Cutting - BEST PRACTICES

[jdodoubleg]

We recently installed a new Polar N 78 Plus cutter, before this we were using our Duplo 618 and a very old/small triumph stack cutter. This new cutter is amazing. The problem is I don't have a lot of experience using these kinds of cutters.
I am wondering if there is a website or whitepaper that has cutting best practices available to read. I am quickly finding out there are many ways to cut something. Before I start making programs, I want to make sure the way I am cutting is the best way I have available.
Any help pointing me in the right direction is much appreciated in this matter. Thanks.

 

[jwheeler]

See attached guide that I created.

 

[jdodoubleg]

Hey! Thanks for the quick guide jwheeler

 

[namelessentity]

See attached guide that I created.

You should make a guide for jobs with gutters too.

 

[jwheeler]

You should make a guide for jobs with gutters too.

The process would be the same, only you move out a gutter width then a finished piece width starting at step 6. There’s too many variables to make a guide for every situation. Sometimes we have a mix of gutters and chop cuts. The idea is to understand how to do less movements by hand and let the machine move the final pieces out to you.

 

[jwheeler]

By the way @jdodoubleg , our programmable guillotine cutter allows us to save the clamp pressure with each pattern as well. This can be helpful for cutting NCR as an example where you want less pressure. Our cutter also allows us to control whether the air table is on, if the back gauge does a push out after a cut, and we can even put arrows showing the operator which direction to rotate for the next cut. This is all very helpful in our shop because it’s a learning environment.

 

[chock]

Hi sir

Attached the best of POLAR paper for Better performance Cutter

Hope you enjoy it.

Blessing

[email protected]
Cell WhatsApp: + 505 8861 1441
Managua, NICARAGUA CENTRAL AMEICA

 

[BigSi]

We recently installed a new Polar N 78 Plus cutter, before this we were using our Duplo 618 and a very old/small triumph stack cutter. This new cutter is amazing. The problem is I don't have a lot of experience using these kinds of cutters.
I am wondering if there is a website or whitepaper that has cutting best practices available to read. I am quickly finding out there are many ways to cut something. Before I start making programs, I want to make sure the way I am cutting is the best way I have available.
Any help pointing me in the right direction is much appreciated in this matter. Thanks.

Hi there.
Interested to know on your thoughts on a Duplo 618 verse a conventional guillotine. I realise there is a place for both. I have a resonabley good Guillotine (programmable, air bed etc...). The feedback I'm getting is for certain jobs eg x21 up B/cards. x6 up DLs etc. the Duplo will beat the guillotine. (time wise, and of course you can do another job while its working). The down side, a Duplo 618 is expensive. I have to think of ROI. I realise this topic has been covered before but my Guillotine is getting older and is a bottle neck in production. Getting back on topic, not hard to learn on to use a Polar, you will soon pick up your own technique just interested on why your purchased when you had the Duplo. If your Duplo went belly up tomorrow would you replace with another 618? ta Simon

 

[jwheeler]

We acquired a slitter cutter creaser a few years ago and it was a game changer for us. We got the AeroCut Prime instead of the Duplo, but pretty much the same thing. It’s purely a question of volume @BigSi. As a county inplant supporting multiple county departments, we run dozens of unique business cards each week. It was a killer to have someone take up the guillotine all the time for business cards, and even have occasional miscuts, resulting in reprints. With the slitter/cutter, we have a great hotfolder workflow which automatically imposes the cards 24up to match the cut pattern of the AeroCut. Then we just load stacks of sheets in there and let’r rip. Very few reprints now because of human error.

Any job that is a smaller finished piece runs on there (think raffle tickets, punch cards, small postcards, greeting cards, etc) For fewer cut jobs like 2up letter sized flyers, we often still cut on the guillotine. You will always need a guillotine because these slitter/cutters can’t run light weight stocks, only card stock or heavy text weights.

Keep in mind, the Duplo or Aerocut will also crease and perf in the same pass, which can eliminate the need for additional equipment and reduce the number of processes.

It’s hard to come up with an exact ROI. If I were a small shop doing low volume, I’d probably do without it. If I were a small shop doing med to high volume, I’d definitely get one because it will free up my staff’s time to do other tasks. For medium to large shops with high volume, it’s a must have.

If a new Duplo 618 is too expensive, then a used 616 still works great. I used a 616 for about 5 years in the Konica Minolta demo room. Not only did I cut down customer’s samples, but I also produced the KM employee business cards, postcards, flyers, etc. It was a solid machine.

 

[BigSi]

We acquired a slitter cutter creaser a few years ago and it was a game changer for us. We got the AeroCut Prime instead of the Duplo, but pretty much the same thing. It’s purely a question of volume @BigSi. As a county inplant supporting multiple county departments, we run dozens of unique business cards each week. It was a killer to have someone take up the guillotine all the time for business cards, and even have occasional miscuts, resulting in reprints. With the slitter/cutter, we have a great hotfolder workflow which automatically imposes the cards 24up to match the cut pattern of the AeroCut. Then we just load stacks of sheets in there and let’r rip. Very few reprints now because of human error.

Any job that is a smaller finished piece runs on there (think raffle tickets, punch cards, small postcards, greeting cards, etc) For fewer cut jobs like 2up letter sized flyers, we often still cut on the guillotine. You will always need a guillotine because these slitter/cutters can’t run light weight stocks, only card stock or heavy text weights.

Keep in mind, the Duplo or Aerocut will also crease and perf in the same pass, which can eliminate the need for additional equipment and reduce the number of processes.

It’s hard to come up with an exact ROI. If I were a small shop doing low volume, I’d probably do without it. If I were a small shop doing med to high volume, I’d definitely get one because it will free up my staff’s time to do other tasks. For medium to large shops with high volume, it’s a must have.

If a new Duplo 618 is too expensive, then a used 616 still works great. I used a 616 for about 5 years in the Konica Minolta demo room. Not only did I cut down customer’s samples, but I also produced the KM employee business cards, postcards, flyers, etc. It was a solid machine.

thanks Jacob. from what I have googled the 618 is quite a shift up from the 616, now if I can just find one at a reasonable price also the Duplo seems like a better machine than the Aerocut. ta Simon

 

[jwheeler]

thanks Jacob. from what I have googled the 618 is quite a shift up from the 616, now if I can just find one at a reasonable price also the Duplo seems like a better machine than the Aerocut. ta Simon

Yes, the 618 is a big improvement. And I also agree that the Duplo is better than the AeroCut since I've now used them both quite a bit. Unfortunately it wasn't my decision to get this AeroCut, but it has still served us well enough for the last few years.

 

[pippip]

A local printer just installed one of these, never seen anything like it.

 

[MailGuru]

Dang! I Want One.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

More excited about general solutions like this to be honest:

A machine that can interface with many of your existing systems. Rigid, codified solutions are inferior to a machine that you can train, and can learn the next most probable step in a given situation.