We are obsessed with our Cricut machines! All around our house and stuff are full of crafts made with them. Our notebooks are covered in stickers, our cars have cute decals on them and our kitchen containers are labeled with vinyl lettering.
If you are about to get a Cricut cutter, you probably have lots of projects in mind to decorate all of your house! But you also have to keep in mind that your machine will not work as well with time.
But, fear not. You only need to do some maintenance on your machine, which can include, for instance, cleaning and changing its cutting blades.
Today, we are going to teach you how to calibrate Cricut Explore Air 2 to get neat cuts every time!
What does it mean your Cricut is uncalibrated?
The first thing you need to know is when it is necessary to calibrate your Cricut machine. You will find out that your Cricut is uncalibrated when you want to try projects where you need the machine to match a design you have already printed.
You probably won’t have any issues if you are working on plain-colored projects or vinyl, as the cut will be performed indeed, but you won’t notice any problem because you don’t need the cut to match anything.
You will tell the difference with stickers or pictures when you have your Cricut not cutting in the right place on an already-printed piece.
When you perform a print-then-cut project, you use your Cricut software with the same file you used to print the picture so that it picks up exactly the same shape and the same measures.
However, if your Cricut is not calibrated, you will see that the cut is not exactly where it should be.
Of course, there are some simple cases where you have only a slight mismatch that won’t make a big difference, but in other cases, your Cricut might cut your piece several millimeters far from where it should, and it will ruin you it.
That’s when you know your Cricut needs calibration.
How long does calibrating Cricut Explore air 2 take?
Some people fear the process to calibrate Cricut explore air 2, or any other Cricut machine, as they think it might be too difficult or it will take a long time, but don’t worry!
The process is quite fast and you don’t really need to touch anything inside the mechanism.
You only need to run a process in your Cricut software and test if it’s working fine after that. Just make sure to have a printer connected to your computer, as you will need it for the process.
How to calibrate Cricut explore air 2 step by step:
- Enter your Cricut application and look for the tab next to the “Make it” green tab.
That tab should have the name of your cutter. In this case, it should be “Explore”. If you have several machines, this is where you need to make sure you have selected the right one. - Click on the left side menu, and look for the “calibration” tab.
In this case, you will get only one option for calibrating, which is “print then cut”.
- On the next screen, in step 1, select the printer you are going to use.
After you have selected the right printer, you will get a copy of the calibration paper, which has the following shapes on it:
- Vertical lines on the top of the sheet;
- Horizontal lines on one side of the sheet;
- One big square with a small one inside.
- Place the test sheet on the cutting mat. You will see that the “Go” button on your Cricut is blinking.
- Click on it and it will perform a test cut on the calibration sheet. The small square you see in the middle will be cut around.
At this point, do not pick up the paper from the mat or you will have to repeat the process.
- Take a look at the cut lines to see how it went and answer the question you see on screen.
If you see that any of the cuts are tilted inside or outside the square, click “no”.
If the cuts are aligned with the square, click “yes”.
Keep in mind that even if the lines are perfectly aligned in this step, that doesn’t mean your Cricut is calibrated, so you still need to continue with the process.
- The Cricut will continue performing test cuts, this time along the marks on the top of the sheet, and on the side.
Each line has either a number or a letter next to it.
- Once it is finished, the software will ask which cuts are more accurate, so take another look at the sheet to examine the cuts.
- Choose which ones are the most precise in each group and select them in the dialog box.
You will see some lines are perfect, while some others are tilted left or right.
- Once you have answered the question, the Cricut will make its last test cut around the bigger square.
- You can now pick up the sheet from the mat and see how well the last cut went. It should be perfectly cut now.
- The software will finally ask you if you are happy with the calibration process and you will click on “yes” or “no” based on the results you got after examining the last test.
How to calibrate Cricut Explore Air 2 and see if it is working right?
Of course, the best you can do is try your Cricut with a real project and see how it turns out. There shouldn’t be any bad cuts after the process is finished, but, if you don’t trust it so much, you can always try the machine on a piece that is not so important.
In general, using a Cricut machine is not hard. You can find many tutorials like what is sublimation Cricut or how to cut multiple colors on Cricut to make your experience good. But it will be even easier if you maintain your Cricut in good condition.
So we hope this tutorial about how to calibrate Cricut Explore Air 2 came in useful to continue enjoying this wonder of crafting.