Digital Craft Cutting
My latest fad is a Digital Cutter so I though I would put a dedicated page on line so anyone interested can find my cutting files and other stuff easily.
I started out with a Craft Robo cutter, which I found to be just a little too limiting with the materials it can cut. It is fine for most light craft work but I found it was just not up to cutting some of the thicker materials I wanted to cut so I have replaced it with a 15 inch BlackCat Cougar which is a much more capable machine.
It is very rare these days to find a product which really stands out from the crowd but I can assure you that the BlackCat Cougar definitely does.
I can also promise you that the before/ after sales service you will obtain from Dawn at Thyme Graphics is absolutely second to none! If you have any problems or any need to contact her you can be assured of a reply on the support forum within minutes, day or night, I don’t think she ever sleeps! If that is not enough for you then fear not, if Dawn cannot help you via the forum/ email she will talk you through the problem on the phone and if all else fails even take control of your computer via remote connection and take you through it on your own computer. I cannot stress strongly enough how superb the support from Thyme Graphics is!
The BlackCat Cougar cutter is every bit as good as the support, it has a cutting force of 950 grammes with 255 adjustable steps and a cutting speed of up to 600mm/s both of which can be changed in the software or directly on the machine LCD display. You can even pause the cutting and change the cutting force and speed on the fly. If your cut settings were not quite right you can simply make adjustments to the blade length, adjust the force, and hit the repeat button to cut again over the original cut – No wasted material.
Cougars come in various cutting widths from 13 inches to 24 inches and unlike some other cutters on the market that is the actual cutting width not the media width. They can cut a range of materials from thin vinyl up to 1mm chipboard or 1.5mm mount board, metal foils, shrink plastic, paper, card etc.
The Cougar has a built in laser alignment system so you can perform contour cuts. Basically you can add cut lines to a picture/ photograph ect within the software, then you can print the file on a normal inkjet/ laser printer and put the printout into the Cougar and automatically cut out the shapes around your image. This is often referred to as Digital Die Cutting or Print & Cut. The process is not quite as automatic as it is on the Craft Robo, but at the same time it is less limiting – with the Craft Robo the limited cutting size is further reduced by having to avoid large areas around the page so the system can locate the special registration marks, the cougar does not suffer from this problem and will allow you to still cut up to the full size of the media when doing contour cutting.
That’s not the end of the matter by a long way, not only does the Cougar cut but with an optional tool it also embosses card, velum etc. The tool has interchangeable tips from 1mm up to 6mm diameter for outline or filled embossing. I have the embossing tool and the results are really quite fantastic 
Had enough yet? because there is more, much more! There are a number of other optional tools available, such as an engraving tool to engrave metal, detail blade holder for cleaner cuts on very fine detail cuts such as lattice work, click adjustable blade holders for quick and easy blade adjustment, cutting tables which attach directly to the machine to hold the media steady while cutting and a number of other tools are currently being developed including a rotary engraving tool & hot foil transfer pen among others.
Software wise the Cougar comes with the excellent Inkscape editor and Signcut Pro which takes care of actual cutting. Inkscape is a free vector editing program which uses the SVG file format, it is a VERY capable editor indeed and offers pretty much all the tools you would ever need to produce superb cutting files. It may appear a little daunting at first as there are lots of tools and options which will take a while to absorb, but after a short time you will pick up enough of the basics to create very usable cutting files. The advantage of Inkscape is that once you have the basic knowledge you can then progress onto more advanced tools & techniques to produce some stunning bespoke cutting files. If you are dead set against Inkscape then Dawn can offer some other software solutions instead if you contact her to discuss it.
Even if you are not interested in designing your own cutting files Inkscape is still a good choice; as the software is a free open source project it has a wealth of free SVG files for you to download, not only from the BlackCat forum but all over the web, and it will also load up a multitude of other programs files such as Adobe Illustrator AI, EPS, BMP, JPG to name just a few. By the way the BlackCat forum is one of the friendliest communities I have encountered and well worth a visit before deciding on a cutter
The BlackCat Cougar is the Porsche of cutters, it may be more expensive than a Craft Robo but the difference in quality and ability far outweighs the extra cost. If you are thinking about purchasing a cutter then think very hard before making the same mistake I did by opting for the cheaper machine, if you obtain a Craft Robo/ wishblade type machine you may well find your creativity being limited by the machine, if you purchase a Cougar you will find the machine driving you to producing bigger and better things.
If, after reading that, you are still heading for a cheaper machine, there is the Craft Robo/ Wishblade machines.
The Craft Robo is a computer plotter/ cutter which can be used to cut vinyl sheets, paper, card etc and is mostly used for crafts such as card making/ scrapbooking etc.
