Hi
Been looking on and off for ages for a cutter in the UK. I've never owned or used one before. I've found a brand called "UKcutter" sold by Signzworld.co.uk. I have spoken with them and they confirmed they are rebranded Skycutters (sold by plottergeeks). They have 2 ranges i would be interested in the "C" and "V" The C has a maximum blade pressure of 800g while the V has 2000g, but the C can take the laser attachment which sounds cool...?
What do i lose out on cutting with 800g max?
Is there a better option/make that i'm unaware of?
Also what is the best software for these cutters and what is the easiest to learn?
Cheers, F
Comments
https://www.iloveknk.com/support/skycut-support-page/
Happy Cutting!
Cutting force is the amount of pressure that can be exerted in a downward motion. Higher values tend to indicate you can cut slightly thicker - the limitation is going to be can it fit under the pinch wheels, can the pinch wheels close properly - and denser materials. However, if you look at the drag blade being used, there is very little real estate to its surface, so that is also a limitation. You would hold the edge of the blade to the edge of material being cut, and if that is thicker than the tip of the blade is long, its too thick to be cut. Did you look at the comparison of cutters?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y5KRULViA9-sWLZEk4JLn8CPwueEkjTVsUWJqIV9vlk/edit#gid=0
However, before you get too wound up about getting a Skycut/UK Cutter, I need your answers to the following questions to that you can, indeed, meet your requirements with a drag blade cutter:
(1) How large of sheets do you plan to cut?
(2) Is this a hobby application or are you planning to cut a lot for a business?
(3) What kinds of shapes? What sizes? You can cut fairly basic shapes but not like lettering or anything else with a lot of small tight curves. You can from THIN materials but not mat board.
A few more things to note: Drag blade cutters are NOT suitable for cutting frames for pictures or artwork. Those types of frame typically have beveled edges and very perfect interior corners. That requires the type of manual cutter designed for cutting frames. Drag blade cutters cannot do beveled cuts.
Regarding the laser for the C model: It's a laser ENGRAVER suitable for leather and wood. While is CAN cut through materials it will never yield the type of cutting resolution achievable with a far more expensive laser cutter like the Glow Forge.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask more questions or you can post a PM to me here, as well.
Cutting with KNK Force, Maxx Air, Zing Orbit, Skycut C and D
Over 90 free MTC videos: http://www.iloveknk.com/support/mtc-support/
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Cutting with 18" Silver Bullet and a KNK Force (the rest are collecting dust!)
I would respectfully disagree on your assessment that “hobby” implies lower quality. I know plenty of people who do their art as a “hobby” but who are “professionals” in almost any sense of the word but are a “hobbiest” because they do not do their art or hobby full time and/or it is not the source of their primary income. When that question is asked in this context, it is just to discern how much time one anticipates using the equipment. As someone using it for business is generally thought to be using it much more daily and for extended hours then someone using it as a “hobby.” Even that though is not always an accurate assumption. I know some who do things as a “hobby” but put in lots of time. So the question is really simply trying to ascertain how much time you would expect to be using the cutter on a daily/weekly basis to get a rough idea of how much wear and tear you would put on it. Like you, I don’t do my “hobbies” as a business, but I try to buy good quality equipment that I can afford as most do and I think we all appreciate that. Then, one determines what level of price they can afford to pay. Some will buy entry level machines and be happy with those, others will buy midrange and be happy while others will buy business level machines even if they are not running a business. It depends on your budget usually.
i still think as Sandy noted, you won’t be able to cut lettering in mat board with a drag blade cutter.it would require too many small turns and adjustments and the material is too thick and dense for it to work to the level you would be happy. I have messes with cutting mat board, with a mat board cutter and my drag blade cutter in the past. I would love to be able to cut lettering into the mat board but have never found it capable of doing so. I will offer an alternative approach that can work depending on your needs, desire for look, etc. (I will do separate from this reply.)
