Brother solved my problem! At PIF Camp we attempted to hack the pen holder to work with electronink conductive ink pen…. and failed. Details are in the 28 September 2015 blog post.   Little did I know that Brother was working on a solution!     I haven’t had a chance to test this adapter with other pens yet. […]

  A menu item on the Brother ScanNCut is seam allowance. This setting creates a margin around the image being cut. This measurement is of particular importance when designing and cutting conductive fabrics.     As you can see in the below image the pen draws the item to be cut as well as the margin around the item cut. […]

  The Brother ScanNCut mats have an adhesive application already applied to the surface allowing fabrics and papers to be securely held in place while using the machine.   Although the adhesive is low tack it attracts every loose fiber and hair to its surface making it difficult to have a clean cut without causing woven fabrics to fray and […]

  In hopes of resolving the low tack mat adhesive holding the conductive fabric in place while cutting a speaker coil we tried the High Tack Adhesive Support Sheet included with the kit.   This product did hold the conductive fabric in place during cutting of a basic rectangular shape, but the fabric trace needed for the circuit was very […]

  The Brother ScanNCut uses a separate pen holder with specific sized felt tip ink pens to draw your designs. I want to plot electronic traces, but Brother doesn’t manufacture conductive ink pen cartridges so Denis and I began to hack together a solution.   First we took apart an existing pen holder and cleaned both the felt tip and […]

  While at PIF Camp in Trenta Slovenia we tested the Brother ScanNCut with Statex conductive fabric to make eTextile speakers.   Denis began the project by drawing samples of the coils on his computer. Next we fused an iron on adhesive, Pellon Heat Bond, to one side of the conductive fabric.     Scanning the coil samples into the […]

  Brother ScanNCut CM600 straight out of the box with power adapter, blade holder, stylus and removal tool.     Opening the carriage.     Instruction booklet for Quilting techniques in multiple languages.     Touchscreen menu to select language preferences.       Touchscreen menu display for selecting the print/cut area. Use the stylus to designate area by dragging […]

  First I draw my circuit with pen and paper.     Scan it into the Brother ScanNCut using Scan to Cut Data.     Leave it in place on the cutting mat.     Using the ScanNCut pen attachment draw the circuit on the same piece of paper and check for accuracy against your original image.     I […]

  Brother ScanNCut was a very generous sponsor for Ljudmila’s PIF Hacker Camp by sending two ScanNCut machines for our use!   While at Ljudmila I began by testing the machine with a simple LED circuit. Using a black sharpie I drew the positive and negative conductive traces, scanned this image into the machine, and after the U-shaped piece was […]

  Finalizing settings on the Brother ScanNCut to work with conductive fabrics from Statex. While at PIF Camp I hope to have the hackers cutting electronic circuits from the conductive fabric to make soft PCBs.