Ballston Journal

Most crafters are familiar with vinyl cutting machines, which we covered in our previous post on Maker Spaces. You won’t really find a manual die cutting machine in your local library, in fact, you’re more likely to find it at your grandmother’s house… maybe in a dark closet accumulating cobwebs.

We wouldn’t recommend die cutters for more experienced crafters unless they know that they’ll use the embossing function, something the modern electronic cutting machines can’t quite do yet.

The real problem is their size: they often can cut only 6″ x 8″, not enough for a standard sheet of printer paper. Many newer crafters wind up getting frustrated by this and they never return to crafting again, so if that sounds like you, maybe consider borrowing someone else’s or doing some research on the internet to find the best die cutting machine for your purpose.

Manual die cutters are used for three tasks, typically:

• Embossing material
• Cutting fabric quickly
• Cutting through thick materials like metal

Each machine uses a set of metal dies that are a lot like cookie cutters. You create a sandwich of your material, the cutting die, and two cutting plates. Your material gets pressed in between at high pressure, and the shape of your die is cut out.

Manual die cutting machines are typically much smaller than their digital counterpart, but they’re also heavier. If you treat them right, they’ll last you decades because there aren’t any electronic moving parts inside. If you’re looking to just get started as a crafter, there’s another big benefit as well: the price. These die cutters typically run between $40-50 to start, and you’ll also need a set of embossing plates and dies to cut out your first patterns. That price does add up over time, because unlike a digital die cutter, you need a physical die for every shape you want to cut.

Digital die cutting machines, on the other hand, are much more versatile. Not only can they do everything the manual machines can (except emboss), they also allow you to control exactly what they cut out, just like how you decide what a printer prints. This means you don’t need to lug around hundreds of metal dies anywhere you want to craft, hoping not only that you have the design you want but that you can even find it!

With a digital cutting machine, you use software on your computer or tablet to design exactly what you want. And what you see: that’s what you get. If you like someone else’s design, they can just send it right over to you in a special format called an SVG. SVGs are like images but with a special set of math built-in that the cutting machine can read to know exactly how to make the cuts on your material.

Whichever type of die cutter you choose, make sure to do a bit of research first and know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. These machines, especially the electronic ones, can cost quite a bit and you want to make sure it won’t just wind up like Grandma’s old manual die cutter, in a closet somewhere!

In the past few years we’ve seen a huge growth in the number of maker spaces around the country (and internationally). Libraries have become repurposed as fewer people are checking out books with the increasing popularity of Kindle reading devices.

This is one in a series of articles exploring these new crafting spaces, and in this article, we’ll go into two of the most common devices we’ve been seeing in these libraries: Cricut and Silhouette cutting machines.

For those who don’t know, Cricut and Silhouette both make digital cutting machines.

We asked a few librarians for examples of the projects they see the most, expecting some pretty crazy ideas. But, a lot of them are pretty tame. Paper crafters love to use the cutters to cut their paper to size. Origami, believe it or not, is what we’ve been told us the most common craft. An example would be this origami turkey made by Paper Kawaii.

So what’s a cutting machine? What are people using them for?

Vinyl cutting machines: explained

For years crafters have used manual die-cutting machines, these work simply enough. The machine can load in a die (think of it like a cookie cutter pattern) and then apply that cut pattern to any number of materials. If you’re making a lot of cards, vinyl stickers, or labels you could use these die-cutting machines to make your crafting life a lot easier.

Their use though was pretty limited to crafters, they weren’t very popular, and the larger world mostly didn’t know they existed unless you saw one at Grandma’s house.

Enter the digital cutting machine, which turned everything on its head. Two companies, Silhouette and Cricut, both have been releasing rival versions of these machines. So how do they differ?

Digital cutting machines work more like a printer, the design is completely digital and you lay it out in software. The early machines used cartridges to load the designs in, but now they’re completely stored online. This means you can make your own design on the computer, share it with your friends, they can improve it, and then send it back. You can see why these have taken off beyond just crafters.

So what kinds of things can you make?

With heat transfer vinyl: you can make your own t-shirts or tote bags. You basically load the design into your vinyl cutter, set the material you’re working with, and then place it inside of the machine. The plotter, like a printer, goes over that material cutting out your design. You peel it off, place it on your shirt or tote, and then press it on with heat.

The heat activates a special adhesive that’s in the vinyl so that it adheres to the fabric itself. It’s pretty easy to do.

With regular adhesive vinyl, you have a lot more options. You can make your own signs (like we did here), decorate tumblers, glasses, and a lot more.

The more powerful machines (like the Silhouette Cameo 4 or the Cricut Maker) also support cutting through materials like wood, leather, or acrylic, but like we said above, most crafters seem to be using them for paper (even if they’re much more powerful).