Looks like it is the newer version: New Silhouette Cameo 2014 Compared to Original Silhouette Cameo – Joy's Life
I bought one of these on my own sometime last year. Got the bundle for $199, in fact, on eBay.
It’s awesome. I use it all the time for a variety of projects. Amazon sells vinyl pretty cheaply, too. I use construction paper and oak tag to cut out shapes for awesome customized cards. Everyone will hate you at parties for bringing the best shit.
Buy vinyl to make your own car decals and put your name or favorite logo at the precise size on whatever you want.
Hot tip: cut a design out of vinyl, stick it to a T-shirt, then apply some fabric ink on with a little paint roller. Let dry, tear off vinyl. You now have a shirt and it took like an hour.
I’ll also echo what everyone else said about file formats: Export as DXF, drag into Silhouette Studio.
If you’re an artist, get this.
I also have the older version and love it. I have the paid version of the software, so I make designs in Illustrator, export them as SVG, and import them to the Silhouette software to cut.
I’ve mostly used it for vinyl decals and cardstock, and after cutting a bunch of cardstock for a project once, I learned to ALWAYS keep a spare blade around. They don’t wear out quickly, but when they do start chewing up the paper instead of cutting neatly, you’ll want to have the replacement handy to swap.
If you’re serious about using a vinyl cutter with programs like Illustrator, look into the Sure Cuts A Lot software instead of Silhouette’s pro software. SCAL works with just about every vinyl cutter out there (except Cricut) so if you upgrade to a bigger cutter (or another brand), you don’t need to buy new software.
That being said, I have the previous gen Silhouette and LOVE IT.
Yes this is the new Cameo with the cross cutter on the back and touch screen.
what is the speed of the cut? is this usable on a quasi professional production level - or would it be too slow?
This is a silly question but asking it anyway… I want to make my we stickers, both for my kids projects and for my personal use as a teacher. This is the machine that I’m looking for right?
It does “print and cut” - you print an image out on the 8.5x11 sticker sheet with registration marks and the laser inside the machine sees the registration marks, then cuts the shapes where you had designed them. So you can make stickers in ANY shapes you like - ribbons, animals, names - and with holes in them, too. Just a word of note; the print and cut feature does not allow you to cut on the outside of the page so you lose some material where the registration marks appear and also a border where it is the no-cut zone. It isn’t a lot of space, but it has hindered some of my larger designs or made me use more sticker sheets (I made 2.5" circle stickers and could only fit 9 on a page where without that border I would have been able to fit 12).
The third level of the software allows you to gang up multiple machines to use it on a more professional level. It isn’t terribly fast because if you run it faster, it isn’t as precise and the paper gets torn around corners. It isn’t SLOW, but if you are trying to cut dozens of things out you may be disappointed.
I find that having two mats (sometimes three) allows me to cut one item, and then while I am peeling it off of the mat and cleaning the mat for next use, the second mat is in the machine cutting the second piece or the duplicate piece (depending on what I’m cutting). With cuts that have a lot of intricate cut outs, you have to scrape the junk off the mat when you get your design off, and that takes a little bit of time.
If you are talking about vinyl production, there is no mat required, but you would still have weeding to do or the clear transfer tape to stick on your design. If you maximize your multitasking, you will see that it goes faster than just waiting.
OH - almost forgot - a negative of the software - your machine will stop cutting if you leave the software if the design is too big to send to the machine all at once. If you tab out to say, watch a movie on Netflix while you wait for your lace doily to cut all the tiny holes, the machine will just stop cutting at some point in the middle (when it doesn’t have any more info in the cutter) and you will lose all the time you put into the cut.
Here are some things I made with my Silhouette Cameo. Thought people might like to see what you can do with it.
I like to make handbags using vinyl, is there a thickness that the machine won’t cut. Can I load my own pattern pieces within the dimensions of the machine and will it cut it without issue. Thanks.
Wow…beautiful! Are these your original ideas, or do you get ideas from various sources? Must say that these look very professionally done.
Long story short. It’s a decent machine, but it definitely has some problems.
-2014 Reboot Updates-
LCD Screen-
This is the newer LCD touch screen version of the Cameo. The newer touch screen is in my opinion worse than the older model. The reason being the touch screen is the same level of technology as a debit card reader from a grocery store in the 2000s. It’s not a precise screen touch like you would be used to with smart phones or tablets. I often had problems with the touch screen not responding to my finger. Also, the touch screen is incredibly slow. You can double tap a button and actually trigger the button that would show up on the following screen if it were capable of loading faster.
