Blue Tiles

Here it is; the first printed test. A lot of you have been asking for a progress update, so here it is. For a long while, there really wasn’t anything to report, but things got to a point where they quickly moved along.

Here, you see a printed test for the roof tiles, which means that I’ve moved onto doing the graphics in Photoshop. In total, there are 71 printable pages, and a grand total of 693 model pieces. The model also had to be scaled down just a tad, so it will not be as large as originally estimated.

Now for some Craft Robo updates. First off is the problem I was having with the machine both reading the registration marks very slowly and making a loud, grinding sound. It turns out that there’s nothing wrong. Whew! It seems that the last cutting speed is retained in the machine’s memory, and is the speed it automatically starts out with. As for the sound, the slower the blade moves, the louder the machine gets. It can be down right scary at times, but it’s supposed to do that.

Second, I will not be able to offer cutting templates for the models. It’s unfortunate, but unavoidable. The registration marks have to fit within a narrow reading area of the paper, and all of the model parts have to fit within the registration marks. That means the parts would have to be either scaled down significantly, or broken into multiple parts (more so than they already are). That translates into a lot of wasted paper space and many, many extra printed sheets. It’s just not practical.

Since I am using the Craft Robo Illustrator plug-in, I don’t see a way to convert the data into the type of cutting file needed by the Craft Robo program. I could freehand all of the cutting lines in the program itself, but that would take a lot of time and work that I’m not inclined to do.

Testing a few different paper mediums, the Craft Robo does not cut very well. There simply are too many sharp corners that get crumpled, torn, and lifted from the carrier sheet. I’ve tried regular bond paper, thin card stock, and thick card stock, and they all failed. The blame lies in the type of paper used (I much prefer bond paper), the machine’s limitations, and (mostly) my model designs.

In the end, we’re all stuck cutting the pieces out by hand. I’ll try to use the machine to cut out some of the tedious, delicate parts, but everything else will have to be done the old-fashioned way.

Although I bought the Craft Robo specifically for aiding me in creating my paper models, it was still a good investment. I’m always designing something new that needs to be cut out. Perhaps I’ll design some paper crafts that are better suited for the machine.