Laser Engraver vs Cricut – Don’t Buy Until You Watch This

I've got this one off the mat. Y'all, I'm pretty impressed. Like, I'm very impressed with how well that shows up. I don't know, y'all, I'm impressed. Here they are side by side. So y'all, if you have ever found yourself wondering, how does a Cricut compare to a laser when it comes to engraving? Let me tell you, you have found yourself in the right spot because in today's video, we are going to put that to the test. We are going to be testing acrylic and some metal, and we are going to engrave or etch on the exact same blanks in our laser and on our Cricut so that we can get a really, really good comparison. Now, if you're also here and you didn't know that your Cricut Maker could engrave, y'all, you are in for a treat because I'm going to show you exactly how you can do that in this video as well. If you are new here, my name is Lauren, and I'm a craft producer here at Makers Gonna Learn where we strive to bring you inspiration, education, and motivation to get your Cricut out and start using it today. And if you're already a Cricut user, you've probably asked yourself, what is the comparison? Should I invest in a laser or should I just stick with my Cricut? And I hope that I'm able to answer some of your questions throughout this video so that you can really make that decision for yourself. Now, I do want to make a disclaimer. I'm not going to be doing a lot in the actual software for our laser. We've actually already engraved on these products with our laser, and I will show you that. Now, there are a couple of things that we're going to talk about when I get in the craft room and actually start crafting with you, but we're really going to be focusing on how you can engrave on your Cricut, the process it takes, and look at the comparison on what it looks like when it's finished with a Cricut and how it looks like from the laser. So if you're ready to learn and see this comparison, let's go ahead and jump right in. The first thing that I want to talk to you guys about is going to be the differences in lasers, what you can engrave on lasers and what you can't. So there are two main types of lasers. There is a diode laser, and then there is a CO2 laser. Just know that with a diode laser, it's very limited on what you can engrave with acrylic because a diode laser just does not engrave on acrylic. So we did have to pull out our Glowforge, and I'm going to turn you around so you can see. So we have our Glowforge here, and then we have our X-Tools sitting here. Our X-Tools is a diode laser, and our Glowforge is a CO2 laser. So for the Glowforge, we actually, our acrylic, we had to pull our Glowforge out for the acrylic. So that is one downfall, is if you do get a diode, which is the more reasonably priced laser, you are going to have issues engraving on acrylic just because of the mechanism, it does not work. So do keep that in mind. So because of this, just know the acrylic that we've done is on the Glowforge, the metal we did was on the X-Tools. Now, I do want to go ahead and show you what it looks like being engraved. So this is the pink acrylic. So when you look at this, we have cute little Caroline on here. You can see that it has engraved very, very well on the Glowforge, and we're going to do the exact same thing on the Cricut with this blank. Now, let me show you what the other two look like. Once again, this one is also from the Glowforge. Here is what it looks like, the engraving from the Glowforge on the clear acrylic. I think it looks very, very good. In person, this looks more like a stapled effect, like the you make me smile. So that does look very good. And then the last thing that we have already done on our laser, and this one was done on the X-Tools because it is a diode laser, so the etching of metal is very easily done on a diode laser. And here is what our metal looks like. You can see it's fully solid, and it looks really good. It's more like it is burned on there, but this is what it looks like from the laser. So we are going to be doing the exact same thing on all three of these blanks in the Cricut, and we're gonna be engraving, and I'm gonna show you how you can set this up in Design Space, and how you can engrave yourself if you have a Cricut Maker 4, and how you can engrave on your Cricut yourself if you have a Maker Series machine. Now, I do wanna talk about the tools that you are gonna need for this, and that is your quick swap housing. So this is only for people who have a Maker. If you do have an Explorer Series, I sincerely apologize, but you have to have that adaptive tool feature to be able to do this, and the pressure needed. So you do have to have a Maker Series or a Maker 4, a Maker Series, a Maker 3, or a Maker 4, and you do have to have this quick swap housing. What it does is this little button on the top, you press it, and the tip comes off, and you are going to need the number 41, and you are going to need the number 41 tip. I don't know if y'all can see that, but that is just the engraving tip, and it pops right on to that quick swap housing. Now, another thing that I want to talk to you all about with your Cricut is you must use the right type of blanks, and this is the one downside about the Cricut that you're not gonna have with the laser is you only have so much clearance that you can use to engrave. So this one will fit in there perfectly. However, we are gonna have to take that jump ring off for it to go all the way through. Otherwise, it's gonna get stuck. You can see right there, it would get stuck. So you have to be very selective on the blanks you use. Another good example, this is one that we possibly could engrave on, but the thickness and the edge is going to prevent us from doing that because it doesn't have enough clearance to go under our bar right here. So that is one of the biggest downfalls about engraving with your Cricut is you just have to be very, very selective on what you choose, and the thickness, it has to be pretty thin, to be real honest. So just keep that in mind. You can't just engrave anything on the Cricut. It does have to be able to go under this bar, and that's one of the biggest downfalls with engraving with this machine. So now that we have kind of talked about that, I've shown you what the results are from the laser. Now we are gonna hop over into Design Space, and we are going to set up our projects, and we are going to do literally the exact same thing that we did on our laser. We're gonna do it on our Cricut, and then we're gonna do a side-to-side comparison and really see, is it worth it to go ahead and upgrade to a laser if you're just wanting to do small things like this, and how these two compare to each other. So let's go ahead and hop over into Design Space. Let's set up our mat so that we can start engraving. Now, before we actually head into Design Space, we're gonna grab the files that we need. If you want to recreate this, they are going to be linked down below for you as well. If you're not an MGL user, I highly suggest you going down and checking out that first link. With our membership, with MGL+, what you are gonna get is access to everything on our website, thousands and thousands of cut files, hundreds of fonts, and literally every single course we have ever created, you are going to get access to if you say yes to MGL+, today. Y'all, it is 100% worth it. But let's go ahead and grab our files that we need. So I'm going to start out with the You Make Me Smile, and I'm just going to grab that file. So how you're gonna do that, once you find the file you want, you're just going to click that arrow pointing down. That is going to download the file that you need. The other thing that we must have if you are engraving is going to be our lines file. Now, I know this sounds silly, but just like if Cricut is drawing, when you turn something into engrave, it's just going to engrave the outside. So if you want it to be completely filled like it is engraved inside, you need this lines file. Now, you do have access to one of these files inside Design Space, but it is only for Cricut Access users, which is why we have one of our own here. Now, after you have downloaded that, the other two things that we are going to be using today are going to be fonts. So the first font is going to be Willow Lane. I already have it downloaded, but you can use whatever font you want. Another thing about our website that I adore is our Preview Custom Text. So I can type in a name here and I can choose what font I want. Like this one is super, super cute, but we did go with Willow Lane. So go ahead and download this font here. Super cute. And how you're going to download this font is once again, you're going to click this arrow pointing down. It's going to come over into your downloads. You're going to open up that zip file. And then once you open that up, you're just going to install it onto your computer. You can see I already have this font installed, so I don't need to. So back over to our website. The other one that we are going to be using is going to be University here. And you're just going to download that font. Once you have downloaded all of the files from the Maker's Gonna Learn website, we're going to hop over here into Design Space. You can see we already have this set up, but I'm going to show you exactly how to do it. First thing we're going to do is we're going to come over here to Upload. We're going to upload image and I'm going to pull my Finder back into view. And I'm going to bring that You Make Me Smile SVG into Design Space. Once you have done that, we need to come back over here and we need to upload that Lines file. So I'm going to grab the Lines SVG, pull that in. You can see it looks like a big black box, but it's not. You can see that it is lots and lots of little tiny lines. So the smaller you make it, the closer together the lines are and the more filled in it is going to look. So do keep that in mind. But what we are going to do now to get this set up the way that you need to is I want to size this according to the blank that I'm putting it on. So the size of the oval is going to be roughly two and a half by a little under two. So what I like to do is bring in a shape. We'll find this oval. We'll just go ahead and rotate it right here. And it looks like we are sitting at probably around the same size that it is. So I've got, it's a little bit wider than the one and a quarter. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to unlock this and we're just going to make it just this, probably 1.9, somewhere around in there. So this is very similar. We might make it 1.85. So this is going to be the size of our design. Now we can resize all of this later, but I'm going to make it to about right here. Now I don't want this to be fully lined. I just want this. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ungroup these two and I'm going to pull the you make me smile here. And if you need to, you can bring it to the front to make sure that it fits. And then I'm going to size the lines down to as small as I can without cutting anything off like this. Then I'm going to take them both and I'm going to slice. Once you have done that, we can get rid of that one. You can see there are multiple, multiple, and you can really use any of these. They're all going to be just lines. So you can use any of them. But what we're going to do now is we're going to bring this back over here. Let's select both of these. We are going to make sure that they are centered. We're going to make sure they fit. Centered is not really great. And then we're going to change the operation from basic cut to engrave on both of them. So now this is going to engrave. The last thing we need to do is bring these, select these both again and attach them back together. And now we can, we'll make this oval white so that we can see it just a little bit better. And we are going to size this to fit on our blank. Just like so. Beautiful. So now we have the you make me smile done. The next thing that we need to do is we need to set up our dog tag. That one is going to be done in the university font. So I'm just pulling in a text box here. We are changing the font to MGL University here. And then we'll type in the name. So we're just going to do scorpion. And then once again, we are going to change it to engrave. Now the size of our dog tag, where we are going to place it is actually going to be, have to be within one and a quarter, 1.25 inches. So I'm going to collect this left side down. And then I want the width to be, we'll just do one inch. That way we have some clearance. So now we have our scorpion. I'm also going to get rid of this oval because we don't no longer need it. So we have our dog tag ready. We have our clear acrylic key chain ready. The last thing we need to do is type in our name for our bow. So I'm going to grab a text box once again. This one we were doing in Willow Lane. So we're going to come over here and we're going to type in Willow Lane here. And then we're just going to type in Carillon. If you want the cricket to fill this in, now this is a pretty thin font. So I don't know how well it would do if you wanted it filled in with those lines. I think for this one, if we come up here to basic cut and change it to engrave, I think once we size it, so let me get the sizing of our bow and how large I want the name to be. So I think the name needs to be around two inches. So I'm going to make the width here two inches. And that leaves me a quarter of an inch clearance in height, which from the bow to the bottom, I think where Carillon sits will be good. Now there really is no rhyme or reason. Sometimes it's kind of harder to position what you are wanting to engrave on these kind of odd shaped blanks, but I think that this one will be good. We may make it just a little bit smaller just to be on the safe side. And then I'm also, because when I hit engrave, you can see that these lines overlap. I am going to go ahead and come down here to combine, and I'm going to unite those together. That way we don't have that overlap issue. And that is very important if you are engraving with your cricket to make sure the text, if it is a script or a cursive text, go down there and unite that together so that you don't have that overlap. So now we have our three little things set up on Design Space ready to go. And now we are going to go back into our studio and we are going to start engraving on the cricket. Okay, so now that we have everything ready in Design Space, I'm going to actually start by doing these two together because they are the same material we're working with acrylic. So I want to do these two together and then we will do the metal one after that just because it's a little bit of a thinner material. So what I'm gonna do now, first thing you need to do if you are working with something like this that already has like a metal jump ring on it, we need to take that off because that is not going to fit under the bar on our cricket. So you need to make sure that you take that piece off. But also if you're working with acrylic, just know that they always have a plastic protective layer over the acrylic. They do this so that when they cut the acrylic, it just helps prevent breaking and cracking and scratching the material because it is easily scratched. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just removing the paper off of one side. I'm gonna leave it on this side because that's the side that's gonna be going down on the mat. And then I'm also going to do the same thing with our cute little bow. Still yet it does have that plastic protective layering on it. So I'm taking it off of this side and then I'm gonna place it down on the mat. So what we're gonna do now is we are going to get our mats ready in design space and then I'm going to finish putting this on the mat so that you all can see it. So over here in design space, we're gonna go to the make it screen. Now these are all engraved so they are putting them all on one mat, but I want to move this one. So I'm gonna go to move object and I'm gonna put this one on a new mat and we'll just color it orange since our dog tag that we're using is gonna be orange as well. So back over here to the first one where we're gonna be working, we have to set this up to properly engrave exactly where we place our material. So I'm going to kind of center this between the two and two here. So over here when we are prepping our mat, I'm gonna bring you down here so you can see. You want to make sure that the center of your blank is going to be right there on that mark. Now I think I have it down just a little bit and this is why grids can be very, very important on your mat and one of the reasons why we have grids here. So I am placing this down and one thing I don't do is I don't trust that the Cricut is going to keep this down where it should be. So I'm going to get me some painter's tape and actually that just split right in the middle. I was thinking about splitting it anyway, but look how the Lord's just doing his job today. He's really got my back. So I'm just going to put that side down. Then we're gonna grab this other side of that ripped tape and I'm going to make it in smaller strips and I'm just going to tape it down all along the edge, but trying my best not to get where the design is. It looks like I've got it pretty close. So we're just gonna try to kind of put it all the way over to the edge as far to the edge as we can while still securing our blank down. So this may take you just a few minutes, but no worries. Okay, John, we're just going to probably speed this up. Just do a little bit of a time lapse. Now that we have that one, we're gonna hop back over into design space and we are going to set up Caroline as well. So I think I'm gonna set this one up and I'm gonna zoom in on my mat so that I can see. We're gonna center it here on this line right here. So this word Caroline is pretty evenly spaced with that O. So I'm going to make sure that I put the exact center right here on the two and center it on the nine. So back over here, I'm looking at my two. This is where it needs to be. And then my center point. So my center point horizontally needs to be on the two. And then my center point vertically needs to be right there on the nine and make sure that it is even there. Beautiful. And then we are gonna tape this one down. Now this one doesn't need, you don't need to tape down. Tape it down with as much care as we did the other because we are working just kind of right in here. So we can tape it down a little bit sloppier, if you will. And then we will start the engraving process. Okay, so we have these taped down. We have it ready on Design Space and back over in Design Space, I am gonna go ahead and hit Continue. Now, because this is engraved, there's only certain things that we can choose. So I'm gonna go to Browse All Material and we're gonna type in acrylic. And I'm gonna do this on thick acrylic and we'll just do it on more pressure. After we've done that, we're gonna come over here to our machine. I'm going to take our fine point blade out of clamp A. We'll just set fine point blade there. And I'm gonna put in my adaptive tool here. And then we are going to load our material. I forgot to move my star wheels, but it's not changing anything. So it still fits, but let's go ahead and move them over so that it doesn't bother it anymore. Okay, so we've got our star wheels moved over. Perfect. And we're just gonna hit Play and we're gonna let the machine engrave. Now, one thing about engraving on your Cricut, it's gonna take it a minute. It's going to be a while. Currently right now, it says that it has loaded 32%. When we look here at what it's doing, it's going pretty slow. So since it is going slow, we're gonna let the Cricut do its thing. We're gonna come back and we're going to see the results after it has finished. So see you back here in roughly, I don't know, we'll say 20 minutes, who knows. I'll actually time it and tell you exactly how long it takes. Okay, y'all, it's finally finished. I said roughly 20 minutes. Here is our official count. 24.06, pretty much almost 25 minutes, which we'll call it 25 because I started this timer a little bit after it started. So we'll just say 25 minutes. That is going to be the biggest downfall when it comes to engraving with your Cricut. Just be aware of that. But let's see what kind of results we get so that we can do our head-to-head comparison. Okay, right off the bat, this looks pretty dang good if you ask me. I don't know, let's pull this guy in. So I'll have to take the tape off of this and we're gonna have to look at this. But here, this is our laser one. Looks good. And this is our Cricut one. The Cricut one is actually showing up a lot more than this one. I still have to wipe this one down. And here is our pink Caroline. Ooh, I got it really close to that top hole. That's not great, but you know, that's on me. Now here is our, this is our laser version. I do think the laser version on this one is obviously better. It's deeper. This one doesn't show up a ton. Maybe if we would have done the line, actually done the lines on this one, it would have been better. So