Cricut or Silhouette Stencil Cutting Machines

[fishbelly]

Sorry if this is not the correct forum for this. Please move it to where it needs to go.

So I am in the market for a stencil cutting machine and wanted to ask the good people here if you own / use either a Cricut or Silhouete?

If you do, which one do you have and what do you like/ dislike about it. I am trying to do research and looking over Youtube videos, but they seem to be either about using one or the other and or really comparing them.

I am looking for ease of use and cutting accuracy. I do not need the big one. The smaller desk top one will be fine.

[crblue]

My wife has a Silhouette Cameo something or other, and her mom has a Cricut.

The Cricut seems more robust, but the Silhouette works too, but a little more finiky.

The Cricut also had a bit of drama around it, where they were trying to implement a monthly subscription fee in order to use it. I'd make sure they haven't tried again, or that you are Okay with that model if you buy one. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/cricut-fully-abandons-plans-to-make-device-owners-pay-subscription-fee/

[SOMECALLMETIM]

Brian,

I have a Cricut Maker and use it to cut out .020 and .040 styrene. The pieces are accurate, but do need some clean up. The software is relatively easy to use - if you don't know how to do something, there are a million YouTube videos to walk you through it. I would say the software is a bit limited in creativity/capability or at least I find it to be. If you're cutting a stencil for a font it's easy to import the font for use.

[Mr. Trainiac]

I have done it to cut passenger car side panels out of styrene sheet. It works great for cutting out the rounded corners of streamlined car windows. No more having to use the 'four corner drill' method.

There will be a slight raised edge at the cut, just as there is when cutting styrene with a hobby knife. 0.020" thickness takes a few passes, I usually do 0.010" sheet in two passes.

The machine cannot cut perfectly sharp corners. Every corner has a tiny radius as the knife blade turns, which means you lose some material on outside corners. Inside corners will be a little rounded too, but a square file will sharpen them up. I'd say it's about the 0.015" in diameter, so it's easy to fill with putty if you are assembling a model from flat wall panels.

In terms of software, any vector graphics generator like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape will make files compatible with Cricut. I upload these drawings into the Cricut app, rather than make my designs in the app directly. I think the Cricut app is more suited to laying out the parts and prepping the cuts rather than actual design work.

[ambluco]

Brother ScanNcut here.

[tillamook]

I have a Silhouette Cameo 2 cutter and use it to cut styrene sheet up to 1 mm/0.040". Well, from 0.020" we're talking of scoring, not cutting, but still a lot more precise than by hand.
I also use it to cut masks from masking tape sheets like this for POTB 101, for example: