[HN Gopher] Building road signs at home using a Cricut Machine
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Building road signs at home using a Cricut Machine
Author : annanay
Score : 33 points
Date : 2025-11-25 22:03 UTC (4 days ago)
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| downboots wrote:
| would cricut work for photoresist chemical etching as in the
| recent post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46020561 ?
| there's a4 size rolls of vynil or even kapton
| Karliss wrote:
| Do you mean as an optical mask for photo step of the process or
| directly as resist for chemical etching skipping the photo
| part?
|
| I have done both some home photochemical PCB etching and some
| vinyl cutting but not that specific combination.
|
| As photo mask it makes little sense in most cases. Just buying
| a transparency which can be used in an inkjet printer will
| likely be faster, easier and produce better resolution. These
| used to be widely available due to use in overhead projectors
| in schools and offices, but still shouldn't be too hard to get
| due to use when screen printing custom t-shirts.
|
| As a direct physical resist it makes a bit more sense since it
| would allow skipping one chemical bath and the photo transfer
| process. I have seen some people online having very good
| results of it for decorative etches with moderate size details
| on thicker metal parts and glass. But I am somewhat skeptical
| about it withstanding full depth cutting of very fine grids
| with high pressure circulation like the one demonstrated in
| Applied Science video. It will likely come down to etching
| depth (is it a metal sheet 0.2-1mm or the copper layer on PCB
| 0.035mm or decorative surface etch), how aggressive your liquid
| circulation is, type of vinyl and it's adhesive (ones designed
| for outdoor use might be more resistant to liquid for longer),
| size of details. With concentrated enough etching liquid
| allowing fast etches, mild agitation and wide enough lines
| (>1mm) the vinyl should hold up.
|
| In the worst case if adhesion during etching turns out to be a
| problem it should still be possible to use the vinyl as stencil
| while painting on whatever paint to be used as resist. This
| should still be much faster than doing photo step.
|
| One of the good parts of photochemical manufacturing is that
| you can make something like a mesh with hundreds of tiny holes
| that would be impractical with any other approach. It doesn't
| matter how complex the pattern is. While you might be able to
| cut such patterns on vinyl cutter worst case by leaving machine
| to work for few hours, weeding it might be a big problem. After
| cutting you need to manually peel half of image you don't want
| (called weeding). For simple large shapes it's not a big deal
| but for complex cuts that have a lot of holes or maze like
| structure it can be quite time consuming. There are industrial
| cutters that can do the weeding automatically, but I don't
| think any hobby level machines like Cricut have this feature.
|
| If you have something like a mesh and you are removing mesh
| part leaving only the tiny dots or pattern with thin long
| unsupported lines (like a PCB), you need to be very careful to
| avoid accidentally nudging and separating the small details.
| This can happen during weeding, transfer to target material and
| even cutting (for some types of materials). The last one was
| major problem when I tried cutting copper tape directly,
| original backing tape was just too slippery, less of a problem
| for suitable vinyl.
|
| None of that gives you hard answer, but I hope my experience
| was of some use to you.
| butvacuum wrote:
| I honestly expect transparency film to survive as a product
| long past when people have forgotten why it's A4 or Letter
| sized. People are already forgetting why it's called
| "transparency."
|
| Always a demand for the occasional stack of identical, thin,
| flexible, transparent sheets of plastic.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| Might want to try this font
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Gothic
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Used to live near the highway department's sign shop for the
| area. When they had a job opening, they'd make up a road sign and
| put it up next to the street outside the shop. Which made
| complete sense but did seem like overkill. Guess you go with the
| resources you have and know.
| charlie-83 wrote:
| These are cool. For anyone in the market for a vinyl cutter I
| would recommend against Cricut though. Very cloud-subscription-
| user-hostile software that tried to limit the number of times you
| could use the machine you bought unless you had a subscription. I
| have a silhouette and control it with a plugin for inkscape and
| its great.
| awinter-py wrote:
| what's good? have been shopping for something to cut medium EVA
| sheets. seems like brother scan N cut is most likely to work
| with SVGs + linux, but can't handle anything past 2mm. siser
| juliet + silhouette get recommended too but I think both rely
| on proprietary software
|
| laser cutters seem better on the software side, but more
| expensive, less safe? (and also not safe at all for vinyl)
| charlie-83 wrote:
| The silhouette software is proprietary but I am using Linux +
| inkscape + https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette
| which works perfectly (except I can't get the Bluetooth to
| work but that's probably a me issue). It's less user-friendly
| (but more power-user friendly) than the official software and
| doesn't have all the templates and ready-made designs but
| that isn't a problem for me.
|
| I would like to get a laser cutter at some point but that's a
| completely different beast. Don't get a cheap ali-express one
| that is not enclosed if you value your eyes. You will also
| need ventilation for a lot of materials if you value your
| lungs. In comparison, my silhouette is a simple thing I can
| move around easily. It's also able to plotting, engraving,
| embossing and foiling with the right add-ons
| awinter-py wrote:
| whoa thanks for the link to inkscape-silhouette, didn't
| know about this
| jdboyd wrote:
| I like my Silhouette Cameo, which I use from Linux and
| Windows with Inkscape + the silhouette plugin. However, the
| maximum thickness that the latest machine can cut is 2mm, and
| it seems that is also the maximum thickness that the Circuit
| Maker 3 can handle. So, you probably do want a laser if you
| want thicker eva than that. In my book, the best choice is
| probably both.
| imp0cat wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQyvCix8sQI xTool M1
| jdboyd wrote:
| I would probably prefer the laser and the pen/knife
| machine to be separate, and for the price that seems like
| it would be reasonable to accommodate. However, this is a
| nice looking machine and the Hot Foil Pen is interesting.
| c420 wrote:
| I realize that op asked for a Linux solution. But for those
| on Windows, Adobe Illustrator with the $30 Silhouette plug in
| on a Silhouette 4 worked close to as well as the dedicated
| software and hardware I used professionally once everything
| was dialed in.
| Animats wrote:
| TechShop used to use large HP plotters repurposed as vinyl
| cutters. Unfortunately, HP's product now comes with overpriced
| "cloud-based software."[1]
|
| [1] https://uscutter.com/hp-latex-54-basic-plus-cutting-
| solution...
| teeray wrote:
| Interesting, but I was hoping for applying vinyl to actual
| retroreflective sign blanks for private road use.
| jonah wrote:
| Yup. First thing I did was search for "reflective" in the
| article.
|
| These just look like signs. (But cool nonetheless.)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "Bear Crossing" needs rounded corners--the black outline and the
| cutout shape of the sign itself.
|
| Otherwise, super cool.
| FractalParadigm wrote:
| It's pretty easy to accomplish the same using virtually _any_ 3D
| printer, even something as simple as an Ender 3 can be set to
| pause at a set layer in GCODE where the filament can manually be
| changed to the next desired colour. Realistically, this is only
| practical for things like signage, where you start with the base
| colour (such as yellow or green) then switch to the next for text
| and details, and if done properly with compatible materials, can
| look incredibly well-done.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes. I'm looking for a Linux program that can turn SVG into
| signs like that (STL). Because doing it manually is a lot of
| work.
|
| (Maybe it is easy to do in OpenSCAD?)
| fragmede wrote:
| Hueforge has an AppImage. I'm on mac so I don't know how well
| that runs, but it's what you're looking for.
| netsharc wrote:
| It's not this story then? https://thelandmag.com/richard-ankrom-
| guerrilla-public-servi...
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