I understand about the Glowforge, I didn’t know about it’s limited warranty. I have looked at them in the past, ever since they did their initial crowd source campaign to get started and several people on here bought one and waited months for the delivery. I wouldn’t pull the trigger then, and still have not been able to for various reasons but never delved in enough to know of the short warranty period, but I am not surprised. From my research, the laser head on most of these smaller home styled lasers is not very robust and can burn out pretty quickly. My biggest issue with it was that best I can tell, you need to use their cloud base software to control and engrave and cut to the glowforge. That is what has always continued to stop me. What happens to your machine should Glowforge the Company go away along with their cloud based software. I want equipment that is not reliant on a Company and their cloud based software.
Yes, most frag blade cutters can be used with a pen or marker to “draw” with. Some require an adaptor in their blade holder clamp, others don’t and can hold the pen or marker, usually to do so, they need an adjustable clamp.
Cutting with 18" Silver Bullet and a KNK Force (the rest are collecting dust!)
You still haven’t given us a full explanation or detail of exactly what you are wanting to do with the mat board.if you are intending to use it outside of “framing” artwork for something totally unrelated or if you were wanting to cut shapes and letters into the mat board that you would be then using to frame items. The more we know of what you are wanting to do, the better we can answer.
another option is to cut your lettering out of self adhesive wall vinyl and apply that to the mat board it’s self. This also works and can look good depending on what you are wanting to do.
the one thing I always wanted to do was to cut say someone’s name, or a name of a city out of mat board and then use it as the mat to frame photos that would be inside the letters as I have seen done, that I have yet to be able to do with a drag blade cutter (although you could create it as a “faux” look with my paper technique outlined above but I wanted the beveled edge of the mat board so still waiting on the tool to do that. 😉
Cutting with 18" Silver Bullet and a KNK Force (the rest are collecting dust!)
(1) You wrote this: "drag knife (trolley wheel)" My interpretation of "trolley wheel" would be a rotary blade and a drag knife is a swivel blade. It drags/cuts though a material in the same way as if you were using a butter knife to cut through a pizza dough versus a rotary blade would be like a pizza cutter where the blade is a big circle/wheel cutting through the dough. When a drag knife reaches a corner it cuts a teeny bit further and then swivels around to then cut in another direction.
(2) When asking if you were a hobbyist, I was definitely trying to ascertain how many hours per day you were wanting to cut mat board. After 15 years of providing support, I can guarantee you that hobbyists tend to not only expect better cutting but also are far more particular about the designs they're cutting!
(3) The cutting mat (which is required for paper materials and, certainly, mat board, is only A3 in size. You can create your own mats from thin plastic sheets BUT you don't want to be cutting large sheets of mat board for many reasons... too many to explain in detail.
(4) Nothing smaller than 1" or extremely detailed is a good. But also the larger the shape, the more issues you'll also face, such as the blade not tracking on the subsequent passes unless you use a lower speed and cut by depth, as I described in my prior post. This works but is tedious especially if you don't have a dual head model.
(5) The last I checked, Signzworld wasn't selling the tables that can attach to the UK Cutter V or D models. I consider the tables to be essential, especially with any heavy materials because, without support for the cutting mat, the mat can bow in the middle due to the weight of the material, and that leads to cutting issues. Now you can use boxes or a stack of books or whatever to support the mat, but having the tables works so much better
(6) Note that cutting a lot of mat board means you'll be dulling the blades rather quickly. It's hard to provide an exact "life expectancy" on a blade because it depends on how many cuts, the density of the material, the size of the cuts, etc. But mat board, for sure, wears out blades probably 10 times faster than cardstock and 100 times faster than vinyl.
(7) The UK Cutters come with a test pen and two refills (double that one the D model). But if you want to use other pens, markers, etc. then you can order a Skycut pen holder from me. I had some manufactured but note that shipping from the US to anywhere overseas is insane and can take up to a month at least since Covid reared its ugly head on the world. Below is a photo.
I think that's all I have to say! Please do post more questions, if you have them.
Cutting with KNK Force, Maxx Air, Zing Orbit, Skycut C and D
Over 90 free MTC videos: http://www.iloveknk.com/support/mtc-support/
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Any info on alternative Mat board cutting would be great!
