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You can get stencil cutters for not-very-much-money: http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-Cameo-Material-Cutting-Printer/dp/B0060D1LFO http://www.amazon.com/Silhoue

You can get stencil cutters for not-very-much-money: http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-Cameo-Material-Cutting-Printer/dp/B0060D1LFO http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-Cameo-Material-Cutting-Prin...

VLM 12y ago
Both that and the somewhat cheaper cricut are into the whole walled garden thing where you get to buy the letter "H" for $1 or whatever. Its not like owning a laserprinter where you can reasonably assume you can "just print" without having to purchase each letter in each font first. Also my wife has a cricut and its slow. Fast enough for home craft use, but don't expect 15 ppm laser printer speeds, its more like 5 to maybe 10 minutes per page. This has scaling effect and labor cost issues for a school teacher. Theoretically you could build something as fast as a modern laser cutter, heck, you could use a modern laser cutter, but even those aren't as fast as a laser printer. Giving the kids some fine motor practice in cutting out laserprinted outlines would be cheaper and more effective.
- regularfry 12y ago
  > Both that and the somewhat cheaper cricut are into the whole walled garden thing where you get to buy the letter "H" for $1 or whatever. Both the product FAQ and the customer comments on that page disagree with you: Q: Can you create your own illustrations / decal designs (vectors) and print them with this - or is it only clip-art images? A: Yes, I create my own vector designs and import them from adobe illustrator. Seems like either you or they are wrong.
  - sp332 12y ago
    That's good to know. Cricut is more closed and has DRM on their cartridges.
  - VLM 12y ago
    I am surprised, and they are technically correct. My only alibi is no one in my wife's scrapbooking clique could handle creating their own dxfs or pirating any kind of files off the internet, making me correct in practice. There surely do exist at least some scrappers who have CAD skills. Just not many of them. When circut was new the carts I bought my wife for gifts were all like $60 and have steadily dropped in price over the years. Now they're mostly like $20. When diecuts at the local scrapbook store are only $1 or even 50 cents a cartridge is a luxury but not really economic, but at $20 its hard to justify buying diecuts instead of a cartridge. Is a ripoff a good deal if the alternative is technologically impossible for most and the ripoff is really cheap? A good analogy is a buck for a two minute .mp3 top 40 song, I don't think its worth a buck, but its more convenient than filesharing or ripping, especially for people technologically incapable of it, and its not a lot of money so, ok fine whatever, even if I'm not smiling while I pay my $1.
- joshu 12y ago
  I have a Silhouette Cameo. It imports DXF just fine.
Pxtl 12y ago
... ooh, yes. I'd been searching about for such a thing but coudln't find it. Don't have the money for such a luxury right now, but definitely on the to-do list.
fudged71 12y ago
I asked a teacher about this the other day: why are they cutting things out when there are tools like this? Well you need to print something out first and then define the cutting patterns then run it. It's just easier overall to just cut things out by hand.

You can get stencil cutters for not-very-much-money: http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-Cameo-Material-Cutting-Printer/dp/B0060D1LFO http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-Cameo-Material-Cutting-Prin...

VLM 12y ago

Both that and the somewhat cheaper cricut are into the whole walled garden thing where you get to buy the letter "H" for $1 or whatever. Its not like owning a laserprinter where you can reasonably assume you can "just print" without having to purchase each letter in each font first. Also my wife has a cricut and its slow. Fast enough for home craft use, but don't expect 15 ppm laser printer speeds, its more like 5 to maybe 10 minutes per page. This has scaling effect and labor cost issues for a school teacher. Theoretically you could build something as fast as a modern laser cutter, heck, you could use a modern laser cutter, but even those aren't as fast as a laser printer. Giving the kids some fine motor practice in cutting out laserprinted outlines would be cheaper and more effective.

regularfry 12y ago
> Both that and the somewhat cheaper cricut are into the whole walled garden thing where you get to buy the letter "H" for $1 or whatever. Both the product FAQ and the customer comments on that page disagree with you: Q: Can you create your own illustrations / decal designs (vectors) and print them with this - or is it only clip-art images? A: Yes, I create my own vector designs and import them from adobe illustrator. Seems like either you or they are wrong.
- sp332 12y ago
  That's good to know. Cricut is more closed and has DRM on their cartridges.
- VLM 12y ago
  I am surprised, and they are technically correct. My only alibi is no one in my wife's scrapbooking clique could handle creating their own dxfs or pirating any kind of files off the internet, making me correct in practice. There surely do exist at least some scrappers who have CAD skills. Just not many of them. When circut was new the carts I bought my wife for gifts were all like $60 and have steadily dropped in price over the years. Now they're mostly like $20. When diecuts at the local scrapbook store are only $1 or even 50 cents a cartridge is a luxury but not really economic, but at $20 its hard to justify buying diecuts instead of a cartridge. Is a ripoff a good deal if the alternative is technologically impossible for most and the ripoff is really cheap? A good analogy is a buck for a two minute .mp3 top 40 song, I don't think its worth a buck, but its more convenient than filesharing or ripping, especially for people technologically incapable of it, and its not a lot of money so, ok fine whatever, even if I'm not smiling while I pay my $1.
joshu 12y ago
I have a Silhouette Cameo. It imports DXF just fine.

Pxtl 12y ago

... ooh, yes. I'd been searching about for such a thing but coudln't find it. Don't have the money for such a luxury right now, but definitely on the to-do list.

fudged71 12y ago

I asked a teacher about this the other day: why are they cutting things out when there are tools like this? Well you need to print something out first and then define the cutting patterns then run it. It's just easier overall to just cut things out by hand.