Make die cuts, improve turnaround times

Here's how making your own masking die cuts improves your throughput

One of Viadon’s bigger customers is a specialty aerospace supplier. They provide a wide variety of metal finishing services, and one of them us extremely detailed custom masking. While they still use standard tapes and plugs, one aspect of their operation is a technique that is available to nearly any larger company all the way down to one person shops: Plotter-made die cuts.

A plotter cutter is basically a machine that takes a roll of lined tape material (with the adhesive tape applied to a siliconized-release liner) that then can move the tape forward and back on pinch rollers while simultaneously moving a carriage back and forth that has a small knife blade inserted into a clamp. When dialed in properly, it can cut the tape to various shapes – without cutting the liner underneath. So with various programs, customized shapes can be designed, sent to the plotter, and then cut on an as-needed basis.

What our customer has learned is that they can make exactly the quantity of custom die cuts they need. This includes circles, squares and rectangles. This ensures that far less material goes to waste. Due to the extremely stringent aerospace demands of their customers’ needs, tape or die cuts that were not used by the end of shelf life had to be discarded.

In your situation, the savings may come from only cutting the exact number of die cuts you need to finish the job, with no extras leftover.

So by getting large rolls of our lined green polyester tape, they can make exactly what the need – even in “kit” format for masking personnel. That may be something like six ½” disks, twelve rectangles that are 2” x 4” and several other custom shapes (or whatever is required) – all on the same sheet. In this way, no surface that should be masked goes unmasked – because the operator knows they need to use very single shape provided in their die cut kit.

Where to get a plotter cutter? We do get asked that frequently, and while we make no specific recommendations, many of our customers have had success with Ioline, Roland and US Cutter products. If nothing else, that can help you get started on a path for making exactly the tape masking die cut parts you need for one-off or short runs of parts requiring a high degree of customized masking.

As for the lined green polyester tape, click here. We can also line other masking tapes as well (minimums may apply). 

And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us here at Viadon. Since June 2000, we have been helping customers and potential customers find the best way to mask parts that is the fastest, lowest cost and best way to achieve the outcome their customer requires.

Viadon. A cut above.