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rbandrewsOn Black Friday, I got an email from a website I go to sometimes, Inventables. They were having a sale on this thing called a Silhouette Cameo. I don't buy much there because they're somewhat overpriced, but this was a normally $300 machine for $220, so I went for it.
What it is, essentially, is a plotter. Sort of. It's a cartesian robot, like a 3d printer, in that it has a print head that it can position anywhere over a piece of paper (or other thin material). The print head can hold a pen, making it exactly a plotter, or a knife, making it a sort of poor-man's die cutter.
Back in the before-times, there was a thing like this sold in hobby stores called the Cricut. Like the Cameo, it was designed for crafting, cutting shapes out of cardstock and so on. I wanted one the moment I saw it, but in order (presumably) to keep from cutting into their industrial sales they nerfed the thing: you had to buy cartridges that had shapes on them, so you'd buy a cartridge with a bunch of butterfly patterns or whatever. I didn't want to cut out butterflies, so I didn't get one.
The Cameo has no such restrictions. It's pretty clearly a hobbyist machine at heart, despite the cutesy craftiness of the box. You can draw whatever you want to cut with it, put it on an SD card and plug it in, just like the Makerbot. They have a "Pro" version of their software for $50 that will import SVG, but the basic version will import DXF (from CAD programs) so I don't know why anyone would bother.
Already I've seen people cutting out stencils for surface-mount soldering with it, and papercraft things. I've cut out a little cardstock gear (as a test) and I drew a little pattern of lines. One thing I want to do with it: since I have the pens, I could make several files, for "red," "black," "blue," and "cut," say. Run the same sheet of cardstock through several times, to draw red lines, black lines, blue lines, and then cut out cards. So I could manufacture card games this way.
Which was actually most of why I bought it; I had just come home from BGG.con and I was thinking about making games. I think maybe my first big project with this thing may be a copy of Sail to India.
What it is, essentially, is a plotter. Sort of. It's a cartesian robot, like a 3d printer, in that it has a print head that it can position anywhere over a piece of paper (or other thin material). The print head can hold a pen, making it exactly a plotter, or a knife, making it a sort of poor-man's die cutter.
Back in the before-times, there was a thing like this sold in hobby stores called the Cricut. Like the Cameo, it was designed for crafting, cutting shapes out of cardstock and so on. I wanted one the moment I saw it, but in order (presumably) to keep from cutting into their industrial sales they nerfed the thing: you had to buy cartridges that had shapes on them, so you'd buy a cartridge with a bunch of butterfly patterns or whatever. I didn't want to cut out butterflies, so I didn't get one.
The Cameo has no such restrictions. It's pretty clearly a hobbyist machine at heart, despite the cutesy craftiness of the box. You can draw whatever you want to cut with it, put it on an SD card and plug it in, just like the Makerbot. They have a "Pro" version of their software for $50 that will import SVG, but the basic version will import DXF (from CAD programs) so I don't know why anyone would bother.
Already I've seen people cutting out stencils for surface-mount soldering with it, and papercraft things. I've cut out a little cardstock gear (as a test) and I drew a little pattern of lines. One thing I want to do with it: since I have the pens, I could make several files, for "red," "black," "blue," and "cut," say. Run the same sheet of cardstock through several times, to draw red lines, black lines, blue lines, and then cut out cards. So I could manufacture card games this way.
Which was actually most of why I bought it; I had just come home from BGG.con and I was thinking about making games. I think maybe my first big project with this thing may be a copy of Sail to India.
