Arts and crafts are a lot of fun, even for professional purposes. Whether you want to make fabric, vinyl, or paper designs, you will need the right tools to get the job done.

Today we are here to review one such machine which can go a long way with your cutting and printing needs, the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM.

Related Reading: How to Cut Fabric for Quilting

Brother Scan & Cut

The Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM is a moderately priced fabric, vinyl, and cardstock cutting machine that does not require a computer to use.

Who is this product for?

The Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM is designed for people who like doing arts and crafts. It is more of a home cutting machine, for more basic tasks, or maybe for child-friendly activities, but it could also be used for small business purposes.

If you want to cut fabric, cardstock, vinyl, and more, and you want to make some cool designs, but don’t want to spend a fortune on a machine, then the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM is a great option to look into. It’s not super advanced, but for the price, there’s really nothing to complain about.

What’s included?

When you purchase the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM, more or less everything you need comes included, and this includes the machine itself, a really nice LCD color touchscreen display, a high-quality scanner, a mat, and a cutting knife. More or less, here you get virtually everything in the box that you need to get started right away.

Overview of features

In terms of overall features, the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM has quite a few that are worth mentioning. First off, it connects to your PC using a USB cable. Bluetooth is nice and convenient at times, but it does come with its own set of issues, especially poor connectivity. However, the USB cable here is not included, which is a bit of a downfall.

The next thing that is worth mentioning is that it comes with its own built-in scanner. As far as we are concerned, this is actually one of the best features it has, because there are not too many of its kind that comes with scanners.

This way, you can scan, upload, and cut your own designs using nothing more than this machine itself. Keep in mind that the scanning area is 11.7 inches wide, which is actually pretty good for a home scan and cut machine.

What’s also nice about the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM is that it comes with its own large color touchscreen LCD display, which you can use to choose settings, make changes to your design, and control the machine. There is an app available for this item, which you can use on your computer to choose designs, upload them, download them, alter them, and more; the software is actually pretty decent.

Even better is that there are already over 600 designs uploaded onto this machine, so technically speaking, you don’t actually need a computer at all, and you don’t need scan cartridges either, which is another one of the prime features.

Furthermore, the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM performs very well when it comes to cutting tasks. It is specifically designed with fabric cutting in mind, and it can cut the fabric very well thanks to the ultra-sharp precision blades. However, it can cut more than just fabric, as it can handle paper, card stock, vinyl, and many other materials too, even very thin leather if need be.

What you might also like to know here is that the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM is easy to use right out of the box, and you barely need to read the instruction manual to start using it. All in all, we have to say that if you need a user-friendly scanning and cutting combo for fabric, vinyl, cardstock, and more, one that is not going to cost you an arm and a leg, but still performs quite well, the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM is a great machine to keep in mind.

Tutorial

The Brother ScanNCut CM100DM is very easy to use, but if you would like some more instructions, take a look at the videos which we have included below.

Alternatives

Something which the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM does not particularly excel at is cutting out vinyl stickers, but there are options out there which are better suited for this, such as the Brother ScanNCut 2 Machine Vinyl Transfer Glitter Heat Transfer machine.

If you just want an upgraded and more functional version of the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM, then you could look at the more expensive Brother ScanNCut DX SDX125 Electronic Cutting Machine.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, we think that the Brother Scan & Cut CM100DM is one of the better options. It does not excel at all tasks, but no product ever does. At the end of the day, for the fairly affordable price, there is really not much to complain about. It’s precise, easy to use, and quite versatile.