It can perform normal cuts such as cutting vinyl lettering for signs etc or print & cuts (contour cuts) where an image is first printed using a normal computer printer and then the image is cut from the sheet with the cutter – also known as digital die cuts. Some of the Craft Robo range do not do print & cut so if you are just thinking about obtaining a machine and want this facility make sure the machine supports it.
Cutting wise the machine is designed to cut material up to 0.3mm thick, this range can be extended with various tricks and cutting multiple times but your mileage may vary. The blade depth is set by fitting different colour caps to the end of the blade holder which give 0.1, 0.2 & 0.3mm of cutting depth, but depending on the density of the material it may not be possible to actually cut to these depths in one go because the maximum cutting force is only 230 grammes. The cutting speed is also quite low with a maximum of 100mm/s.
The Craft Robo/ Wishblade cutters come with RoboMaster software which is basic, very basic, if you are at all interested in creating your own designs you will very quickly find this software too limiting. I found the software pretty close to useless within a matter of hours, it is really a next to useless software bundle that is going to mean you will need to buy an upgrade pretty soon after buying the cutter! There are other software packages available for these machines which will give you more editing capability, but they are not free so this closes the gap between the cost of the CR & the Cougar.
The Craft Robo/ Wishblade machines are basically home/ hobby machines, not suited to extended use, and only really effective for quite thin materials. If you just want to cut a bit of light weight card once in a while then they are fine, if you want to cut lots of card, or heavy card/ dense materials you will find they are far from ideal.
If you are thinking about obtaining a craft robo, or already have one but are not a member, then you should join the Yahoo Wishblade Group. The group is an invaluable source of tutorials, cutting files, help, support and friendly banter for a range of cutter machines not just the Wishblade The members include some extremely talented crafters with a wealth of experience they are all to happy to share. Joining the group also gives you access to the www.GSDfiles.com which is a superb archive of free cutting files, fonts, tutorials and all things cutter related.
The cutting files for the Craft Robo are also usable by Wishblade cutters so if you have a Wishblade you can use my Craft Robo cutting files too.
I will be adding tutorials and cutting files to my website which you will be able to find using the appropriate subjects in the Subject navigation links in the sidebar (Craft Cutter – Tutorial/ Cut File/ Print & Cut) I am also working on coding a sort of gallery page with thumbnails of the example pictures which link to the full size image and also provide a quick description plus link to the article & zip file, it may take some time though so for now you will have to do it the hard way 
The cutting files on this site will be in the form of a ZIP archive, most of which will contain the cutting file in Craft Robo/ Wishblade GSD format and Adobe Illustrator AI format or SVG (Inkscape) format. The zip file will also contain a ReadMe.HTML file, example photos in JPG format and other files as required.
Please note, I am producing these files for the benefit of the craft cutter community, and unless indicated otherwise in the ReadMe.html file they are:
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
You are free to modify the files as you like, but if you wish to distribute modified files in any manner they must be licensed under the same or similar licence and also be attributed to the original work and myself by including the following line:
Based on an original design by Louise-Paisley (www.bratpack.org.uk)
If you find any of my tutorials or files useful or have any suggestions regarding them please take the time to leave a comment on the relevant page to let myself and others know
Hi, boy am i glad i found you as you seem to know your stuff. Im new to this but im looking for a machine that will enable me to download fonts from my pc and print and cut onto vinyl. Any advise would be very much appreciated. Thankyou.
The Craft Robo, Wishblade, or Cougar would all allow you to do this.
The software for all the machines use the standard true type fonts installed on your computer and will cut them on vinyl or card.
The main issues are how much editing you want to do and what materials you want to cut. The Craftrobo/ wishblade software is VERY limited, and they will struggle to cut thicker card or dense material.
I would think carefully about not only what you want to do with the machine now, but what you may well end up wanting to do later once you have ‘played’ around with it and realised it’s potential.
I would have no hesitation recommending the BlackCat Cougar, as I said on this page the after sales support alone is worth the asking price and it is really a VERY capable machine.
If all you will ever do is cut a few vinyl letters up to about 7.5 inches high max, then the Craft robo/ wishblade machines will work out a bit cheaper.
Louise
Hello. Please can you help me. I run childrens messy play art and craft groups and spend my evening cutting out lots of different shapes and feel that a cutting machine would help me. The problem is I dont know anything about all the different ones available and was hoping for some advice. I need to be able to create my own templates and down load templates from the internet and also cut about 100 shapes a time. Any ideas as to what would best suit me. Thank you in advance.
Wendy
Sorry for late reply but I have been rather busy lately.
