My Cricut blade snapped on a $40 sheet of vinyl last Thursday

I was cutting a custom decal for a client's car window, about 8 inches long with tiny text. The blade caught on a weird spot in the adhesive and just cracked clean in half halfway through the cut. Ruined the whole sheet of Oracal 651 I had just bought for that job. I ended up ordering a pack of replacement blades and had to redo the whole thing by hand with a scalpel while I waited for delivery. Anyone else had a blade fail on expensive material?

3 comments

3 Comments

jackson.wesley21d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah I saw a video where a guy tested cutting vinyl at different temps and found below 65F the adhesive gets brittle and can snap blades. I had it happen with some cheap dollar store vinyl that felt like it had cold spots in it. @charles_henderson is right about checking before you start, now I always run a test cut on a scrap piece first. That Oracal 651 is good stuff though, usually pretty forgiving unless you hit a bad batch or it sat in a cold truck.

morgan.cameron20d ago

Ngl, my buddy tried cutting some frosty vinyl and his blade just gave up halfway through too.

charles_henderson21d ago

Man, did you check the blade before you started? I learned that one the hard way after I snapped my last good blade on a sheet of printer vinyl that was way too cold. Felt like a real genius trying to cut tiny letters with a cracked blade and a grudge.