How-Tuesday: Kirigami with the Craft ROBO

2009-01-06T16:10:00-05:00

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The Craft ROBO is a machine that lets you cut and score paper with precision and repetition. This is really handy if you're into scrapbooking or want to make shipping boxes, envelopes or promos for your Etsy shop. Perhaps you want to take it to the next level to create unique paper sculptures, pop-up books or custom vinyl stickers.

Using the machine is like hooking up a printer to your computer, but instead of printing ink, the Craft ROBO has a tiny little sharp knife that it can control and move around to cut through or just slightly graze paper.

Jeff Rutzky has been creating incredible kirigami (origami with cuts) with the Craft ROBO. He joined us at Etsy Labs to give us a tutorial on this wonderful bread-box sized machine.

To make the kirigami box in the video, you'll need to have Adobe Illustrator (AI) on your computer and you'll have to install the AI plugin. You can also use the software that comes with the Craft ROBO, but this project involves a few different type of cuts which is best done on AI.

Download the pattern. (Be forewarned! This is a mighty large zip file of documents!) Load it into AI and turn off the layers with cutting lines and print out the graphics and registration marks. Load your printed sheet onto the plastic carrier which protects the machine from its own blade. Then go into the cut/plot interface and set it to stop between each layer. That way you can change the blade out to go from scoring to cutting.

You can also do this project with an Exacto knife and a boning tool for scoring, but the beauty of the Craft ROBO is that, well, the machine does the work for you perfectly!

Watch more how-to videos and check out these how-to projects too!

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How-Tuesday: Kirigami with the Craft ROBO