Brother Scan N Cut Hints & Tips

Mats

• don’t be too worried if in the early days you cut through your mat – you won’t be the first person to do it!  Selotape over the area on the back of the mat and you will be surprised at how long it will hold out – even through washing the mat!

• Clean your mat regularly to prolong its life.  There are a couple of ways you can do this.  A quick fix is with a baby wipe – use the cheap ones without baby lotion in them.  They can clean off excess dirt and lint.  If they are really grubby then I find the best way is to pop them in the sink and take a washing up brush with warm water and washing up liquid and give it a good old scrub.  Sounds bizarre I know but it cleans them a treat an will very often rejuvenate the tackiness.

• I have done this on a couple of occasions with my original mat that I am still using and that has been repaired due to cutting through it.  This mat has to be 4 months old and I use it almost every day.

• The cleaner your mat the better the cuts and the longer your blades will last.

• If your mat looses tackiness there are a few things you can do before binning it – first try washing it as above if no joy then either try spraying the back of your card stock with a re-positionable adhesive but please never spray the actual mat.  The mat has guides on that are read by the machine so you may interfere with these and you cannot guarantee not to get the spray on the side where the rollers travel and this will gum up your machine.  There is a glue that you can buy on Amazon and it comes from the USA which you mix with water and paint onto your mat which does an amazing restoration – I will do a clip of how to do this in the fullness of time.

BLADES

• If you have a problem cutting first check that there is no debris on around the blade tip.  Unscrew the blade holder and check inside and round the blade.

• Check the blade has no chips out of it – you will probably need to look through a magnifying glass to do this effectively.

• WARNING!  For obvious reasons extreme care should be taken when handling the blade – it might only be tiny but it is exceedingly sharp!

• Always keep a couple of spare new blades as a stand-by – accidents happen and always at an inopportune moment and there is nothing more frustrating that struggling to get a project finished and having to rely on a craft knife to finish off the job!

 CUTTING

• If you are experiencing problems such as snagging check your blade as above.

• If all appears in order check your blade depth and pressure.  Sometimes too much pressure can cause the blade to drag

• Are you cutting on too slow a speed?  For almost every cut I leave my speed set to 5 (obviously there are times when you need to reduce it) but as a rule of thumb I cut on 5 – again this gives you less drag and in general a cleaner cut

• If all else fails change your blade, it is probably dull and it isn’t worth wasting your good card stock on a dull blade!

 

• When cutting out layers – and the internal part of your design is very intricate you can experience problems if the outer part of your design is cut first.  Making sure you paper/card is well adhered to the mat will not necessarily do the trick unless you ensure that the basic shape is cut last – see the following photo
• 
• if the outer line of the heart was cut before the inside then it is more than likely that your paper/card will move during the  cutting process.  To avoid this happening bring the shape layer (in this instance the outer heart shape) to the front of the design to ensure that it cuts after the filigree work has cut.  The Brother Scan n Cut (like most other machines) cuts in the  order that you design – in the above photo I drew the heart first before the inserting the filigree shape (designed by Monica).  I therefore had to bring the heart shape to the front in Canvas before saving the final project.

• To do this it is very simple when in Canvas click on the shape, then click on the Edit button at the top, pull down to ‘Order’ and then choose ‘Bring to Front’  If your item is all one piece you will have to break it apart first in order to do this.  Don’t forget to group it all together when you have done this so save having three million ‘bits’ to try to manipulate when you open it on you machine!

I will add more to this page as and when I can.  If you can’t find an answer please feel free to email me your question and if I can help I will be more than happy to.