Monday, July 30, 2018

It Still Doesn't Register...

Registration: the alignment of multiple processing passes on the same sheet of paper, so a single multicolor or multiprocess image is produced. 

Coming from the world of photography and printing, I see perfect registration as a requirement to make sure my images and cut works line up so there's no offset of one color to another, or of image to cut. It's something I expect of any color printer — and which, until now, I expected to be standard for any cutting machine. If I have to manually align a paper for multiple passes, I'll set my program to print the registration marks which allow me to perform the alignment myself.

One of the issues I've been having with getting my Cricut to do what I want it to is its inconsistency in registering to the same spot on its cuttting mat, or — more importantly — to the material on the cutting mat. This is annoying because it makes it difficult to do precision cuts on unusual shapes, and to do registered cuts on preprinted materials — such as personalized cupcake wrappers and flags for an event.

Cupcake flag and wrapper for New Jersey Libertarian Party event


Cricut's Design Space has a "print and cut" feature which is supposed to make this sort of thing easy: print your design out onto an appropriate paper through Design Space, which adds registration marks to your graphics, and then cuts out the intricate shapes of your printed item.

There are some problems with this:
1. The maximum size of a print-and-cut graphic is about 9" x 6", which is nowhere near the size of the standard cutting mat, and a bit small for adult t-shirts.
2. The "print" part of print-and-cut is much too low a resolution to be useful
3. The "cut" part of print-and-cut either tries to cut out every single color change, causing the knife to shred the project, or only cuts the outlines of the printed portion (as if you were making a sticker), with no obvious option for anything different.

DIY'ing the sequence isn't much better. While you can print and adjust to the entire size of the sheet, the cutting will end up in different areas from one mat feed to the next. A few YouTubers have suggested that adding a bounding box at the edges of your image (or paper) will help with registration, but I've not found it a perfect match.
The red rectangle is my Cricut's DIY "registration" marks for US letter-size paper
That said, there's one additional step that looks like it might help (though it may "ruin" a mat): I ran an old mat through the Cricut several times with the bounding box set to "write" and found that my Cricut has a specific offset for 11 x 8.5" paper and cardstock (US standard letter size paper, matted landscape). If I set my letter-sized paper to the marks I've made on the mat, I'm getting something closer to a usable registration, if not what I would consider acceptable registration.

Registration Errors
Note that the bounding lines on the flags and some of the wrappers are visible, and how they vary from cupcake to cupcake.

On the plus side, after a lot of trial and error (and wasted cardstock), I got the Cricut to cut everything out without mangling the pre-printed images. On the minus side, I still had those outline marks. Since this was a bit of a test project, I went with the stock I managed to print out. For future events, I can "hide" the outline layer so it won't print, and my cupcake flags and wrappers should be perfect.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

I Hear Cricuts...

If you spend any amount of time in a craft store or among paper crafters, you will hear them toss about words like Cuttlebug, Sizzix, Spellbinders, Silhouette, Cameo, and Cricut. Each of these are machines that help a crafter create precise embossed or cut shapes that can be assembled to make three-dimensional cards, scrapbook page accents, centerpieces and other specialized paper goods for special events, including custom favor boxes. A family with a couple of Cricut machines and a lot of time can save enough money creating their wedding, shower, or baby-naming supplies to pay for the cost of these expensive cutters and the amount of time it takes to learn how to use some of them.

Because I'm not into scrapbooking or planners, and I don't have children or nearby family, I don't have a direct need for these machines; however, many Michaels customers purchase consumables for them, and some even earn their incomes by using them. That means it's a good idea for me to understand how they work.

Our classroom includes a Sizzix Big Kick, a Cricut Expressions, and several dies and embossing folders for the Sizzix. The Sizzix is pretty straightforward: you put your paper on a plate, put your die on it, put another plate on top, and crank it through the machine. Then you take your pieces and assemble them.

The Cricut is another matter entirely. The Expressions model has a small number of built-in images and fonts, but mostly relies on proprietary data cartridges for your projects and designs. You use an awkwardly slow built-in display to try to lay these out in a way that either makes sense or wastes the least amount of consumable materials — or you can (or rather could) use a USB connection and a PC program (Cricut Craft Room) to try to manage things more quickly. Then you prepare your materials and tell the machine to do its work. Later Cricut models (the Explore series and the current top-of-the-line Maker) use different software (Cricut Design Space) that (hallelujah!) allows you to upload your own designs, rather than just relying on cartridges and whatever Cricut has made available through their online space.

It's that ability to do truly custom work that has had me interested in playing with the Cricut Explore series, and that past tense that has gotten me to finally purchase what, for me, is an expensive toy: Cricut shut down Craft Room on July 15. The nominal reasons for the shutdown is because the software is based on Adobe Flash, which is (1) insecure and (2) no longer supported by Adobe.

As part of the Craft Room sunset program, Cricut generously offered Craft Room users a significant credit towards purchasing a Design Space-compliant model, valid through July 15. I waited almost until the last minute before taking the leap and buying a Cricut Explore Air with a basic set of starter tools. Now, I'm working on translating some of the logos my organizations use into Design Space-friendly files and and trying out some ideas for custom decorations for our events.

Once I get the hang of the translations, I'll be able to see what sort of market might exist to give me some return on this investment...