[Q&A] What is Converting? - Kevin Carey

[Chris]

Author : Kevin Carey


The most com­monly asked ques­tion is ‘What is Diecut­ting / Die Cut­ting?’ Although describ­ing diecut­ting is not par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult it is use­ful to put this high vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ing process into the con­text of Con­vert­ing. Diecut­ting is a Con­vert­ing Process, which gen­er­ally uses six tool­mak­ing dis­ci­plines to Cut, Crease, Score, Per­fo­rate, Deboss or Emboss a sub­strate or a web or sheet of mate­r­ial. Diecut­ting is the process, which uses a com­bi­na­tion of tools to ‘con­vert’ a mate­r­ial into a prod­uct, part or com­po­nent of higher value than the orig­i­nal material.


In most diecut­ting appli­ca­tions the sheet or web of mate­r­ial to be processed is pre-printed on one or more sides to pro­vide infor­ma­tion in the form of text or graphic brand iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and a descrip­tion and instruc­tions of how to use the com­po­nent or the con­tents of the fin­ished con­tainer. See right.


This is impor­tant to the platen diecut­ting process as the image on the sheet mate­r­ial must pre­cisely reg­is­ter to the male and female platen press tool­ing if the final prod­uct is to be con­sis­tent with the approved prototype.

With the graphic ele­ments of the work com­plete the printed sub­strate is ready for the con­vert­ing process. One ele­ment of con­vert­ing is the per­ma­nent trans­for­ma­tion of the two dimen­sional image into a shape which can be formed into a three dimen­sional con­tainer, see left,
or a two dimen­sional prod­uct such as a dis­play card, gas­ket, or an indus­trial com­po­nent. See right.

This is where the fin­ished prod­uct first emerges and it is a crit­i­cal first test of the mar­riage between the graphic image and the struc­tural con­cept. For exam­ple to cre­ate a fold­ing car­ton design a paper­board sheet may require one or more of the six basic diecut­ting or con­vert­ing processes to gen­er­ate the product.

As you can see from the gas­ket illus­trated above there are other crit­i­cal dis­ci­plines in diecut­ting, which impact the effi­ciency of the process. These would include auto­mat­i­cally remov­ing the wast mate­r­ial and slugs from the diecut prod­uct, called Strip­ping, and the auto­matic stack­ing of the fin­ished prod­ucts, called Blank­ing.

The con­vert­ing dis­ci­plines are Cut­ting, see left, or the sep­a­ra­tion of a sheet or web of mate­r­ial into indi­vid­ual parts, com­poe­nents or fin­ished prod­ucts. This shows the platen diecut­ting process in which the mate­r­ial is trapped between an upper steel rule die and a lower cut­ting anvil or plate.



For many diecut­ting oper­a­tions Cut­ting would com­prise the entire process. However, when con­vert­ing other prod­cuts, par­tic­u­larly fold­ing car­tons and fluted con­tain­ers, the diecut part will be folded and erected into a three diemen­sional con­tainer, or Point-of-Purchase dis­play device, often with key graph­ics printed on the sur­face. There­fore, to cre­ate this type of fin­ished prod­uct it is often nec­es­sary to inte­grate the other five con­vert­ing disciplines.

Con­vert­ing Creas­ing, see above right, is the gen­er­a­tion of a con­trolled fail­ure of the mate­r­ial, by cre­at­ing a hinge point in the mate­r­ial, which will enable the mate­r­ial to fold through 180 degrees with­out the ma-te­r­ial, and par­tic­u­larly the outer sur­face of the mate­r­ial from split­ting or crack­ing.

When creas­ing, the com­bi­na­tion of a male tool inserted into the steel rule die and a matched female tool mounted on the cut­ting plate enable the gen­er­a­tion of inter­nal delam­i­na­tion stress fail­ure in paper­board and the crush/deformation of a fluted mate­r­ial. Both of which enable the mate­r­ial to hinge and fold.

Con­vert­ing Scor­ing, see left, is often used to achieve a sim­i­lar type of con­trolled fail­ure in the substrate/design, how­ever, instead of a blunt round topped crease rule, scor­ing is achieved with an iden­ti­cal, but lower height cut­ting knife. This enables the par­tial pen­e­tra­tion or par­tial cut­ting of the mate­r­ial, usu­ally to enable a sharp, pre­cise fold or fail­ure point.

Sim­i­lar to cut­ting, Con­vert­ing Per­fo­rat­ing, see right, uses a cut­ting knife to pen­e­trate the mate­r­ial, how­ever, the cut­ting edge of the knife has gaps machined into it to cre­ate indi­vid­ual ‘teeth.’ In a ‘fold­ing’ appli­ca­tion this has many uses, and employs many dif­fer­ent pat­terns of ‘tooth-gap’ to achieve a skip cut to pro­vide a weaker square fold or a spe­cific degree of fold­ing force. How­ever, Per­fo­rat­ing knife is not just lim­ited to cre­at­ing folds in a sub­strate and is used in many con­vert­ing appli­ca­tions and is a very ver­sa­tile tool.

Con­vert­ing Emboss­ing, see left, is a process where a sec­tion of the mate­r­ial is per­ma­nently deformed into a relief shape above the printed sur­face to enhance an image or to high­light a design fea­ture. Emboss­ing is gen­er­ally employed to enhance the ‘look’ and per­ceived value of the prod­uct, enclosed in the embossed con­tainer. Because Emboss­ing often requires con­sid­er­able pres­sure, and heat, when uti­liz­ing a ‘foil-stamping’ process, it is often com­pleted in advance of diecut­ting, how­ever, it is also often simul­ta­ne­ously com­bined into the diecut­ting process.

Con­vert­ing Deboss­ing, see right, is the oppo­site of emboss­ing, in that the mate­r­ial is depressed below the remain­ing sur­face of the sub­strate. Deboss­ing has mul­ti­ple appli­ca­tions but is gen­er­ally asso­ci­ated with deform­ing the mate­r­ial to cre­ate a bet­ter assem­bly and glu­ing process for fold­ing car­ton and con­tainer manufacturing.

Diecut­ting or Die Cut­ting con­sists of the inte­gra­tion and mix­ing of these six dis­ci­plines to pro­vide the Con­ver­tor with an extra­or­di­nary range of man­u­fac­tur­ing options. This sim­plic­ity, when com­bined with the diver­sity of design options is why Con­vert­ing is one of the most impor­tant processes in any indus­tri­al­ized society.


Source : Die-CuttingWorks