Cricut As A Modeling Tool

[oldcarfan]

Between 1973 and 1975 Porsche offered an option for the 911 called safety stripes. They were magnetic and non-reflective to supposedly eliminate reflections from the hood. I think they look cool and I've been wanting a 1/24th version for a long time. 

 I saved this line art with the idea of printing them as a decal someday. My wife has a Cricut and today she was working on a project in her office and it gave me an idea. I asked her to do a test for me with some scrap vinyl. She put the line art in her iPad, sized it and printed it out. This is the first attempt and it'll need a little adjustment, but I like it.

 Here's that first try shown on an old Monogram 1/24th curbside. This is regular Cricut vinyl which looks a little thick for scale to my eye so I'll be looking for something thinner, maybe some 3M vinyl or some decal paper? I may use the artwork as a stencil to spray the stripes. I may also get my wife to cut some other stencils too, she's pretty patient.

The Cricut vinyl would probably work well for R/C cars, too. You could probably reverse your artwork and put them inside a clear R/C body before painting. If you put them on the outside and they got scratched up you could print replacements and move on.

As far as the Cricut, it doesn't seem to do well with details and letters smaller than about 1/4 inch, but it did a good job on this size. Cricut says there's a fine point blade that should do more detailed work and I'll get one and give it a try. The machine can also cut thin plastic, but that's a little advanced for me right now. I can see how that feature might be handy for modeling projects.

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Edited Saturday at 02:18 AM by oldcarfan

[Ace-Garageguy]

Cool.

There have been several modelers on this forum who've posted really impressive scratch-building work using the Cricut to form parts.

Definitely worth a search...

[Chris V]

You could possibly use it to cut Tamiya masking sheets into masking templates and spray the graphics on…?

[stitchdup]

the cosplay folks have thinner vinyl sheets. they are slightly flexible too so should work on corners. i dont use it myself but the rc guys all seem to use them

[peter31a]

Have guys in our club that use Cricut but they use it to create masks not to use the vinyl itself for the graphics.

[Marley]

Porsche 911 is definitely one of the coolest looking cars ever!

[DJMar]

I've used a Cricut for both cutting masks and cutting solid color decals.

With something like these 911 designs, you could certainly do either. Masking frisket paper is readily available at most craft stores. As for decals, I've had good results using BMF's line of Expert's Choice paper, although there are a ton of other options out there. Expert's Choice has a limited color palette (white, clear, gray and gold) but I often just use the white film and airbrush the final color over the top before application.

One tip: be sure you use a brand new, fresh blade in the cutting head of the Cricut when using decal paper.

[oldcarfan]

36 minutes ago, DJMar said:

I've used a Cricut for both cutting masks and cutting solid color decals.

With something like these 911 designs, you could certainly do either. Masking frisket paper is readily available at most craft stores. As for decals, I've had good results using BMF's line of Expert's Choice paper, although there are a ton of other options out there. Expert's Choice has a limited color palette (white, clear, gray and gold) but I often just use the white film and airbrush the final color over the top before application.

One tip: be sure you use a brand new, fresh blade in the cutting head of the Cricut when using decal paper.

Thanks, I was wondering decal paper would work.

[DJMar]

2 hours ago, oldcarfan said:

Thanks, I was wondering decal paper would work.

Yep, use the light blue (light grip) mat for paper, and set your machine to cut regular paper (or light cardstock). Each machine is a little different, so I don't know the exact settings for the one you're using, but a standard pressure cut usually works just fine.