Free helicopter SVG files

The rotor is the thin part

What makes a helicopter hard to cut is the main rotor: a blade seen edge on is a long sliver. Here each blade is about 2 mm thick at the tip and twice that at the hub when the design is 100 mm wide, and the skids and their struts are a little over 2 mm. In vinyl that weeds well from about 110 mm wide. Peel the waste away along the blade, from the hub outwards, and never across it. For card and thin wood, 150 mm or more keeps the blades stiff.

When the design has to be small, use the simple helicopter for children, which has a rotor bar about 6 mm thick, or the helicopter in a heart, where the machine is an opening in a solid shape and nothing can snap. The silhouette stands on a straight strip of ground, so it suits a shadow box, a shelf edge or the bottom of a layered scene.

Jobs a helicopter does

Several designs show the machine at work, for the people who fly and crew them: a winchman on the line for search and rescue, a water bucket for wildland fire crews, and a rooftop landing for city pilots. The twin rotor transport and the army machine suit service families. None carries a cross, a roundel or a unit marking, so you can add the lettering of your own crew beside it.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions