Check this page for odds and end such as sketches, alternate versions, and other various web only content.

About my cutting machine:

Disclaimer: This is an attempt to answer some frequent questions, and offer my opinions about the Craft Robo Pro. If after reading this, you end up breaking your machine, or cutting off your fingers, I am in no way responsible. For official advice, please consult your owner's manual.

When I bought this thing, I had my doubts, but I've used it for several years, and have successfully cut hundreds, if not thousands of pages with it. The Robo is a marvelous machine. It has a cutting area 15 inches wide, and can handle paper about 18 inches wide. Your total cutting area is somewhere in the neighborhood of 13x22, which is pretty decent. I run it with an Adobe Illustrator plug-in (cutting master 2 v1.7) on my iMac Intel 2.4. I have experienced occasional software glitches and needed to upgrade, and re-install the driver a few times. Sometimes the machine has problems, usually easily remedied by unplugging it or turning it on and off.

Although intended to cut vinyl, it will cut card stock, quite nicely. Set properly, your cut pieces will fall out of the page with minimum prodding. Here are some keys to my ROBO method in no particular order:

If using Illustrator, be sure the plot language is set to GPGL, as opposed to the factory default HPGL

If you are using crop marks, make sure they are type 2.

There may be trouble reading the crop marks if your computer doesn't have enough RAM.

Leave about 3/4 inch between crop marks and the sides and bottom of the page. About 3 inches from the top. This is why it's good to have a big printer and paper. This is also why I hate using crop marks. I have done some experimentation with cutting by aligning the printed page by using the origin point instead of using crop marks. For now, I'm resigned to sticking with the crop marks. If anyone has success without them, please share.

Your blade should always be set very shallow. Only about 1/2 mm sticking out. You can also set the cutting pressure, but it is less reliable than adjusting the blade manually to account for paper thickness and strength.

Very important: for card stock, set it to cut at least 2 or 3 passes.

Each time I cut, I make new Illustrator documents, cut and paste in pieces to use as cut files. When I'm done cutting, I just close the cut files without saving.

I never use the carrier sheet. They are a rip off. Big time. Instead, I cover the cutting surface with electric tape, which I change about twice a year, and feed paper in directly.

Don't expect perfection from your ROBO. Don't get mad or hit it. If you get too frustrated, take some deep breaths, and go find an x-acto knife. Cutting by hand is good practice. It gives you a better understanding of your material; like peeling vegetable with a kitchen knife. You will be a better engineer, and better appreciate your ROBO.

Good Luck, and happy cutting.

Alternative covers, and cancelled projects:

This is the video of me working. Thanks again to Wendy and Kate at Sterling for the filming and talking me into doing it.