Crosscutter-
Don’t use this, it is absolutely terrible. You’d be better off buying a roll of cellophane and ripping the crosscutter off of it.
-Software-
Silhouette America releases a free standard version of the software anyone can use that is a vector editing software. It’s not nearly as capable as Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Inkscape, but it’s good enough for most things. The standard(free) edition of the software comes with the ability to import .DXF files, but NOT .SVG files. For the ability to import .SVG files you would need to buy the Designer Edition which MSRP is $50. You could design anything you wanted to creating using the software. It would probably be easier doing it in AI or CD though if you are familiar with those programs. The software isn’t great, but it isn’t terrible. It’s free which is it’s best selling point.
(Also for those interested, if you save an SVG file with stroke width .1pt and RGB 000001 the software will automatically import that line as a cut line.)
-Speed-
The machine is fairly fast, however if you want to cut lots of curves or acute angles you would need to slow the speed down considerably. You can edit how fast the machine cuts from the software.
-Noise-
The machine is loud. I mean LOUD. It makes all sorts of buzzing and whistling and singing. It was never really a bother to me, and I literally spent most my days running the machine when I worked there. But you wouldn’t want it around if you needed quiet for any reason.
I honestly really enjoy using my machine, I have made many vinyl decal projects with it and I’ve made tons of cardstock projects using the machine.
These are some of the projects i’ve made
-Honest Downsides-
Can be complicated. The software and machine provide lots of customizability and complexity at the cost of being not quite as quick/user friendly as it could be. The biggest example would be the image tracing option. The software can take a regular picture you’ve downloaded from google images and turn it into a cuttable vector, however the tool to do so has a ton of options to allow to to decide where each line gets created. It’s not as simple as “Make an outline” but it can create more complex images that if you just had an option to “make outline”. That being said, becoming proficient with the machine and software takes a fair amount of trial and error on your part to get the perfect settings. Again, it’s customizability at the cost of complexity.
Customer support is a joke. Well let me phrase that, the company has tried to make customer support better but it keeps getting worse. They have no real training for the phone reps other than teaching them to identify key words and then copy/paste responses. 90% of the phone reps have never used the machine and will never get a chance to use the machine. They aren’t taught about anything from a technical support perspective. It’s not really their fault that they aren’t trained, so try not to get too frustrated with them, however, if you need technical help you will find better answers with google than with calling/emailing them.
There is no content/quality control for the designs submitted to the online store, meaning that artists can submit designs that don’t work and no one is checking up on them.
The software can be EXTREMELY processor intensive, especially if you don’t have a dedicated graphics card installed on your computer. It often slows/crashes due to too much information being handled on the screen. There are also tons of bugs in the software that will never get handled. The software developers are actually contracted 3rd party out of the UK and are given completely unrealistic timelines to get things done and often results in poor quality releases. If you do update your software, do not delete the old version installer if you can. It’s possible that the new version might have something that causes a serious problem. Also the software has seemingly random problems with Windows 10.
All in all, if you like crafting and could see yourself using the machine. I’d say buy it. At $200 that’s the same price that the company sells the machine wholesale. Also, please don’t buy the Curio it is absolutely awful.
I like my machine and don’t have any major problems with it. It gets done what I want to do. If compared with the Cricut i’d say the Cricut machine is better but Silhouette’s software is much more versatile.
Hopefully that helps.
Some of those are my own ideas (the Star Trek card, the Mickey Mouse cupcake picks, the Scrabble card, the wall art, the banner), many of them are files purchased from the online store (the pop up cards). Things like the shadow box are a combination - I bought the deer and the birch trees, which were a different scale and two different files, separated the trees from each other and made them the appropriate size, created three layers from them, separated the grass from the deer and re-created their legs. I then put it together how I wanted in a shadow box.
You also get to pick your own colors for everything - the shadow box matches the bedding in the nursery for my coworker’s new baby. The wedding box card matches the couple’s wedding invitation. So even if you don’t make the files yourself, there is a lot of “creativity” you can have on your own.
Recently I started inking the paper, too which adds another level. I made butterflies for my mother where the wings have a gradient of orange inks on a yellow paper.
It is not difficult to use this tool. I do have a slight graphic design background (I fix Macs for graphic designers so I learned how to “do” graphic design in order to do my job more effectively). That being said, however, it is mostly like sending a file to a printer and instead of printing, it cuts paper. You cut multiple colors, glue it together, and “voila!” Professional looking banners. The cuts are clean. You can cut ANY font on your computer, too, which is how I made the “Jamie’s Bridal Shower” sign (and a few more items not pictured).
