Quite often during sign making we have to meet a challenge of printing on film with next pasting sheet material with it and couture cutting. 

To lighten the work and making more profit we offer to buy and use NEO UV-LED Evolution printer together with milling engraver. You will get competitive advantage; you can provide both printing and accurate contour cutting to meet and exceed the customers’ needs.

1. Where to use? Suits well for production of all advertisement i.e. sign, graphics, figured constructions, POS – it will be interesting for customers that technology allows to create double-sided stuff that looks perfect from different view points; souvenir production – badges, refrigerator magnets, beer props, tea and food trays and many more; also different customized products for interior decoration (can be used to give a new look to children’ rooms for example).

2. How to make better? The process is extremely simple. First you have to print the image directly with chosen material like plastic, wood, cork, or acrylic – NEO UV LED Evolution accepts these media and next you do accurate contour cutting. Maximum thickness is about 4-5 cm and depends on model of milling engraver and size of milling cutter that is used.   Maximum possible size of the end product depends on table size also. So for small pieces lake badges, souvenir production you can buy tabletop milling engraver for big size sign use big engravers.

3. It is all about profitability. You can increase profits without growing revenues. It is essential that quality of the end product becomes higher and you don’t have to use any labour-intensive technologies. NEO UV-LED / Evolution provide easy printing with perfect adhesion. Then you make accurate contour cutting with any engraver you have. This method is really perfect because it ensures at the same time high quality of printing and complicated contour cut. And you have significant savings in time and money. It is now possible to get excellent product at record low cost. It takes about 2 minutes to cut 1 meter of contour.

Bad methods

For many years people have been used for this purpose other methods. Let’s talk about the most popular and traditional one that is made in a few steps. The print is made on self adhesive PVC film, secondly you have to paste a material over with it - be careful when doing this to avoid ridges and last step that is very laborious – contour cutting with electrical fret-saw or knife. It takes a much time and energy and what is more important it’s impossible to do it very neatly. As usual contour line that u get is not clear especially if it is not very simple form. One wrong movement and you have to start all again.

Just see how much time it takes to make 1 meter of contour cutting:

• With milling engraver it takes 2 minutes
• With electrical fret-saw it takes 3-4 times more i.e. 6-8 minutes
• With knife it takes 20 times more i.e 40 minutes. Very slow but if u have to make some complex contour a worker with knife can do it better rather than a worker with electrical fret-saw.

Of course these computations of time are approximate and depend on complexity of the product itself. But one thing is obvious – perfect contour cutting you can get with milling engravers only where accuracy is around 0,005 mm.

Some people use silkscreen printing method on ready forms or units. Due to several reasons this idea is not going to be the best solution. First of all you should have certain circulation that is around 100-500 copies. If less quantity of copies is printed the cost price will be very high and then you should know that this technology itself is not simple and pre printing takes few hours. It is need to make screen printing stencil, squeegee, frame and other things. You can’t use gradients, shadows or halftones - only clear colors and don’t forget that you have to pay for each color that is being used, so more colorful image makes higher price for customer. Also before printing the next color it is need the previous one to be dry completely – that also takes time.  And one significant disadvantage is size limit, as usually it’s not more than A3 format. Machines for bigger format are very expensive.

Also for qualitative contour cutting it is possible to use special digital cutters by Zund (G3), Aristo (Aristomat SL plotters). As example Zund recently presented some new models in G3 series but they are really expensive in comparison with milling engravers that we offer to customers in SUN. Besides for that money accuracy in it could be much more precise. In Aristomat  SL plotters its also about +/- 0,02mm.

One last word. Now you know how to cut a contour better as well as your expenses. This technology improves quality and efficiency and at the same time makes customers happy. So buy NEO UV-LED Evolution and milling engraver and do it first and best with new technology.

Secret of technology is available for NEO UV-LED/Evolution owners and clients who are going to buy these machines.