Silhouette SD

[wazzou]

@Jamie -

May I make a suggestion? 
I would make a small box of styrene from evergreen strip, .010 or .015 x however deep your walls are, .020 perhaps and trim out the windows from within the opening and adjust your acetate and screen to this new sized trimmed out window.  I have done that with quite a bit of success. That allows the trim to stand proud of the walls a little bit and you have a nice, pre-painted gluing surface to build your window box and the really nice thing is you can back the frame with strip on the inside to have a surface to glue your windows/screens.

[lashedup]

Good suggestion Bryan and I meant to mention that. If I was going to do this over, I'd cut the windows, add the strip styrene to frame them and paint that all before installing any windows or screens. I also sprayed the screendoor and screens with a rattle can of Matte and it went on heavier than I would like. I couldn't locally find any Matte Pollyscale Clear and got impatient and decided to use the rattle can I had laying around. Next time I'll airbrush them which will give finer detail and make them a bit more realistic.

In the end this has been a great experiment and I learned a lot (as always).

[SAH]

Wow.  Just fabulous!
An internet forum operating at the highest order.
I can see one of these gizmos in my future.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences guys!!!!!!!

Steve

[Zox]

I was experimenting tonight with cutting out wrought-iron fencing, and discovered that at the small end, I had to watch out for asymmetry between widths on the vertical and horizontal axes. Here are a couple of test results, trying to produce a section of 4-foot-high fence:



The section at the upper left was cut with both the horizontal and vertical members at 0.010" wide. The section at the upper right was cut with the vertical members widened to 0.015". (The bottom sample is BLMA's etched-metal 6-foot-high fence, included for comparison.)

As it happens, the horizontal members were running across the page (the direction the cutting head moves), and the vertical members were running down the page (the direction the paper/vinyl/whatever moves).

I didn't notice this effect with my earlier stone wall samples, but apparently it's something to keep in mind when designing objects--you may have to "fudge" dimensions for small objects to get them to render correctly. (I may try the experiment again, with the fence on the diagonal, just to see if that evens out the error...)

[lashedup]

Cool stuff Rob. This has been great to see what kinds of things people are experimenting with. I was playing around with paper shingles that I bought from RS Laser for the motel and got frustrated quickly trying to get them on the roof straight and without a big mess. So I decided to try scribing roof shingles on .01 material to create an overlay for the roof. Shingles in actual scale are something we don't see very often and these turned out pretty well. I'll take photos once I get some paint down. Right now I'm trying to make the ridge and hip pieces and figured I could use .005 material. After fussing around with setting to make sure it didn't cut all the way through, my next issue is that the .005 is actually fairly stiff and won't lay down on the ridge nice. I may try paper next.

More later...

- jamie

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I just saw last night that Amazon has these for $200 now.

I am REALLY tempted.

[Dave Schneider]

Rob,

Interesting observation on symmetry. I haven't run into that problem yet so I am a bit confused by your results. What package are you using for drawing your objects? Maybe the lines you drew have some thickness to them??? Odd. What material are you cutting?

Jamie,

I am looking forward to seeing your shingle results. I have been thinking about cutting paper shingles from Clever Models to try to improve their texture, but haven't had time. I am using it to scribe the tarpaper seams for the roof of my Milbrew building, and I think it is going to look really good. I have also played around with cutting thin tape to overlay onto half-round styrene to produce those clay caps for concrete and brick walls. Results are mixed at present.

Ed,

Feel free to jump on in. The water is fine! I paid $187 with shipping on eBay a month or more ago, but it appears that $200 is about the going rate for buy-it-now.

Best wishes, Dave

[TrainCat2]

Overstock.com has them for $189 + $1 shipping.

http://www.overstock.com/Crafts-Sewing/Silhouette-SD-Digital-Craft-Cutter-with-10-Gift-Card/4400810/product.html?keywords=silhouette%20hd

[DKS]

Overstock.com has them for $189 + $1 shipping.

That's where I got mine.

Haven't got very far with mine yet. My problem is a workspace. It requires a fairly good-sized clear area so the material can move freely through the machine. In my little basement office/workshop/apartment, such space is hard to come by.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

That's where I got mine.

Haven't got very far with mine yet. My problem is a workspace. It requires a fairly good-sized clear area so the material can move freely through the machine. In my little basement office/workshop/apartment, such space is hard to come by.

I also think that, if you get one of these, the modeling world as we know it will end, because NOTHING else will ever look as good...

I know this will save me money in the long run too... just think of all those Walthers buildings I'm not going to have to buy!

Hmm... very, very tempting.

[lashedup]

Jamie,

I am looking forward to seeing your shingle results. I have been thinking about cutting paper shingles from Clever Models to try to improve their texture, but haven't had time. I am using it to scribe the tarpaper seams for the roof of my Milbrew building, and I think it is going to look really good. I have also played around with cutting thin tape to overlay onto half-round styrene to produce those clay caps for concrete and brick walls. Results are mixed at present.

Did you get any vinyl material samples with yours (I can't remember if mine came with it, or if I ordered it separately)? The vinyl has an adhesive backing, is typically thinner than paper and might be the best for what you are trying to do. Most of those caps aren't a half circle so you might try sanding down the top of the half-round styrene to make it a little less rounded and then try applying the vinyl and paint. Plus with the vinyl you can make some impressive masks for painting that are really tight and crisp.

In fact now that I mentioned it, I may just use the vinyl for the roof ridge and hip pieces.

- jamie

[Dave Schneider]

Jamie,

Thanks for the vinyl suggestion. I didn't get any in my purchase, but have been thinking about buying some. This is my next project, the bar across the street from the Milbrew building. That is the Snake Track in the foreground and the Beer Line main was behind the garage. I was thinking about doing the white window frames using a paint mask or your scribing technique, followed by the red trim in vinyl.



Although I didn't get any vinyl, it did come with a $25 gift card for their online pattern store. My 9 year old daughter thinks that this thing is great for making cards for all of her best friends. Fun for the whole family!

Best wishes, Dave

[lashedup]

That's going to be a nice challenge to work through the details on Dave - lots of textures!. Can't wait to see the workarounds. Plus bouncing the ideas off this group should help.

Silhouette sells white vinyl and the nice thing is that it is a matte finish so airbrushing it works nicely.

- jamie

[Dave Schneider]

Jamie,

I ordered some vinyl today from Expressionsvinyl.com  in a variety of colors. They sell smaller sheets of 9x24 inches for $1.59. This seemed like a better idea than the long rolls so I could try different colors. The thickness of these sheets is 3 mils (0.003 inches). Thanks for the tip.

Best wishes, Dave

[Zox]

Rob,

Interesting observation on symmetry. I haven't run into that problem yet so I am a bit confused by your results. What package are you using for drawing your objects? Maybe the lines you drew have some thickness to them??? Odd. What material are you cutting?

I'm using overhead projector transparencies; the particular ones I'm using right now are made for laser printers and are about 0.004" thick. For software, I'm using the Silhouette Studio program that came with the cutter.

I plan to do some more experiments tomorrow. I'll report results as soon as I have some.