I think it’s obvious, I LOVE this tool. We got it before our wedding and used it to make photo booth props, guestbook pages, crayon boxes, door hangers for our out of town guests, stickers for a ton of stuff, envelopes for our photo booths, and vinyl decals for our favors. Now I use it for everyone else’s things and for fun.
Oh my god! I almost forgot! IT CUTS FABRIC!
So - if you quilt, and you want to make, say, an appliqué - you just need the fabric blade and some interfacing and you can make a whole host of IDENTICAL perfectly cut appliqués.
I too am interested in know if it could cut thicker vinyl since I use outdoor vinyl to re-cover motorcycle seats. What is the largest size vinyl (LxW) it can handle?
If you craft in any way shape or form, you want one of these. It will render your Cricut obsolete the first time you even turn it on. I have only used the older model, but I cannot reccomend it enough!
Our family has recently been getting into laser printing images onto vinyl for tee-shirt heat transfer decals.
We’ve been using a flat iron but were looking into the lower end heat presses…
Could a machine like this speed up the cutting out of the printed designs, or is it limited to 2d block shapes?
I’m thinking I could make digital cutting template for the machine at the same time I’m printing off the original?
I can see some impressive scrapbooking style results from some of the posts here, but I’m uncertain if it would be the right tool for the job.
To the posters asking about thick vinyl: Let me explain how the blade works on this machine.
The blade is in a plastic tube. There is a small white plastic dial on the edge of the tube and you adjust how much of the blade is visible using a plastic tool that comes with every blade. The tool ratchets the white plastic dial into or out of the tube, exposing more or less of the blade in increments that are numbered on the dial from 0-10, 0 being all the way hidden and 10 being all the way out.
When you cut anything, you choose what number to set your blade on based on the thickness of your material. Copy paper might be a 3, thin cardstock a 4, thick cardstock a 5. Cardboard/chipboard might be an 8.
There are two other cut settings to consider - speed and pressure. The machine will press harder or not as hard also depending on what you tell it. This is set in the software. If you are cutting copy paper, you don’t have to press that hard. A 25 might be fine with your blade at 3. But when you are cutting cardboard, you might want to put it up to 35 to really get in there with your blade set at 8. It takes some trial and error. The speed also matters - some designs tear if you go too fast (mostly things with angles) so you will go slower with sharp turns and faster with curves. Also a larger design with less intricate things can often be done faster than something tiny. And finally, the paper/material type matters for speed as well - some paper just tears more easily because it is more fibrous and you just need to go slower.
Why am I telling you all of this when all you care about is vinyl? Because of the last setting for all of this - Double Cut. Even if you have set all of your settings and you have tried and tried, sometimes you just can’t get something to cut out cleanly. Bazzill cardstock is like that for me - it’s just SO thick. So instead of ratcheting the blade and pressure up more and more, I leave it at 5/33, but tell the machine to cut everything twice by checking the DOUBLE CUT button. This follows the same track twice on every shape. It makes the cuts very cleanly, and it gets through the second half of the paper during that second pass.
For vinyl, you would likely have to have the blade pretty high and the pressure high, but also double cut. You may even have to cut it more than twice by NOT unloading it from your machine and cutting it AGAIN. It will go over the same paths EXACTLY if you do not unload the mat from your machine. Experimentation is the only way to find the exact settings for your material. When you find them, write them down. Different brands will have different settings, sometimes different COLORS of the same brand (with paper) have had different settings.
I found this post of someone cutting leather with the machine. Craftaholics Anonymous® | How to Cut Leather with Silhouette CAMEO They used similar settings to what I suggested - double cut, 10, high pressure. Leather and vinyl would be similar, so I think you could do it.
To the poster who wanted to know maximum size - there are two answers here. The width that the machine can cut 12". A standard mat is 12"x12" but a 12"x24" mat is available. This is the answer for all items requiring a mat (which is most items).
If you are cutting adhesive vinyl, it can come on a roll instead of a sheet, and does not need a mat BECAUSE IT HAS ITS OWN BACKING. The rollers get set differently and you feed the material directly into the machine. Therefore, it can cut up to 10’ on a roll of adhesive vinyl. If what you are cutting has its own backing like adhesive vinyl does, then you might be able to do it like that, otherwise, stick with the mat. If you don’t, you may wind up cutting the machine itself because the material is so thick and that is something you would not want to do.
Thanks! Very helpful - might have to do more research and wait to get it elsewhere.