The Craft Robo
The Craft Robo is a small (A4 size) cutter/plotter made by Graphtec, manufacturers of commercial plotters and cutters, specifically for the craft market. It can be attached, like a printer, to your computer, and will perform the same sort of functions as a craft die cutter plus dies. However it is much more versatile in that you can cut virtually any type and size of font that you have on your computer. Templates of other designs can be created from scratch or copied from, for example, clip art. These first need to be "traced" to give the Craft Robo a cutting guide to follow. The machine has its own (somewhat basic) software that allows you to do this (see below), and recently a more sophisticarted software package, Design Master has been developed, and this is now included with the machine. A plug-in for Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw is included and the machine can cut directly from these. Once you have a template you can cut it in any size or orientation (e.g. mirror image) that takes your fancy. It is also possible to import an image, trace round it, print the original via a standard printer, and finally insert the printed sheet into the Craft Robo which will then cut around your traced outlines. It can be used to cut three dimensional items such as bags and boxes, and an option exists to create scoring/folding lines as well as the cutting ones.
The Craft Robo will cut a variety of materials: paper, thin card, acetate, vinyl, etc., and a sampler pack is included with the machine. It has a blade with a set of caps which are used to adjust the cutting depth to accommodate different thicknesses, and very fine tuning of the cutting depth and speed can be done via its Controller software. It will also work as a basic plotter and a standard (slim line) pen or pencil can be used for this - a very useful function both for testing before you cut, and for writing messages with metallic or glitter pens in a variety of suitable fonts.
There are also two rebadged versions of the machine, Xyron's Wishblade and the QuicKutz Silhouette. These come with the Basic Robomaster and Controller software, but include extra software and features.
A larger version of the Robo is now available in the form of the Craft Robo Pro; this is a bigger, quieter and faster version which can cut thicker materials. The same basic software is shared by both models, but the controller for the Pro is more complex.