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Trying to scribe a brick wall into styrene Journals/Blogs
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Prolific poster 1,550 posts Yaron Bandell ybandell Prolific poster 1,550 posts
Yaron Bandell ybandell

About a week ago I saw Rick Reimer's (On30guy) post here on MRH, where he is creating a wall of a brick building with his laser. I thought this must be possible with my Sillhouette Cameo die-cutter and a diamond tip scribe in styrene for HO scale.

Determined to fool around and try to see how well a low cost machine can scribe this in 0.010" styrene for HO scale, I set out last weekend and started drawing in the Silhouette Studio Designer. This is what I came up with:

l_design.png 

I put my diamond tip scribe in an old style Silhouette pen holder:

p_scribe.png 

and placed it in my Cameo loaded with some scrap styrene sheet. Pressed 'start cutting' and off we are, scribing into the evening:

 
And after about 15-20 minutes worth of scribing, this was the resulting brick wall:
 

_and_cut.png 

A close-up of the arch above the window opening shows that the cutter has some issues with very small details (like 0.010" x 0.001" lines, effectively a dot) being pounded into the thin styrene with force when lowering the diamond tip. To avoid this in the future I'll need to remove the little pieces of mortar line the cutter tried to create in between the bricks of the arch: an artifact of how I created the arches in the Studio designer. Since I still want to raise the brick arch I can re-cut the brick arch and glue it on top of the messed up arches I have now:

close-up.png 

A last picture shows the full wall next to the inspiration that Rick Reimer provided:

d_result.png 

Overall I think this was a pretty successful excercise where I learned yet again a lot more about the quirks of the Studio Designer application and the die cutter. Perhaps I'll cut three more simple brick walls based off of this design and attach them to some foam board, add in some home designed and cut windows to finish a test building. Maybe...

The screw up with the mortar lines and the arch is a good lesson learned and gave me the thought of experimenting with the diamond tip and letting it to punch rivets for me

-Yaron.

-Yaron.
Susquehanna Bridge Build | My Personal Website | Capitol Free-mo
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On30guy Prolific poster 2,625 posts
On30guy

I'm flattered

Glad you found my building interesting, also glad you went off on your own and re-created the image yourself and not whined that I wouldn't share the file. (long story)

I actually spent some time looking at the Cameo and the Silhouette, $200.00 vs. $5000.00 is defiantly something to think about, But I am VERY glad that I chose the way I did.

I'm looking forward to see what you next attempt will look like. I hope that your machine works well for you.

When it comes right down to it, it's not about who has the biggest, or fastest or most expensive equipment, it's what you can create with it,

 

good luck Yaron

Rick Reimer,

President, Ruphe and Tumbelle Railway Co.

Read my blogs
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John Buckley roadglide Frequent poster 568 posts
John Buckley roadglide

Thicker material

Interesting concept. But can you cut anything thicker thatn .010 styrene? Could you cut maybe .030 or .040?

Is the material fed in like an inkjet printer so it goes around a drum? Or is it a flat feed? That might make a difference in how well it would cut brick material.

John

John

COO, Johnstown & Maryville RR

 
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Yaron Bandell ybandell Prolific poster 1,550 posts
Yaron Bandell ybandell

die cutter vs laser

Rick, I think you made the right choice choosing the laser. As you can see, scribing with a die cutter is really not their strong point for making relief patterns in a material. A laser is just more suited for that. But you do the best you can with the tools you have and for a $200 tool, I think the result is not all that bad. Asking for the file would not have worked here anyways since I'm assuming you used a brick bitmap while for a die cutter it must be vector graphics. Further more I wouldn't have learned as much about the CAD program as I did. I had to draw it 3 times before the brick pattern was finally correct. The final time it took me about 20 minutes to draw it, and 3 hours to fix the compound paths of the horizontal and vertical mortar lines and layers around the arches. I wouldn't want to share my resulting file myself for varying reasons. One reason is that anyone with basic CAD skills can make this from scratch by counting bricks and using a standard brick and mortar line measurement. So it will look the same/similar in the end, yet there was own creativity and effort involved that hopefully brings the modeler to a higher level. Handing over the file basically equals to hitting the xerox button. Anyways, enough with the ranting babble, on top more CAD work. I have a 5 more bridge decks to cut and assemble.

-Yaron.
Susquehanna Bridge Build | My Personal Website | Capitol Free-mo
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Yaron Bandell ybandell Prolific poster 1,550 posts
Yaron Bandell ybandell

styrene thickness

John, yes I could feed thicker styrene. I think 0.040 can go into the machine. Just didn't have that thickness laying around Also with the limited downforce (230gpf) this machine or the cricut machines produces, you will end up with multiple passes to cut through the material when it is that thick. But scribing that thick should not be an issue at all. These die cutting machine are all flat feed machines and often use a sticky carrier to hold and cut the material on. If I'd have to do cuts in thinker material on a regular basis I'd go for a better machine with more downforce (750gpf+ or so). Mine is basically a freebie: the wife bought it for scrap booking and hardly uses it. I use it more and I get crap/made fun about: "you are using my machine more than I do!". I just nod and smile and buy more cutting blades

-Yaron.
Susquehanna Bridge Build | My Personal Website | Capitol Free-mo
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John Buckley roadglide Frequent poster 568 posts
John Buckley roadglide

Brick relief

Thanks Yaron. Even though I am thinking thicker material you would only need to scribe a very shallow cut to achieve the brick look. The thicker material would be more for sturdiness than anything else. And if the bricks were a little raggedy thats okay too. Older brick walls don't look pristine either. 

Keep experimenting. I would be interested in what you can achieve.

John

John

COO, Johnstown & Maryville RR

 
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Yaron Bandell ybandell Prolific poster 1,550 posts
Yaron Bandell ybandell

sturdier

John, absolutely correct. Right now the wall is super flimsy and I'd have to create a carrier sheet for it to be useful as a wall. The scribe force is strong enough to bend and dent the 0.010" styrene especially if using full force and multiple passes. Using it for cutting through or creating deep snap score lines, is a whole different ball game...

-Yaron.
Susquehanna Bridge Build | My Personal Website | Capitol Free-mo
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NevadaBlue Regular poster 103 posts
NevadaBlue

I'm impressed.

Nice work, I'm glad it seems to be working. I don't have my machine yet, but I want to experiment with thin foam, Sinatra or similar, for embossing brick and stone walls. I think it will work better than rigid styrene. 

From what I'm reading on other forums, .015 is about all you can expect to cut through with one of these machines.  Thicker material requires a score and snap it appears. 

The Cameo feeds sheets similar to the way a printer draws in paper. Rollers control the back and forth movement of the sheet. I ordered a Curio because it uses a 'base' or table that the machine moves back and forth, and it is designed for embossing as well as cutting. 

It should be here next Tuesday or Wednesday so I'll see how the thing really works. 

---

Ken
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