JR-Chiisai: Enoden T-Trak

[Martijn Meerts]

18 hours ago, Madsing said:

This really looks impressive!

When zooming into your photo, as you mentioned, I also get the impression that the corners are not so square. Can you take a closer shot? Would it be possible to cut the corners differently, in two steps?

I am considering purchasing this kind of cutter, or a laser cutter…

Do we know how the Sankei kits are manufactured?

 

The thing with the blade I'm using, is that I think it rotates based on the direction of the cut, so if you're cutting a corner, it'll need to rotate the blade while also moving the material (at least, I think that's what it does) .. A possible fix is to make those cuts separate lines rather than a single line doing the whole square cut.

 

Considering the distance you're viewing these from once installed in the layout, and with additional scenery and weathering, I don't think it would be very noticeable if the corners are ever so slightly rounded. You will definitely get better results with a laser cutter, but a (good quality) laser cutter is still quite a bit more expensive than a Cricut machine. I have looked at the Flux Beamo laser cutter, that's pretty much the cheapest I would go. There's cheaper ones from China, but I've heard too many bad stories on those, and I prefer to be careful with lasers 🙂  Also, with the cheap laser cutters, you won't get the kind of quality that a Sankei kit has.

 

I'm definitely not unhappy with the kind of detail I'm getting on these test cuts, and I still have plenty experimenting to do with different settings and materials. I have found a place here that sells laser board sheets, but only in their natural brown-ish colour. Cricut also have Kraft board in black, white and natural colour (pretty sure other brands have it as well), which seems to be somewhere in between card stock and laser board, so I might give that a go as well.

 

In the end, if I get annoyed with the corners, I can always send off the designs to a laser cutting service, but very few of them will have a large selection of colours, of card stock, so it would need to be one more aimed towards hobby stuff. Of course, I could also just 3D print the entire building, which is still an option. And then use the Cricut for fast prototyping and to quickly place some buildings while 3D printing the final buildings.

 

[cteno4]

Martijn,

 

my silhouette cutter software has settings that you can do double corner cuts so each corner gets a cut going outward from the corner for each side. Adds time but gives better results. also go to a craft store and buy some different cardstocks. Some do much better than others with the cutter.

 

also check out the angle of your blade there are like 3 or 4 different blade edge angles out there for vinyl cutting blades. These are better quality than the ones silhouette sells and I picked up a holder for $20 that would let me use standard vinyl blades in the silhouette. Much cheaper in the long run and better quality and some even rehone the vinyl blade tips. I bet there is a holder out there for the cricut. When I go my silhouette the cricut still only let you use their predefined patterns (which you bought), no cut your own, so they may be a bit behind the silhouette on their cutting software. 
 

i found that about 100-120lb card stock was the limit for the silhouette. Using that material you really need 4-6 layers to make an equivalent stiffness of a sankei 2 or 3 ply wall. Not really horrible just extra cutting and laminating and you potentially could do some more detail bits with the extra layers. one test that seemed to determine how well a cardstock cut was how well it tears. Tears clean it cuts well, really ragged, soft edge tear means little resin and does not cut in the cutter as well as well as tends to warp more with glue moisture. Usually the stiffer the board the more resin as well. Tony had pretty good luck using the silhouette to make small sankei type structures pretty quickly. He was handy at 3D cad so 2d was easy for him.
 

I just got stalled and put it aside until there was a better stretch of time to work on it all and get other life projects out of my hair. I’ve been meaning to get back on to see about doing a final layer from hot dog wrappers that have the thin layer of aluminum foil as a light block to add into the interior easily. I did not get around to testing light blocking of layered colored cardstocks, but it may not be quite as good as sankei that is pretty dense stuff with good pigments and so far keeping led levels down I’ve not found issues much at all, but expect there will be situation of some glow w.o some light proofing.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

So far I've only really been using the default settings of the Cricut software, so definitely more experimenting to do there. The blade I've been using and that came with the Maker 3 is a fine point blade, which is pretty much made for cutting small detail pieces. I've not yet bought any other blades, because I've not really had that much time to really sit down and try things.

 

I'll sit down and do some more tests with more materials and different tools at some point. I might have a week off towards the end of the month, and depending on other things that need to get done, I might have some time then.