things that can damage your cricut mats!
Ok. So even though cricut mats are built to last long, certain habits of ours or certain practices can damage the mat early. And before that happens and you feel betrayed, i think it's better if you read on and keep in mind the following things that can damage your cricut mats.
1. CARELESS EXPERIMENTAL CUT SETTING.
This is bound to happen when you are in your beginning stage and you're just testing out what your machine can do. Test cutting is not something that we can escape. And even when you master your cricut you'll still have to make a lot of test cuts before you can figure out which cut setting will work out for the respective material.
What you can do to take care is,
Know your material. Find out its thickness and what category it falls into. And when you choose your cut setting pick a setting either the one that's already given in the default cut setting for that material, or choose the one closest to it. When your machine is new, chances are that the default setting will do.
But if you've been working with your machine for a while or if the default setting didn't work out for you and you have to choose a setting with more pressure, here's something that can help reduce the damages:
Stay close and watch the cut with one finger on the pause button of your cricut machine.
This way you can prevent the machine from causing too much damage and you can watch the cut closely.
Never go for pressure settings that are too much for your material. If the blade cut into your mat, there's nothing that can be done to fix it. It'll be a forever scar. And once your mat gets filled with these scars, it becomes hard to use anymore.
I've lost two mats in just two months during my experimental phase. It still breaks my heart to watch those mats just sitting there in the corner. Some of those damages could have been avoided had i taken a big more care. No use crying over spilt milk now.
2. BAD/CHEAP QUALITY MATERIAL.
For one of my products, i really needed lots of thick cardstock. So i dived into research mode, found and called alot of paper manufacturers and finally bought a set from one of them. I was actually pretty satisfied with my purchase, because not only did it cost less compared to so many others, but even the print looked pretty good too! It was a set of 300 GSM matte paper. So i set it on my mat and got it ready for the project.
To my horror, the paper couldn't even withstand the pressure from the cricut scoring stylus! Now if you haven't used a scoring stylus, you should know that the scoring stylus needs to make atleast three scores on the same spot on a normal paper to get a clean score. And my 300 GSM paper looked as if a bird had been pecking on it! I tried different cut settings, i changed the project, i tried everything because back then i didn't realise that it was the quality of the paper. But the worst part was getting the paper of my mat. It wouldn't come off! Even the print ink got smeared on my mat because of the damn paper! I had to soak the mat for quite sometime to try to clean the mat from all the debris! That brings me to my next tip,
3. DON'T USE DEBIT CARDS TO CLEAN YOUR MATS!
You see this 'hack' everywhere on the internet! And that hack is the reason why one of my standard mat is sitting in the corner of my workshop sadly watching, while the rest of the mats gets to do it's job.
Sometimes i wonder if i should name the blog to 'don't cricut like me' because of all the things that goes wrong with my projects.
Anyway, the problem with this 'hack' is that, when they say 'scrub gently' over your mat, you don't exactly know how much pressure is too much pressure! I actually thought i was scrubbing gently and that all that substance coming off was gunk. To my utter horror, turns out, i was 'scrubbing gently' all the glue away from my mat. Because after that cleaning, my mat never stuck even a 40 GSM paper on it!
Then how should you clean your mat? I'll explain it in another post. TBH, i need to make as many post as possible to get this habit going. Heh heh
Okay. So back to topic.
Wait something for you to note: whenever you are cleaning your mat, of you notice that a green substance is coming off ( if it's a standard mat) proceed with extreme caution. This could be the glue of your cricut mat and you'll tender the mat useless if you scrape it all off like i wisely did. Cough cough. Pardon the sarcasm!
Lastly
4. NOT USING THE MATS DESIGNATED FOR THE RESPECTIVE MATERIAL.
Allow me to explain why this matters. If you use a felt cloth on a strong grip mat, when you try to remove the felt from the mat, most of the felt will have stuck to the mat. This will make it difficult for you to clean it and you'll have to resort to washing the mat. Now if you go to point that I've just mentioned above, you'll know why that is not such a good idea. Now c imagine having to clean it much much often! That kind of cleaning is definitely not good for your mat.
So it's definitely better to invest in the right mat rather than having to replace one more often.
If during my countless unfortunately experiences, i do come across any more valuable cricut wisdom, i will let you know.
Until then if you're looking for more projects or details about the cricut machines
Go ahead and jump onto the portal links below
I'm a cricut crafter from the UAE and so i follow
Incase you're from UAE, I'd suggest you to follow the page of you don't want to miss out on exciting offers and product launches!
Incase you'd like to take a peek at my insta profile,
Here you go @scissors_tale.uae although you need to know that most of my cricut related experiments are shared mostly on my YouTube channel.
Comments
Post a Comment