Cutter 3 of 3: The Black Cat Lynx

As some of you may know, my Black Cat Lynx was delivered on Friday May 20, slightly over 2 months after I have ordered it. This was the second cutter that I ordered after the PC-MTC lawsuit and it is the last of the three to arrive. I paid $529 ($499+$30 shipping) on March 15 and I was excited when the Fed-Ex truck finally delivered with it.

Now, before I show you the box, let me show you the package that I received 2 weeks prior. Sherri (That's Scrap Inc.) had mailed out to all her Lynx customers a Welcome Pack that included  a welcome letter, a BLACK (woo hoo!) USB cord, and 2 blades (45deg and 60deg). Also included was a chart that listed the types of blades and blade holders and their uses. It is a very useful guide and I was glad to receive it.

This is the box that the pint-size Fed-Ex delivery girl handed to me. The box was so big I could barely see her but when I asked if it was heavy, her answer was a chirpy "No. Not at all!" :-)

 The shipping label stated that the package weighed 28lbs but it felt more bulky than heavy.

Here is the box with the outer plastic covering removed.

The box was stapled closed and not taped. I easily removed the staples and was totally expecting to see another box inside but instead....

...I saw a "cat" looking straight back at me.

Before I could take the cutter out of the box, I had to first remove the cutting mat and a smaller box.

The smaller box includes a blue USB cable, a white Serial cable, the power adapter, 3 blades (2x 45deg, 1 60deg), a pen holder (for testing), 2 pen ink refills only (for testing), 1 original blade holder, and one cd. I knew from the welcome package that I had received 2 weeks ago that I really don't need the blue USB cable and the serial cable. Nor do I need the cd or the blades.

This is the Lynx out of the box.

And here it is out of the plastic cover. I found a red piece of vinyl under the cutter. Probably from the factory testing. 

Here is the control panel.

I really appreciate that this unit has the 4-way direction buttons. In fact, at first glance I understood what all the buttons on the Control Panel were for. In case anyone is wondering, the button in the middle of the 4-way direction buttons is to set the Origin (or blade starting point). 

I noticed that, like the blue cd that came in the smaller box, the screen of the Lynx is labelled "Vinyl Cutter". I'll talk more about that at a later time.

Here is the Lynx and the Silhouette together.  The Lynx is the biggest cutter that I have while the Silhouette is the smallest. I thought that in this picture, the Lynx looks like it's about to eat up the Silhouette. LOL!

"Nom, nom, nom,....."

The Lynx is almost as wide as the Cricut Expression but it is deeper (broader?) and is very much taller.  

The Power On/Off button is on the left side of the Lynx.

The Lynx weighs almost 19 lbs, and this includes the blade and blade holder and without all the packaging materials and cable ties.

Here is a closer look at the original blade holder and the blades that came with the welcome package.

The instructions to using the Lynx with Make-the-Cut must be downloaded from the Black Cat forum. I downloaded 2 sets of instructions: One is a 36-min long video tutorial that took me about an hour to download while the the second is a written manual for the Cougar cutters.  I only referred to a few pages in the written manual, particularly the pages about the testing pen and the blade holders. I was very impressed by how detailed the instructions are. The photos were clearly labelled (How refreshing!). The video tutorial showed me a lot of information. It covers everything from getting the cutter out of the box to making a cut with it from Make-the-Cut. 

The written manual comes in the form of  PDF file so although I am showing a small sample  of it here, the page can actually be enlarged until it's pretty big in Adobe Acrobat.

Thanks Dawn for giving permission to show this on my blog.

After putting the cutter on my table, and happy noticing that it did not leave any black marks on my white table, I decided to follow the instructions on the written manual and test the Lynx by using the pen that came with it.

The "pen" is really a ball-point pen ink refill in a black holder. As instructed in the written manual, I wrapped some tape around the holder so that the clamp can better hold it in place.

Using the same Provencial Princess frame that I had used for test-cutting on my Silhouette and Gazelle reviews, I used Make-the-Cut to get the Lynx to "cut" (i.e. to draw). The drawing turned out looking sharp. The two circles that I tested looked good as well.

Next, I switched out the pen for the loaded original blade holder. The video tutorial demonstrated using the Lynx with the Click Blade Holder but on the two times that I had asked to buy the Click Blade Holder, it was sold out, and so I was only able to use the original blade holder with this cutter.

The instructions that I downloaded from the forum were crucial in helping me learn the Lynx. If you have ordered the Lynx and are awaiting for its arrival, you may want to download and watch the Quick Start video first. Just sign into the Black Cat forum with the log in info that was emailed to you when you bought the cutter and download the video from the Manuals Section.