This board is thick but the Cricut will cut it. The card stock is obviously too thin to stand on its own as a sign so I usually use conservation board (type of cardboard) as a backer board. Once printed Design space prompts you to place the card stock on the sticky mat and load into the machine. There is a way to utilize a whole sheet using Inkspace to set it up but I am not comfortable with that yet.
#Taskboard basswood lasercut registration
Cricut automatically adds a border around the images to act as registration for the cutter. Note - I used Card Stock paper - 80 or 100 pound - not sure. These images must fit inside a rectangle that is 6.25 max by 9.75 max. Once in Cricut Design Space I uploaded the image, resized it to the size I had in draw then duplicated and re-positioned the images. I then selected and exported the image as a ".png".
This is a good idea to do if you want to print on regular bond paper to see how the size fits your structure. I set up a single image in LibreOffice presentation (can also use draw) and sized it to the dimensions I needed. Up to now I always used rectilinear designs because cutting out curves was pretty difficult for me for the thick backer board. Set up the Cricut "Print and Cut" for building front signs. All I got from Cricut was 'those options don't exist at this time'. I also can not make a new material for the list and specify the knife blade.
Only issue so far is that any material on the 'materials' list that uses the knife blade can not be edited (change number of cuts of pressure). I'm looking at complex signs with a lot of curves. The machine aligns the cutter head to the border with a laser to register the position of the signs and then cuts. When the sheet is printed a perimeter border is auto printed. Design space instructs your printer to print the sheet then you load it into the cutter and press 'go' to cut out each individual sign. One can load designs like bill board signs into the design space, size and move them around then hit a 'print and cut ' icon. I am also going to try the 'print and cut' option on card stock. If it does work it could come in handy for complex dual angles (like a roof line that changes slope mid way). Thanks Alan - Though I procured this primarily for basswood but I am going to try some 80 mil styrene this week. Note the video used Open Office Draw which is different than LibreOffice so I had to export the drawing as a jpg. It took about 15 minutes for the machine to cut the walls out. I used LibreOffice Draw to make the basic wall outline then added the openings in the Critcut Design Space. The sizes for the openings were taken off the Grandt Line and Tichy web sites. I designed, uploaded and cut my first project. You could always pitch it as machine your wife/husband could use for their arts&crafts projects. This video below shows how one user designed the patterns by simply using LibreOffice / Microsoft Office Drawing platform - transferred to Cricut design space for the actual cutting. I just set it up today for my first test cut. I can cut about 11 inches wide by about 24 inches long.
#Taskboard basswood lasercut plus
The machine plus the knife blade / tool holder along with extra blades plus a couple of super stick pads cost me about $550. In this case 1/16 inch basswood.I have not tried plastic as yet but will do so. It uses a knife blade to cut the material I am interested in. I recently purchased a poor man's "laser cutter called the Cricut Maker 3 ( ).
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