Silhouette / Cricut Engraving Template / Jig

This is a 3d printed jig designed to be used with Silhouette / Cricut style machines that have an engraving / etching tool installed. I bought a “Etching/Engraving Tool Kit” by Zoom Precision, When learning to use the tool i had the issue of the blanks moving around and aligning the blanks perfectly with the location i was placing the design at in the software. 

This is designed to solve a few issues. 

1. place blanks in the same location on the mat everytime
2. Keep blanks from rotating or sliding during a cut job.
3. Provide more surface area for my cutting mat to hold the blanks in place.
4. Figure out where i should place my design in the software and making sure that the place where my design is place is where my machine would cut at and not overshoot, be too far in any direction. 

Basically you print the 3d model, the corner with the Star, is going to be placed at the Upper Left of your cutting mat, or whatever your machine / software's 0X, and 0Y coordinates are. blanks can then be put into the jig and and fed into your machine, because the jig itself is thin, it shouldn't have any problems being fed in attached to your cutting mat. 

to ensure the jig would not move around i used some tape (duct tape in my case) to hold it to the mat, at the 0,0 point so there would be no movement during cutting or between job when removing and placing new blanks. 

If you have problems with your cutting mat not providing enough adhesion to hold your blank from rotating, you can place duct tape on the bottom side, then tape it to the mat. this will leave duct tape exposed in the slots for your blanks. i found that duct tape doesn't grip too much or too little and can be used for multiple jobs without replacing it. this will also catch any small debris and it will stick to the duct tape instead of your cutting mat. 

The Template PNG can be saved from here and just imported into Silhouette Studio or Whatever design software your machine uses, just make sure it's set to 8in H x 3in W and placed at 0,0 to match where the jig is on your cutting mat. then you'll have a visual representation of where you need to place your design and where the blank is in both the software and on the cutting mat. 

PLEASE NOTE: The Heart shaped tag, does not match the cutout 100% exactly. I didn't scan it in you make sure it was a complete matched but instead used the heart shape built into tinkercad. because of that the sides on the bottom are more curved out then the tag itself in real life so just be aware that you'll need to leave a bit more space. 

I hope you enjoy and i hope this takes all the guesswork of where you need to place your design and make it easy and repeatable enough to get perfect alignment every time.