the cuts are just off my 1-2mm and it drives me NUTS because they shouldn't be off AT ALL. Most days, the thing works like a dream for me, and it's why when I see people post their results from other machines and it's... well... it's OK... it doesn't look good enough to me because I'm spoiled. I'm going to be posting pictures a couple times a week on Twitter to show off paper minis cut with the cutter. You can get super-detailed cuts. It's a treat. I find I spend more time edging with a marker because it's so detailed, but the results are really quality looking.
Some days I have my printer printing pages while the cutter is cutting pages, while at the same time I'm edging and/or assembling things. Other days, I cut a bunch of stuff out, so I can edge minis while half-watching my home team lose another football game. I tried cutting things by hand, and I don't mind it for terrain so much, but for minis, I find the results were nowhere near as satisfactory as using the cutter.
Ok. That's long-winded enough. I love love love my Silhouette cutter. I can't promise everyone has the same great experience - machines are what they are. But, I and others I'm sure are happy to help with questions and problems.
I'll end with an anecdote. I picked up a 3d printer a while back. I had it for 2 weeks before returning it. I spent much of that time in support hell. Part of it was the machine and company I was dealing with, but a lot of it was just the nature of 3d printing. My office room is small, and the only place I could put the printer was near a window. It was drafty, and that caused a lot of problems. The print nozzle clogged several times. Levelling the bed and getting the prints to stick just right was work. A couple times, I had a mini that got knocked off the bed, and I ended up with a mess of filament. Etc. I was able to print a few things, but everything took several hours to print out, and it still would need to be painted. I also don't have a lot of storage room for things. It just wasn't for me - I didn't have the time to dedicate to smooth out these issues and get it going. Other people DO have that time and energy, and they do great things.
For me, the Silhouette cutter had a learning curve, but it was like... a day or two? and then I was doing amazing things, and I've never looked back. I've certainly learned more - I'm sure I've forgotten some speed bumps because it's been a happy decade since I started.
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Post by adjutantgeneral on Jan 5, 2021 15:43:24 GMT -9
oldschooldm, mproteau:
Before I got into paper flats, I did a lot of home casting. Made some of my own molds, also bought molds from Prince August and similar companies. Got out of it for health reasons.
That said, I always loved paper flats. They were the first mass produced toy soldiers. They really do look fine inmassed formations. You can pay pecisely nothing for a lot of designs and still end up with a very fine collection: I will be forever indebted to Patrick Crusiau, who's pieces formed my first paper army made quite some time ago.
They also have considerable advantages that 3d figures definitely do not: They are easily and cheaply replaced if lost or broken. Detachable bases allow you to store a vast army in a lightweight tool or tackle box. Perhaps best of all is that, if you really want an eclectic collection, you don't have to wait for years, decades, or possibly forever, before some minis manufacturer decides that your idea of playing the Thirty Years War with laser swords in outerspace really is a viable business option. Just throw a few bucks at one of our own designers (or draw them yourself, if you have the talent) and off you go. Not long ago, I had our own Antohammer create for me a set of Weird World War II flats, and they will be among the first I do if I get a cutting machine.
Or not. Which leads to the following questions:
1. Can the machines cut vinyl labels?
2. What goes into making cut files, if you want to use your own designs?
3. What goes into converting other figures into cut files?
Probably I will think of more questions. Again, if anyone here thinks of questions that I am obviously missing, please feel free to point them out.
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Post by adjutantgeneral on Jan 5, 2021 15:52:28 GMT -9
BTW, when I was hand cutting my own paper minis, I got to be pretty efficient at it,and three rules really helped me out:
1. Vinyl mailing labels are the best way to go.
2. Don't be afraid to buy a new pair of decent quality sewing scissors every so often.
3. Thick black edge lines are your best friends.
I know I'm preaching to people who have cut many brigades of paper flats already, but in case some noob stumbles on this thread, why not share the love?
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Jan 5, 2021 17:39:21 GMT -9
I'll refer you to the company's spec sheets on what materials it can cut. Not sure what a vinyl label is specifically, but there's a wide range of materials it can handle. I don't want to commit to something I don't know about. My preferred materials for cutting are 110lb cardstock (I've been getting my terrain printed at a print shop to ensure the color consistency for promo pics) and 45lb matte photo paper (all my minis have been on this, and the colors are super bright). Making cutfiles for the Silhouette machines can be done a number of ways. Some folks just use the 'trace' feature and let the software wing it. You can get OK results for some things, and awful results for others doing that. It will identify non-transparent or non-white pixels and attempt to trace that shape. For minis that have really wide borders, you might have to do a fair bit of work. If you have the source minis that don't have any borders applied, you might have good luck, though it'll still be (small) work to add some bleed around the minis, and add bases to them if necessary. If you're working off of a PDF that you've bought, you might find that the tracing doesn't create a good match front-to-back, the outlines will either not be very detailed, or it might end up with awfully tight and hard-to-edge cuts. I find the whole tracing thing a bother. I like really tight, detailed cuts, but ones I know won't be miserable to edge, so I hand-draw the cutlines. My process is basically clicking a LOT to create a polyline around one half of the mini. I then tell the software to smooth the lines into curves. I then add the correct base style to it, and mirror it to cut out the other side. If you find me on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram I'll be posting pics of minis I've cut out over the years using the cutter, so people can see the detail. I've been at this for a couple years now. I am almost done making cutfiles for every Okumarts set of minis, every Trash Mob Minis set of minis, lots of Kev's Lounge minis that he hasn't had a chance to make cutfiles for himself, some Dave Graffam buildings, and cutfiles for other paper mini artists. Through my Patreon I've also been making cutfiles directly for creators like Paper Mage and Brave Adventures. My patrons are a quiet bunch, but I welcome suggestions for sets that they'd like cutfiles for. I'd like to think that the $2/month price tag (it's about 50ยข per set of cutfiles, plus access to the hundreds that have already been made) is a bargain, but if you enjoy the mind-numbing clicking of making the cutfiles yourself, it's not rocket science. If you make a good set of detailed cutfiles, I think you'll find that on a per-hour basis, $2/month isn't such a bad deal. I make cutfiles weekly for my Patrons, and have been streaming on Wednesdays at 8:30pm EST for about an hour. Feel free to drop in and you can watch the process. It's not exciting, I admit that. But, if you want to see the sausage being made and ask questions, it can demystify things.
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Post by senkosmos on Jan 6, 2021 7:20:47 GMT -9
adjutantgeneral it can cut vinyl labels just fine. I own a silhoutte CURIO I use at work to make custom vinyl labels. It can also cut quite thick cardboard (280/300gsm)
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Jan 6, 2021 16:37:44 GMT -9
Late notice, but I'm starting up a stream for a couple hours (twitch.tv/paperrealms) if there's someone who wants to drop in and chat about cutters, or watch me make a couple cutfiles. I'm hoping to do some old onemonk minis, some Trash Mob and Okumarts minis tonight. Maybe get started on some Kev's Lounge too. I like to make progress on a number of fronts
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Post by adjutantgeneral on Jan 6, 2021 21:29:55 GMT -9
Late notice, but I'm starting up a stream for a couple hours ... Just saw this. Shame. I'd have been interested.
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Jan 7, 2021 4:02:48 GMT -9
Feel free to follow me on Twitch - I'll be doing cutfiles every week!
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