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A steel die cutter is used to cut, punch, or emboss a variety of materials. The molds are made by cutting a thin slot in a flat, rigid base and a thin strip of steel is pushed into the slot. The completed die is then placed into a press that holds the cut out material and is pressed upon it to complete the die-cutting cycle.
A steel die cutter is a simple but effective die-cutting device used to cut, punch, or emboss a variety of materials. The molds are made by cutting a thin slot in a flat, rigid base such as wood laminate that mirrors the shape of the final product. A thin strip of steel is pushed into the slot so that it protrudes above the base by a height dictated by the desired thickness of the final product. The protruding steel strip edge can be sharpened along the entire edge if a clean cut is required, intermittently sharpened if a perforated cut is required, or rounded into various profiles if the material is only to be engraved. The completed die is then placed into a press that holds the cut out material and is pressed upon it to complete the die-cutting cycle.
Die cutting is a process in which a shape cutter is pressed into a sheet of material to cut out its shape from that material. A simple cookie cutter is an excellent example of this process and an equally good example of how one of the most popular types of die cutting machine, the steel die, works. The cookie cutter consists of a thin plastic or stainless steel tube formed into a decorative shape. When the pastry cutter is pressed into a sheet of pasta, that shape is cut from the sheet. A steel die works in exactly the same way for cutting shapes from a variety of materials, including rubber, vinyl, and paper.
To construct a steel die, a flat sheet of strong backing, such as wood laminate or aluminum, is cut with a thin slit into the shape of the finished product. The slot is usually between 0.028 and 0.056 inches (0.7 and 1.4 mm) in width and is usually cut with a laser cutter. A thin, highly flexible steel strip is then inserted into the slot along its entire length. The strip, or rule, is tall enough to sit at the bottom of the slot with some of its body free from the surface of the substrate, forming what would be the “tube” of the cookie cutter. Because of the flexibility of the rule, these dies can be made to cut extremely complex shapes.
The upper edge of the ruler is given a variety of finishes depending on the intended purpose of the cutter. If a clean cut is desired, the top edge is ground with a variety of profiles depending on the material that will be cut. If a perforated cut is required, the ruler edge will be equipped with an intermittent cutting edge of suitable pitch. The dies are simply rounded to leave an imprint on the surface without cutting into it. To make the cut, the steel die is placed in a press which pushes it down onto the sheet of material, cutting or engraving the desired shape in the process.
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