Regarding a cutter it is one of those “you get what you pay for” issues, the cheaper models like the craftrobo and wishblade are OK but limited in the size and materials that can be cut.
I have a craft robo which is sat collecting dust basically, it was fine when I first got it but then quickly found it just could not cope very well with the card I wanted to cut and the size limitation of A4 was too small and the software was absolutely next to useless for design work so I bought the cougar.
The Cougar I have is 15 inches wide and with the supplied software can cut up to 24 inches x 24 inches (well 15 inches by 24 inches on my machine) and it can cut a much wider range of materials, fabric, fun foam, thick card, shrink plastic, vinyl, metal foils… the list goes on and on. Dawn at thyme graphics is an absolute saint when it comes to after sales service, she will literally stop at nothing to help you if you have a problem.
Buying a Cougar also gives you full access to the blackcat forum where there are lots of people, including myself, who help ease new owners into cutting with the Cougar. If you have a specific template you require posting the request on the forum will undoubtedly result in one of us either having it to share or making it for you. The Cougar cutters use Inkscape (a free but very very good design software) which has thousands of free templates available on the web and hundreds on the blackcat forum free for download.
I would strongly recommend that you give Dawn at thyme graphics a call and discuss the matter with her, she will give you honest advice and is very knowledgeable with most cutters including Craft robo/ wishblade etc. She will bend over backwards to help you make the right choice but won’t pressure you into it at all.
Contact details can be found on her website http://www.thymegraphics.co.uk/contact.asp Also ask her for guest membership of the blackcat forum, you will then be able to ask other owners about the Cougar and cutting in general
Thank you for you review, I have been trying to plough through the mine field of cutting machines as this will be a birthday present from my family. You have given me all the informations I was looking for and also things I wanted but did’nt know I could get with a cutting machine such as embossing, which I find fustratating with the little hand machines.
Thanks very much once again
Hi April,
I am glad my quick review helped you choose a machine.
If you don’t mind me asking what have you decided on? If it is a Cougar you will be very happy with it I can assure you
If you do decide on a Cougar let Dawn at Thyme graphics know you saw the review on Loupy’s website 
I hope you have many hours of happy digital craft cutting, better do a good spring clean before you get one though because they are quite addictive and normal domestic chores seem to slip away into the background LOL
Louise
Hi,
I have been looking at the craft robo/pro but I am really put off my the carry mats I have had an xyron which lost its tack way to quick and now I am reserved about the alternatives as I don’t want to be replacing cutting mats it gets expensive. Someone told me that I would need to change a cutting mat every 4 months/100 cuts. Just wondering if you could advise me on what you have found.
Also can you get on none full sheets of paper?
Thanks for letting me pick your brain.
T
The craft robo is toy like compared to a Cougar, I don’t know much about the craft robo pro but in all honestly I would doubt it measures up to the Cougar.
Regarding cutting mats:
You do not need to buy new mats when they loose their tac. Often washing them with a drop of washing up liquid in a cup of water and leaving them over night to dry will restore the stickiness, when that fails you can just spray them with a re positionable adhesive and they are good as new. You only need to replace the mat if it becomes badly scored by cutting with too much pressure (The cougar on full force will easily cut right through a cutting mat).
I am not sure how many times you can cut on a mat before it loses tac as it would depend on the material you are cutting. If you are cutting a more fibrous paper/ card then the mat will lose tac much quicker than if you are cutting a smooth shiny paper/ card. It all depends on how much fibre gets permanently stuck to the mat.
I don’t buy cutting mats at all any more, I buy heavy duty template plastic sheets and spray them with re positionable adhesive to make my own, very much cheaper and I think they are better than bought mats. The adhesive I use is Krylon Easy Tac 7020 and the tin will refresh a mat hundreds of times for about £5
Using offcuts of paper/ card/ vinyl on the Cougar is very easy indeed, you put it on the carrier and load it into the machine, then you use the controls on the Cougar to move the blade to the front right corner and press the origin button. The Cougar then starts cutting at that exact spot. With the craft robo it is not as easy as you cannot change the cutting origin at all so you have to make sure the paper is positioned correctly before cutting.
My advice would be to contact Dawn at Thyme graphics via phone or email and discuss your requirements with her, she will not attempt to pressure you into a purchase but will be more than happy to give you honest free advice.
Personally I would recommend a Cougar over a craft robo. The Cougar will not let you down at all, the software it uses is fantastic and you will be able to do very much more with it than the software that comes with a CR, the Cougar machine is a professional cutter at an affordable price and will cut practically anything you throw at it. Yes it is more expensive, but it is worth every penny, and you may well find the cheaper option becoming frustrating with its limitations very quickly.