by Sandy McCauley | Oct 14, 2013 | Craft Plastic, Engraving, PETG, Zing
For those of you who’ve been waiting for the KNK Zings and 24″ Maxx Airs to be back in stock, they finally are! This also applies to the UK web site. For those living in Canada, we expect them to be available some time next week. If you’re interested, in purchasing, I’m an affiliate seller with KNK USA and this is the link to use: http://knkusa.com/?ap_id=skhaley
Now for the engraving project:
Last Friday, I made a video for a KNK Zing owner who needed to engrave a sheet of dog tags on her Zing. And then repeat and repeat. So, I knew she needed some kind of template set up so that she could position the dog tags on the template and then be able to engrave all them at one time with perfect alignment. I didn’t have any metal dog tags, so I used some stars cut out of craft plastic. It turned out really well and so did her dog tags, apparently. So here’s the video if you’re interested in how this works:
Engraving on the KNK Zing
And here’s a closeup of the engraving done with the KNK engraver:
To check out the engraver, use the this link and then click on Accessories at the top. The engraver can be found under under any of the top three Accessories links.
Please let me know if you have any questions!
by Sandy McCauley | Nov 11, 2011 | Make The Cut, Uncategorized, Zing
The pre-ordered Zings began shipping yesterday and the on-line user manual is now available for interactive viewing and downloading! Note that the manual is a first draft and I plan to make updates regularly as new video links are added, along with rewrites of certain sections, additions of a trouble shooting section and glossary, and basic corrections to grammar and typos! : )
Here’s the link: Zing with Make The Cut User Manual
Even if you haven’t ordered the Zing, this manual also covers all of the functions in Make The Cut and will be updated as new versions of MTC are released. You’ll see that this program has an incredible amount of designing and editing functionality now available! It’s an incredible program for only $58.36! MTC will cut to a long list of cutters including all models of Klic-N-Kut, Pazzles, Gazelle, Craft Robo, Silhouette, and more. You can purchase Make The Cut here at my store.
While all of the pre-ordered Zings sold out, there will be more Zings arriving at the end of the month! So, be sure to check out this incredible new cutter and let me know if you need a recommended dealer to contact!
by Sandy McCauley | Aug 8, 2011 | AI Files, Converting File Formats, Free Files, Free Videos, Importing, KNK, Make The Cut, MTC, Notes, Videos, Zing
Ready for some more Make The Cut! (MTC) features? Here are three more all related to having more files available and how easy it is to get them into MTC for cutting:
Reason #4: Make The Cut! will import SVG files and several other formats not available for import into KNK Studio.
SVG files are readily available on the Internet, both from web stores selling cutting files but also free at many blogs and user forums. MTC will also import SCUT files (created in Sure Cuts A Lot) and the latest AI formats. While KNK Studio does offer a wide range of file import filters, unfortunately SVG and SCUT are not included. Further, AI files must be version 8 in order to easily edited. Newer versions of AI can be troublesome in KNK, but not in MTC!
It’s very simple to import SVG files: just look for the icon at the top of the screen:
Reason #5: Make The Cut! comes with over 4500 free cutting files uploaded by users!
It’s a simple click to bring up a search window where you can not only search by category, date, and tag word, but also by an ID indicating which user uploaded the file! Further, this is a growing database as more and more MTC owners freely share their designs with other owners. Here’s a video to see how this works:
MTC On-Line Gallery
Reason #6: You can copy and paste images, text, and notes directly from KNK Studio to Make The Cut!
This one is extremely important because the new KNK Zing will come with Make The Cut! software and I know that KNK owners will want to be able to cut their existing .knk files as well as continue using KNK Studio for some of the designing functions they’ve already been using for years. No problem! The copy and paste is very simple to do.
I was especially happy to see that you can also continue using those 1300 fonts that came on your KNK Clipart and Fonts CD and copy/paste text you’ve just typed directly over to MTC, even though MTC cannot install these particular font formats. Further, if you use the Notes function in KNK Studio, you can also copy/paste this text into a similar Notes function in MTC.
Here’s a video showing how easily these three copy/paste situations work:
Converting From .KNK to .MTC
Make The Cut! uses a layers function to separate images for cutting. This would be used any time you have different colors in a KNK file and specifically need to keep those colors separated fur cutting. For example, a fold-up project with scoring lines could be one instance in which you would want some parts of an image put into a different layer from the rest. Another would be a paper piecing project where one would put all of the images to be cut from each color of cardstock onto separate layers. There could be several ways to do this when converting from KNK to MTC, but here’s my initial recommended method:
Converting A Multi-Color KNK File to MTC
Thanks for reading! Be sure to check out my next post in a few days when I’ll present three designing features in Make The Cut! that will make you cry out, “Wow!”
MTC is sold for $58.36 in my store.
by Sandy McCauley | Jul 15, 2011 | Auto-Tracing, KNK, Make The Cut, Print and Cut, Vectorizing, Zing
I just LOVE a new cutter! And this one is going to rock the cutting world! The price of $399 is just amaZING for a machine that has 750g of cutting force, along with a 14″ wide cutting range. Just like with our other KNK’s, you can insert 15″ wide rolled materials, such as vinyl, for cutting and there will be a cutting mat included for cutting 12″ x 12″ cardstock or other materials such as fabric, thin chipboard, craft plastic, rhinestone template material, felt, fun foam, mylar, duralar, posterboard, and most of the other materials you see in the photo gallery here:
30 Plus Materials To Cut on A KNK
The only materials I show in that photo album that the Zing probably won’t handle are styrene and mat board. But I’ll give a full report once I have a Zing prototype of my own to test… fingers crossed for that to happen in the second half of August.
As you can see from the link at the new Zing home page, the compact siZING is another great feature! This KNK will be far easier to transport and I look forward to that.
Make The Cut is proving to be a popular software for the existing KNK owners, as well. The Print and Cut function is so much faster and easier to use with the automatic movement of the laser light to within about 1/4″ of each printed mark, thus requiring just a tweaking of movement to align perfectly. I’m also looking forward to the improved auto-tracing function which has always allowed previews of the trace before accepting the results. A demo video of the upcoming new version shows additional functionality with separate tabs to use when choosing the best best vectoriZING method based on the imported raster image.
For those who already own and use KNK Studio, a copy/paste function will be added so that existing KNK files can easily be moved to MTC for cutting to the Zing.
All in all, a lot to look forward to in the upcoming months! So, keep checking for more information and I will be reporting the latest, as I receive it.