let me get these off the mat and then we're gonna look at them. I've got this one off the mat. Y'all, I'm pretty impressed. Like, I'm very impressed with how well that shows up. I wanna take the back off of it and really get a good look at it. I mean, it's not, it's just a piece of plastic. It just makes it look a little foggy to me. So I wanna take this back off of it and really get a good sense of how well it did. I do also have to get some adhesive. I don't know, y'all. I'm impressed. Here they are side by side. So the laser one is for sure more see-through, I guess you could say. It is deeper. I will say that it is deeper and it has a different texture, which I do like and I appreciate. And I think it's really cool. But for a machine that we already have that we didn't have to invest anything else in, I'm shocked. Like, I think that still looks really good. I think it looks pretty, it looks professional. I like that. I really do. So that's a good head-to-head comparison with this one. Now, one thing I do have to admit to you guys, while this Maker 4 was working, I have so much to do that I went ahead and engraved the dog tag on a different machine, on a Maker 3, but it still did really wear well. So let me show you the comparison of the dog tag. So this is the one that we did on the Laser, and this is the one that we did on the Cricut. So you can see the one on the Laser is the one that it's filled in. You can really read it very plainly. This one, once again, it's just the outline of the text. So it's a little bit less legible from further away, but I still think it looks good. I mean, if you already have a Maker and you're not doing this, I definitely think this is something you need to add to your repertoire of things that you can do. So once again, head-to-head comparison. It's just a personal preference. Do you want to spend thousands of dollars on a Laser to do this, or do you just want to use the machine you already have to do something like this? So all in all, comparison between a Laser and a Cricut engraving on acrylic and metal. Number one, you can't engrave acrylic on a diode Laser, and diode Lasers are the cheaper versions. So you just have to ask yourself, what all do you want to do with your Laser? When we look at the comparison, when it comes to engraving, you have the capabilities to engrave small things on your Cricut. So do I like this one better? Technically, yeah, a little bit, but do I think this one gets the job done? Absolutely, and I still really like this one. I have nothing against this, and the fact that I can do it on my Cricut, love. Next up, when it comes to your colored acrylic, just so we can look at, and actually I just broke this one, so be careful with that. Don't break your acrylic, but we'll still do the comparison, y'all. Devil's playing with the church's money! Comparison time. Don't pay attention to the broken piece, but here it is on the Cricut. It's just, I do think you have to have those lines to make it look really, really good. Otherwise, I would pick the Laser on this one over the Cricut, so that is a good comparison on how the lines make a difference when you are engraving. This is without said lines, but it is a thin font, but it's still just kind of not super visible and broken. And then finally, our dog tags. So, if you want my opinion, I think the Cricut stands the test, and I think it is phenomenal when it comes to engraving on metal and acrylic. So if you haven't done so already, what is stopping you? Leave me a comment down below. Why have you not engraved yet? Do you just not have the tools? Do you need a maker? What is it? And were you as impressed as I was with how these things came out? Because I didn't have a lot of hopes. I really thought that the Laser was gonna win this, but I don't know. I think that it's pretty comparable on these materials. Now, obviously, the Cricut can't cut acrylic or cut through some thick wood or any of that stuff, but I still think that you can get the look that you are wanting with the engraved in your Cricut. It's just gonna be a little bit different. Now, if you think this was really cool and you want to learn more advanced skills when it comes to using your Cricut, I suggest you clicking that first link down below and checking out MGL+. Because when you get signed up for MGL+, today, you are gonna get access to everything that we have on our website, which includes three full years of Maker University, which is our advanced level crafting course. We do so many advanced level crafts utilizing your Cricut machine. So if you are ready to really do a deep dive into advanced crafting with your Cricut, make sure you click that first link down below and check out MGL+. Your one-stop shop to everything. What it's going to include is access to thousands of cut files, hundreds of fonts, plus you're going to get access to every single course we have ever created and all of the new courses coming out this year, and we have some good ones planned. So make sure you click that first link down below, check it out, and if you haven't already, hit that thumbs up button, subscribe to our channel, and hit that bell notification so that you can be notified every time we get crafty. I hope you guys have enjoyed this comparison and I will see you all in the next one. Bye guys.