The Decatur Makers wanted to make a cornhole set for out space. Making the boards out of plywood and 2X4s was the hard part. Cutting out your makerspace logo on a Silhouette Portrait is easy if you follow these steps.

Step 1: Step 1: Connect Your Silhouette Portrait to Your PC

Ensure your PC and Silhouette Portrait are powered on. Connect the Silhouette Portrait to your PC with the provided usb cable.

Step 2: Step 2: Open the Silhouette Studio Design Software

Ensure you have downloaded the Silhouette Studio Design software from the Silhouette Website. Open the design software to create a new template.

Step 3: Step 3: Import Your Makerspace Logo

Import your logo to the library by selecting File->Import->Import to Library or in your new template drag and drop your logo into the design area.

Step 4: Step 4: Resize Your Image to Fit Within the Design Area.

If you want your logo bigger that the standard 8 1/2" x 11" cutting area, simply identify what areas can be cut separately from others. Here we decided to split the "brains" of the robot and the face of the robot into separate files.

Step 5: Step 5: Select Trace Area

On the right side of the silhouette studio software there are many quick reference buttons. Select the button that looks like a butterfly to get to the trace menu. Click on the "Select Trace Area" section and highlight your desired area to cut out. In our case we wanted all of the robot's face to be cut so selected the whole image. Also you need to select a trace method for your image. We chose to trace the whole image. Be sure to play with the high/Low pass filtering and the threshold options if your outcome is not what you wanted.

Step 6: Step 6: Load Your Material Into the Silhouette Portrait and Print.

We chose cardstock as a solution to not having adhesive vinyl on hand. We found a good blue hue and loaded it into the portrait by using the control panel on the right side of the machine. This control panel is only accessible if you open the front cover of the machine.

Within Silhouette Studio, ensure that you have your proper setting for the cutter and you select the right material you are working with. These settings are also quick reference button on the right side of the design software program.

Once you have printed your job, pull the finished piece off of the cutting mat and be very careful not to rip your final piece (slight tear in the robot head).

Step 7: Step 7: Continue Printing Pieces of Your Robot Logo

Here we are now switching to the orange pieces of our robot logo. We dropped the eyes and ears of the robot into a new blank template file and used the select trace method once again.

Step 8: Step 8: Tracing the Details of the Robot Logo

The "brains" of our robot were the most difficult to trace due to all of the details. With this image we were able to still use the select trace method and then utilize the Point editing feature of Silhouette Studio to cleanup some of the details of our image.

You can do this by tracing your image in the same manner as discussed and then double click on the tracing once it is complete. this allows you to modify, delete or create points for your image.

Also, our image was too long to fit on the design area so we split it again into two files.

Step 9: Step 9: Final Logo Checkout and Placement.

Once you have printed all of your logo, lay it out and see how the final piece will look. We also took the time to use contact paper to protect it since it may be exposed to the elements. Once we had everything protected, we used spray adhesive to mount the logo to our cornhole game.