By far the majority of those who buy a Skycut/UK Cutter are vinyl businesses wanting the extreme speed and accuracy for cutting stickers / printed decals to sell. Therefore, they have no interest in a pen holder. lol They buy Skycuts because these cutters support the adding of intermediate registration marks for additional scanning during the process which makes them perfect for that application.
But crafters and makers ALSO love the Skycuts (so far) and a dozen or so of them on the Skycut Facebook group have bought them from me. I was hoping the various Skycut dealers would be interested in buying some to list on their site but I haven't really approached most of them because of the Covid situation.
I don't know what poster board is called in the UK but it's very accurate and easy to cut. That's like what protest signs are made from here in the USA and you can buy poster board in dozens of different types of local stores. Also similar to poster board and easy to cut is the type of white chipboard used for printed boxes that package products such as toothpaste, perfume, rice mixes, etc. My favorite is Tango C1S 18pt coated cover. This PDF shows the weight and other specs:
https://www.westrock.com/-/media/pdf/paperboard/product-guide/tango-c1s-product-guide-aug-2019.pdf?modified=20190828024007
My home printer can't handle printing this thickness but this is more for making little boxes that can then be decorated.
Cutting with KNK Force, Maxx Air, Zing Orbit, Skycut C and D
Over 90 free MTC videos: http://www.iloveknk.com/support/mtc-support/
Latest MTC User Manuals: http://www.iloveknk.com/Support/user-manuals/
A good litmus test on whether or not a drag blade cutter can handle a particular material is to manually use a craft knife, like an X Acto knife and see if YOU can through the material in 2 or maybe 3 passes. If you can't cut, neither can the drag blade cutter and you will need a CO2 laser cutter.
Yes, laser cutters can sometimes leave sear marks but also, according to what I've read, that's a matter of fine tuning the settings. Either way, you have to research carefully with a laser cutter to make sure you know what materials can be cut with it. For example, you must not cut vinyl because the fumes are toxic. You also should never ever leave the room when a laser cutter is cutting. Lots of safety measures to learn. On the other hand, it's probably a better option for you if you're wanting to cut a lot of larger shapes from thick/dense mat board.
Cutting with KNK Force, Maxx Air, Zing Orbit, Skycut C and D
Over 90 free MTC videos: http://www.iloveknk.com/support/mtc-support/
Latest MTC User Manuals: http://www.iloveknk.com/Support/user-manuals/
When it comes to extreme accuracy the most impressive thicker material application on a Skycut C that I've personally tested, resulting in a customer having huge success in her magnetic paper doll business, was the ability to do print-and-cut on 0.4 mm printable magnetic sheets... an entire letter-sized sheet of different shapes. That demonstrated to me that compared to all other hobby cutters that could do print-and-cut applications, the Skycut C excels because this wasn't just photo paper or light cardstock... it was printable magnetic sheets, heavy enough to cause drift in accuracy across the sheet with other cutters.
I'm quite sure the Cricut Maker can cut thicker materials than the Skycut because it has a Z motor, thus allowing it to lift and rotate the blade during the cut. This means it can have longer blades than what the solenoid cutters can effectively use. So, that's not something the current Skycut models are designed for. If your goal is to cut the thickest materials you can possibly find, I do NOT want you to buy a Skycut / UK Cutter because otherwise you're just going to be frustrated and unhappy with it.
Cutting with KNK Force, Maxx Air, Zing Orbit, Skycut C and D
Over 90 free MTC videos: http://www.iloveknk.com/support/mtc-support/
Latest MTC User Manuals: http://www.iloveknk.com/Support/user-manuals/
To be the elephant in the room, why don't you @Finku download the Cricut DS software and have a play with it. You don't need a Cricut attached for it to work. Try doing what you think you might want to do with a cutter using that crappy software. Oooops don't want to cloud your judgement, but please, be honest as to what you think. If you haven't used any similar tools like a cutter and related software then you might be quite happy with it.
Cutting with 18" Silver Bullet and a KNK Force (the rest are collecting dust!)