A cutter cuts the shape out. A stamp presses detail into the surface. They look similar in the preview and they are almost opposite prints.
The short version
| Cutter | Stamp | |
|---|---|---|
| What decides success | One tall thin wall | A flat face full of fine relief |
| Critical slicer setting | Wall count, 2 minimum | Layer height, and first layer squash |
| Layer height | 0.2 mm is fine | 0.16 mm is worth the extra time |
| Outer wall speed | Slow, 25 to 30 mm/s | Normal is fine |
| Fails as | Blade splits or wobbles | Detail fills in and reads as mush |
| Minimum feature | 0.8 mm blade | About 0.8 mm of relief width |
Why a cutter is a wall problem
Everything about a cutter comes down to a wall 0.8 mm thick standing 12.5 mm tall. The settings that matter are the ones that decide whether that wall is solid, and whether it stays still while the nozzle prints it. Nothing else has much effect.
The full list is in print settings that work on almost any printer.
Why a stamp is a surface problem
A stamp is mostly a flat plate with raised detail. It fails differently:
- Relief that is too fine fills in. Anything narrower than about 0.8 mm cannot be printed by a 0.4 mm nozzle as a standalone rib. The tool measures the thinnest line in your design and warns you with the actual millimetre number and the size that would fix it.
- The first layer squash matters more. The face of the stamp is the first layer if you print it face down, so an over squashed first layer smears the detail. If you print it face up, the detail is a series of small top surfaces and the layer height decides how crisp they are.
- Layer height is worth spending on. Dropping from 0.2 mm to 0.16 mm makes a visible difference to a stamp and almost none to a cutter.
Which orientation for a stamp
Print it the way the tool orients it, which is detail up, flat back down.
Printing face down onto the bed sounds appealing because the face comes out glass smooth, but two things go wrong: the fine relief becomes an overhang problem, and the first layer squash spreads the detail sideways so an imprint that should be 1 mm wide prints at 1.3 mm and the counters in letters like a and e close up.
When to print both
Choosing Both in the tool gives you a cutter and a matching stamp sized to sit inside it. This is how most decorated biscuits are actually made: cut the shape, then press the detail into the surface before baking.
If you are printing both, print them separately rather than on one plate. They want different speeds, and a stamp benefits from the finer layer height that would only waste time on the cutter.
Mirroring, and why the preview looks backwards
Pressing a tool into dough flips it. The impression is a mirror of the tool. So for the impression to read the right way round, the tool itself has to be mirrored, which is why the 3D view of a text stamp looks backwards.
The tool mirrors by default and shows you both views: the 3D view is the part you print, the flat preview is the cookie you get. If you turn mirroring off, the cookie comes out backwards.