Thanks.
Yeah, Have used the silhouette Cameo 1 in the past but never have been successful in getting decent cuts with it.
A few years ago Brother introduced the ScannCut CM550 in SA and my wife and I Decided to get one after seeing a demo at a local hobby expo.
There is also a lot more support for Brother products than silhouette products currently in SA.
For us it was the best move ever. Find it more user friendly than the Cameo 1 at that stage, and was getting much better cuts on vinyl and masking tape.
We recently upgraded to newer Scanncut SDX1200(Sdx125 in the states) which is much better than the old CM550. My wife uses to cut vinyl as a small business for herself
A nice feature I have used in the past is the scanning option build it in the cutter, Scan something and cut directly. Also a nice feature is that it can scan in the mat with your cutting material and you can place your cuts exactly where you want them.
Brother has Canvas Workspace to design on the PC, But I went aftermarket and found Sure cuts a Lot(SCAL). A lot more user friendly than the brother software and it supports various cutters including silhouette. The only drawback for the Brother machines is that the cuts must be saved on a USB stick, or to cut send directly to the cutter via WIFI you must use Canvas workspace.
With SCAL can most of the designs, but when I wanted to some very complicated I had to use Inkscape, save as a SVG and then import to SCAL. Earlier this year I found Affinity Designer and now replaced Inkscape with this software and doing most of my designs in there and then send to SCAL to finish up. SCAL is great for what my wife does on her side.
