SVG Prep

Quick Reference Chart

Treat presets as starting points. Machines, blades, and even different brands of "the same" material vary, so the test-cut habit described below matters more than memorizing exact numbers.

Know Your Blades

The fine-point blade (gold housing) is the everyday blade — vinyl, HTV, cardstock, sticker paper, and paper all use it. The deep-point blade (black housing) has a steeper 60° angle for thicker, denser materials like magnet sheets, craft foam, and some faux leathers. On the Maker, the rotary blade rolls through fabric and felt without dragging, and the knife blade makes many progressively deeper passes through chipboard, basswood, and matboard up to about 2.4 mm thick.

Blades and housings are matched sets — a deep-point blade only fits its own black housing. If Design Space asks for a blade you don't own, changing the material setting to something your blade can cut is usually the wrong fix; the angle and depth genuinely matter.

Kiss Cut vs. Full Cut

A kiss cut slices through the vinyl or sticker layer but leaves the paper backing intact — that's what you want for adhesive vinyl, HTV, and peel-able stickers, because the backing holds everything in place for weeding and transfer. A full cut (die cut) goes through the backing too, producing loose finished pieces. If your stickers are falling off the backing, your setting is cutting too deep; if you can't peel them at all, it's too shallow. Adjust one notch of pressure at a time, or pick a lighter/heavier material preset.

Pick the Right Mat

Mat grip strength matters as much as blade choice. Blue (light grip) suits paper, sticker paper, and printable vinyl — a green mat will tear those on removal. Green (standard) is the workhorse for vinyl, HTV, and cardstock. Purple (strong grip) holds thick, rigid materials like chipboard and leather. Pink (fabric) is engineered for the rotary blade and fabric fibers.

A too-new sticky mat can be as much of a problem as a worn-out one: brand-new green mats sometimes grab cardstock so hard it delaminates. Pressing a clean cotton t-shirt onto a fresh mat once knocks the tack down to a usable level.

Always Run a Test Cut

Before committing a full sheet of material, cut a small shape — a 1-inch circle with a 0.5-inch circle inside it works well — in a corner of the material. Check three things: the shape weeds cleanly, the backing isn't scored through, and curves are smooth rather than chattery. Thirty seconds of test cutting saves entire sheets of glitter vinyl, which is not cheap.

Fixing Incomplete Cuts

When the blade doesn't cut all the way through, work through causes in this order: debris wrapped around the blade (pop it out of the housing and check — a tiny sliver of vinyl around the tip is incredibly common), a dull blade, insufficient pressure for that specific brand of material, or a mat so worn the material shifts mid-cut. If a cut finishes but one region didn't cut, don't unload the mat — keeping it loaded preserves alignment, and pressing Go again runs the exact same cut over the same lines.

Fixing Tearing and Dragging

Tearing on fine detail usually means a dull blade or a design with detail too small for the material — intricate script below about half an inch tall tears easily in glitter HTV no matter how good the blade is. Dragging (the blade pulling material up as it turns corners) points to a mat that isn't holding firmly enough, or cut lines so dense the material gets perforated and loses strength. Simplifying the design is often the honest fix: fewer, cleaner paths cut better than a noisy auto-trace with hundreds of tiny jagged nodes.

Cardstock: Clean Corners Without Tearing

Cardstock quality varies more than any other craft material. Cheap cardstock has short fibers that tear at corners regardless of settings; solid-core cardstock cuts noticeably cleaner. If corners lift or tear: dedicate a sharp blade to paper, use the "Intricate cuts" setting for detailed designs (it slows the machine down), and burnish the sheet firmly onto the mat with a brayer before cutting so it can't shift.

Maker Knife Blade Projects

Knife blade cuts (chipboard, basswood, matboard) follow different rules: tape all four edges of the material to a strong-grip mat, slide the white star wheels on the roller bar all the way to one side so they don't track dents across your material, and expect the cut to take multiple passes — sometimes 10 or more for 2 mm chipboard. Don't leave the machine unattended on the first pass; if the material shifts, stopping early saves the blade.

When to Replace Blades

There's no fixed schedule — it depends entirely on what you cut. Signs it's time: vinyl that suddenly needs two passes when one used to work, fuzzy edges on cardstock, or fine details lifting during the cut. A fine-point blade is a consumable, and a fresh one fixes a surprising share of "my machine is broken" problems. Cleaning helps too: stick the blade tip gently into a ball of aluminum foil a few times to clear adhesive buildup between replacements.