Cutting without the mat without losing your mind — Tip #11

Today, I’m going to show you how, before you even start the cut, you can tell if your machine is going to keep a grip on the material throughout the whole cut. You can actually roll the material all the way through the machine by using the arrow keys. (To start with tip #1, go here.)

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Tip #11: Use the arrow keys to roll the material through

I taught you in tip #10 how to use the arrow keys on your machine as we learned the riding on cardstock method of loading. You can even see it in the video on that post.

If you are worried about whether or not your material is going to stay under the rollers during the whole cut, you can use those arrow keys to roll all the way down to the bottom of the material. You can watch the edges of the material under the rollers as it moves in and out. It can set your mind at ease to see that it’s not going to start sliding all over the place.

Here’s what to keep in mind when you do this.

• Use the down arrow to move the material more toward the back of the machine.
• Don’t roll back too far, or the material will go all the way out the back of the machine. You certainly wouldn’t want that after you got a nice, straight load.
• Use the up arrow to move it back to the front of the machine.
• The machine will automatically stop at the load-in point. So as it’s moving back toward the front of the machine you don’t have to worry about it coming all the way out.
• You can push and hold the arrow key, or just go in small spurts. When you first push it, it will begin slowly and then speed up.

Another neat trick

There’s another thing you can do to predict whether or not your material is going to stay on course throughout the cut.

1. Draw a small square (1/2″) below the lowest part of your design on the page.
2. Load your material, but remove your blade from the machine.
3. Send that to cut. The machine will scroll all the way down to that square, “cut” it, then go back to the load-in point. If the material stayed under the rollers for that, there’s a 95% or better chance that it will during the actual cut. There’s a bit of wiggle room there, because the constant rolling in and out of the material can shift things ever so slightly.
4. Don’t unload your material. Just delete the square, put the blade back in and cut as normal.

This wont’ work on a Cameo 4, because it actually detects which tool is inserted. You can try these ideas instead–

• Go ahead and cut that square, because you should be doing a test cut anyway.
• Put in one of the adapters that came with your machine, but without a tool in it. It’s the metal strip on the back of the adapter
• Once the motor box has started moving, you can pause and take the tool out. You have to be quick, but it’s an idea.

Up Next

If your cut is extremely long (over 10 feet), there is still a small chance that the material will come out from under one of the rollers even if you do this test. That means you want to keep reading my tips to find out more about preventing a disaster cut.

Next time, I’ll help you learn to deal with material that’s curled from being on a roll.