Linking Cartridges to your Maker
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2021 10:09 am
The Explore, and Explore Air 1 and 2 had a cartridge port you could supposedly stick your unlinked cartridges in and link to your account. That said, I never got the port to work on either my Explore or my Explore Air 2.
The Maker and Maker 3 don't even have the port. And the free-standing cartridge adapter seems to have been discontinued permanently.
As far as I can tell, based on experience with my Explore Air 2, the cartridge adapter wouldn't have done you much good anyway.
Here's the manual way to do it. Note: this doesn't work for any cartridges that have material that is copyrighted by other people or companies, like Marvel, DC, Disney, Martha Stewart, or Anna Griffin. Leave those in the box - if you want to use them with your maker, you'll probably have to buy them as digital image sets. Also know that some are not available that way period. So hang onto your old Expression if you ever want to use those images. Come on, it doesn't take up that much room.
Get all the cartridges you want to link out and line them up on a piece of paper. Call Cricut customer service and tell them you want to link your cartridges. They'll give you a code that you write on the paper, then you take two photographs of the cartridges on that paper. Take one photo with them all turned face up, and another photo that shows them all turned with the serial number up.
The help desk person will tell you to email him or her the photos when you're through. You may have to make certain that the photo files aren't huge. I tried sending them directly from my phone and Cricut's e-mail system wouldn't accept them. I tried reducing them to 800 pixels wide and they worked fine.
The help desk person will then attempt to link all the cartridges you included in your photo (remember, they can't link some of them because of copyright issues). He or she may keep you on the line until it's done, or may just promise to e-mail you back when it's done.
Once your cartridges are all supposedly linked up, go into Design space and make certain they are. From the Canvas view, select "Images" from the left column. Then select "Image Sets," then select "Ownership" then select purchased. Most of the "image sets" you supposedly linked will be in there. But maybe not all. Then open each image set and scroll down to see if the images you like from that cartridge are available.
Why the extra steps? A couple of the digital image sets that have the same name as your cartridges don't have the same content.
Also some of the fonts that you have supposedly linked are actually not available in the digital sets of the same name. Chalkboard's Script font is one of them. So is Don Juan's font, which is ironic, since it's technically a font cartridge.
Figure out which cartridges/image sets or images or fonts are missing and place another phone call to customer service. In some cases, they can't do anything about it, but in some they can, and it doesn't hurt to ask.
The Maker and Maker 3 don't even have the port. And the free-standing cartridge adapter seems to have been discontinued permanently.
As far as I can tell, based on experience with my Explore Air 2, the cartridge adapter wouldn't have done you much good anyway.
Here's the manual way to do it. Note: this doesn't work for any cartridges that have material that is copyrighted by other people or companies, like Marvel, DC, Disney, Martha Stewart, or Anna Griffin. Leave those in the box - if you want to use them with your maker, you'll probably have to buy them as digital image sets. Also know that some are not available that way period. So hang onto your old Expression if you ever want to use those images. Come on, it doesn't take up that much room.
Get all the cartridges you want to link out and line them up on a piece of paper. Call Cricut customer service and tell them you want to link your cartridges. They'll give you a code that you write on the paper, then you take two photographs of the cartridges on that paper. Take one photo with them all turned face up, and another photo that shows them all turned with the serial number up.
The help desk person will tell you to email him or her the photos when you're through. You may have to make certain that the photo files aren't huge. I tried sending them directly from my phone and Cricut's e-mail system wouldn't accept them. I tried reducing them to 800 pixels wide and they worked fine.
The help desk person will then attempt to link all the cartridges you included in your photo (remember, they can't link some of them because of copyright issues). He or she may keep you on the line until it's done, or may just promise to e-mail you back when it's done.
Once your cartridges are all supposedly linked up, go into Design space and make certain they are. From the Canvas view, select "Images" from the left column. Then select "Image Sets," then select "Ownership" then select purchased. Most of the "image sets" you supposedly linked will be in there. But maybe not all. Then open each image set and scroll down to see if the images you like from that cartridge are available.
Why the extra steps? A couple of the digital image sets that have the same name as your cartridges don't have the same content.
Also some of the fonts that you have supposedly linked are actually not available in the digital sets of the same name. Chalkboard's Script font is one of them. So is Don Juan's font, which is ironic, since it's technically a font cartridge.
Figure out which cartridges/image sets or images or fonts are missing and place another phone call to customer service. In some cases, they can't do anything about it, but in some they can, and it doesn't hurt to ask.