cricut cutting board

[Ken1f]

I had a potential client come in last week and wanted a few paint thur stencils made. I don't want to cut all the way thru with my Graphtec and mess up the cutting strip so I told him I couldn't do it for him.
This morning I saw a cricut commercial on the TV and it got me thinking...has anyone tried using one of the cricut sticky cutting mats in a Graphtec plotter before? It looks like you could stick the stencil material to it then be able to put it in the plotter and cut into the cutting mat without going into the cutting strip.

 

[dbenec]

you could, i looked into it awhile back as well.

for 1 time use of course there are the paint masks - but for re-usable stencils what I found works equally well is -

use stencil spray - $5 a can - from craft store. it's like low tack spray mount. spray very light coating on posterboard - approx $1.50 each. I use a roller to evenly smooth out the stencil material onto the posterboard.

generally the person doing the stencil(ing) will have to re-apply some stencil spray after they remove the stencil 5 times or so. That way the stencil stays put both on the substrate and on the posterboard for storage.

have had very good luck cutting the heavy duty ez-cut material from here http://www.pjstencils.com/supplies_ez.html with less than 200g force. you'll see other materials require much higher to cut thru.

you'll also want to use a 60° blade - and make sure you get the heavy duty ez-cut. The regular is too thin.

- good luck!

 

[dbenec]

also don't forget to add bridges to hold center of art and letters in place

 

[Ken1f]

Thanks dbenec, I'll give that a try.

 

[jiarby]

I laser them.