Posted by superjoy on December 9th, 2009 in Cricut, crafting

Regular Blade Settings & Materials It Can Cut:

The Regular Blade Housing that comes with the Cricut is Green, unless you have a colored Cricut then it is most likely the color of your machine.

Here’s a setting that works for me when I cut vinyl:

Speed set to 3, Pressure set to 3 and my Blade at 4.

(following info is from Cricut)
The Cricut is really just a paper/cardstock cutter. A range of vellum to Bazzill is very safe. Other products may be tried, both of the thinner or thicker variety, but results are not guaranteed. In fact, using something extreme will most likely void the warranty. We don’t say that to scare you away from experimenting, but there are just too many materials out there to know what the results would be.

That said, the basic guidelines are that the material (paper or otherwise) needs to be stiff and firm enough for the blade to drag through it. So a more stretchy fabric would probably not work, unless it had Wonder-Under or something to keep it in place. However, we’ve had good results with vinyl types of materials, as long as they aren’t too thick (.05 mm or less).

Although it’s built to cut paper-based materials, the Cricut has many settings onboard that allow for paper-like products to be cut, including thinner Mylar or vinyls. You can reduce the pressure applied, the blade depth and the speed. It may take a bit of experimenting (small samples!) to make sure it’s set right, but that’s not very hard. Since some of these products are fairly costly, I’d suggest careful experimentation first, of course.

Pages 14 and 15 in your Cricut user manual address the various recommended settings for blade length, speed, and pressure settings to use while cutting various types of paper.

Here are some recommended paper settings to try:

Deep Cut Blade Settings:

The deep cut blade is recommended for:

Magnet (0.035″/0.80mm thick) with the recommended settings of
Speed 3 (medium)
Pressure 5 (max)
Depth 6
Multi Cut 4

Chipboard (0.059″/1.50mm thick) with the recommended settings of
Speed 3 (medium)
Pressure 4 (high)
Depth 6
Multi Cut 5

Stamp (0.0415″/1.05mm thick) with the recommended settings of
Speed 3 (medium)
Pressure 4(high)
Depth 4.6
Multi Cut 1

Link to Cricut Blades Compared

Remember to REMOVE THE RUBBER ENDED TIP before using your new blade!!! That tip is covering the blade. The rounded end goes up into the housing. When you push down that little plunger at the top, the magnet inside will pull the rounded end securely into the housing.