Anybody got advice on vinyl cutters?

McCracken

McCracken

Logan Can't See This
Joined
Jul 9, 2005
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With your mom at a nice seafood dinner
I'm thinking I'd like to get my 12yo a vinyl cutter. She's super artsy and loves stuff like this. I see that Cricut makes them but within 5 minutes of research I quickly learned there's a lot of options. Does she need a professional model? Probably not but a few hundred dollars seems like a middle of the road option. Anybody have any experience with these?
 
My wife has the Cricut Explore Air 2. Uses it all the time and it’s held up well. Probably have three years of use on it so far. I’ll definitely be getting her another one if this one ever goes down.

Lots of cool things you can do with paper too. This is a gift card holder from my birthday last year.




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I've got a china 3 footer that is ok for truck lettering but a pain to set up and to use. I've got a friend with a cricut and it's much more user friendly--definitely the way to go. . No need to go super large either
 
Agree with Braxton - the crickets are easy and user friendly wife has had a few.

We’ve also done the big China cutter and then the big high end …skip the middle. Go cricket if it takes off drop coin
 
Bought my wife a Cricut 2 like 6 years ago still works good never really had issues with it. We did end up buying the cricut iron square for pressing vinyl on shirts
 
Ron said:
Agree with Braxton - the crickets are easy and user friendly wife has had a few.

We’ve also done the big China cutter and then the big high end …skip the middle. Go cricket if it takes off drop coin
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Agree w this.
Wife has a Circuit and our 12 yo uses it all the time now.
Very simple to use. Get the Air 2 or whatever is a top-ish model. What you're paying for is flexibility is the heads, what it can cut etc, and die options
 
I started off a couple years ago with a little Cricut Joy, made some stickers and started selling them. Then bought a Cricut Maker to do bigger ones. Then bought a Explore 3 to add capacity. Now I upgraded to a Silhouette Cameo 4 Pro and don't even use the Cricuts any more. If you are interested, I'll give you a good deal on the old Maker. It is just sitting here and I'll probably never use it since I have the Explore as my backup and have a new Roland coming in soon for extra capacity.

I also have a larger format Vevor Chinesium one that I used for a while before I got the Cameo, I'm going to sell that one too but it is way less user friendly.
 
I bought my wife a Silhouette Cameo a few years ago. Honestly, I use it more than she does as she isn't really computer literate. I'm not doing anything really fancy but it has done the job for what I have thrown at it.
 
Wife has a Crikut Explore Aire and loves it. I like it too. Its simple and works well. Bought it used for a good deal.
 
Blaze said:
I started off a couple years ago with a little Cricut Joy, made some stickers and started selling them. Then bought a Cricut Maker to do bigger ones. Then bought a Explore 3 to add capacity. Now I upgraded to a Silhouette Cameo 4 Pro and don't even use the Cricuts any more. If you are interested, I'll give you a good deal on the old Maker. It is just sitting here and I'll probably never use it since I have the Explore as my backup and have a new Roland coming in soon for extra capacity.

I also have a larger format Vevor Chinesium one that I used for a while before I got the Cameo, I'm going to sell that one too but it is way less user friendly.
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Thanks! Let me do some research on it so I know what's up. Shoot me a PM with what you would need for it.
 
When I got mine, the two name brands to choose from were Cricut and Silhouette, unless you were going with a commercial grade cutter. Back then, the Cricut required you to purchase the graphics from them and you had no way of converting an existing image you had into their system. Since I was big into graphic arts, I went with Silhouette. Use it all the time for stuff. I can design whatever I want in Illustrator and then scan it into Silhouette to cut it out of vinyl, card stock, etc.
 
My wife has launched an arts and crafts business at least 3 times now. She has the cricut, she has silhouette, she has a vevor and the last time she absolutely had to have a Roland GS-24. The most user friendly and platform she used the most and still uses for personal stuff is her Silhouette Cameo set up.
 
I have a Silhouette Cameo. It was easy enough to figure out that even I could do it, and I chose it over the Cricut because the Cricut supposedly needs special vinyl if you want to cut it without the backing mat. A lot of my decals are several feet long so I didn't want the extra expense of special vinyl or extra long mats or whatever.

Duane
 
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