As you prepare for your Festivus Shopping spree be sure to head over to the New york Times’ Persronal Tech section for their review of the new lineup of personal vinyl cutters titled, For Crafters the Gift of Automation by Peter Wayner.
In summary the article reviews the three main producers of these devices, Pazzles, Critcut and Silhouette.
The cutting machines look and manipulate paper like printers for personal computers but have blades instead of ink cartridges. They started appearing more than four years ago, and the earliest versions used patterns from cartridges and digital memory cards. This year, the manufacturers have enabled customers to buy patterns from professional artists and are making it easier for crafters to swap patterns through online networks.
The business model of limiting customers to a set number of patterns and paying for each pattern sounds fairly unsuited to fine art needs. On a whim I did a quick search which revealed a world of links and videos of folks whose hacked in to these machines. It also seems that there may be back doors to import your own files, but without spending some serious time on crafting forums I’m hesitant to say more.
Two other companies that didn’t get a times shout-out are CraftRobo and Wishblade, neither of which seem to have a lockdown on where your cutting designs come from. Additionally, Craft Robo Pro and Silhouette both offer plugins for Adobe Illustrator.
In closing, I don’t think any of these would replace an industrial vinyl plotter in terms of flexibility, durability or size of material you can cut, but at a fraction of the cost they may meet the needs of small print studio or someone with a mild sticker addiction.
If any Printeresting readers have gotten crazy with one of these devices please post your comments or better yet, email us a review with some pictures!
I saw a late night infomercial about one of these. As an owner of a large format vinyl cutter I was intrigued. They are very “dumbed down” and have a few extra steps to insure good results that I would find tiresome. However they also appear to be well thought out for their target market which appears to be craftbooking and the like. I’m sure that in the right hands some great stuff can be made.
As a Utah resident, I live with the overabundance of such crafty printy gizmos daily. The Critcut is the original and is owned and operated out of Provo (Happy Valley), UT. True, for what it is it is useful for small scale vinyl cutting for scrapbooking, etc., but it is painful to go to folks’ houses who have made their own “wall decorations”- usually some terribly lame inspirational quote set in Papyrus.
The future of printmaking! …It’s all in the execution, right?
I must say, I love all these various crafty products. Every time I walk into a Michael’s/Jo-Ann/AC Moore/Wal-Mart, there’s some item like this that I want to buy. Unfortunately, I tend to abuse this sort of device with large “editions,” and it ends up broken.
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