Maximising workflow with a CAD-CUT Plotter Cutter

Adding new equipment to your business is an exciting undertaking. It represents new business opportunities, the potential for new customers, and, hopefully, new levels of profitability. All of this is especially true with cutters and printer/cutters, which present such enormous decorating potential.

If you’re adding a cutter or printer/cutter to your business, get ready for an influx of new types of orders, and get the business ready to handle those orders by laying out your new equipment in the most efficient manner possible. But before moving any new equipment into the business, you’ll need to give some serious thought as to how you’ll physically arrange it, and doing that requires understanding how the work actually flows through the decorating process.

Go with the flow

With cutters, everything begins at the computers, where the design is created, manipulated and prepared. That said, you’ll want to keep the computer as close as possible to the cutter. On some units, the controls are on the right; by placing the computer on the right side of the unit, near the controls, you can easily reach over to the cutter’s controls while staying seated at the computer.

If you’re using a printer/cutter, you’ll first print the design onto the material; if your unit is a conventional cutter, then you’ll obviously skip this step. After the unit cuts the design, you’re ready to weed away the excess material. Next, you’ll mask the design by laying onto it a piece of clear, adhesive material – it looks rather like a huge piece of Scotch tape. Bend the adhesive material in the middle slightly so the middle hits the design first, which will help you avoid air bubbles. You then need to run a squeegee across the adhesive material to push out the air, the first pass lightly, then a second pass with additional pressure.

Leave the protective backing on the weeded and masked designs so you may stack them up and take them in bulk to your heat press area. This is a more efficient process than actually applying each design as you weed and mask it, because you’re grouping together similar tasks rather than jumping back and forth between dissimilar ones. Use a cart if needed to move those pieces over to the heat press area. Then, after the garments are decorated with the designs, they can be folded, stacked back into the cart, and rolled over to the packing/shipping area.

The work area

With a firm understanding of the workflow process for your cutter, you can lay out equipment in the most efficient way possible. Ideally you’ll designate a 3m x 3m area for your cutter, giving you ample room to operate the unit comfortably. Embellishers with spacious production areas might be tempted to allocate even more room for their cutters, but that’s not necessarily a good idea. A compact work area translates into efficiency by putting within arm’s reach the tools and supplies you need to stay productive. You’ll also want a table nearby for weeding and masking; a standard 1.5-2m library type table should provide plenty of room.

Devote your cutter area strictly to creating the designs, and handle the application of those designs using the heat press in another part of your premises. In all likelihood, you’re already doing other types of heat transfer work, so there’s no need to move the heat press into your cutter area.

(By the way, if you’re just now purchasing a heat press, consider at least a 40x50cm press so that you’re able to handle a larger variety of sizes. Also, consider an air-assisted swing-away type model, a versatile piece of equipment that allows for custom platens, to handle odd shapes such as bag’s gloves and hats.)

Other equipment and supplies you’ll need include the media itself (the material that you will be cutting) as well as squeegees, masking material, weeding tools and scissors. Consider bin storage below the table to hold these supplies.  

For a one or two person work area, consider arranging your equipment and supplies in a “U” shape. At the base of the “U” is the cutter, with a 2m table to the right, and the computer on the far left-hand side of that table, next to the cutter. The rest of the table is used for weeding and masking. Your configuration may be different depending upon your particular needs, but the goal is to keep everyone working with no waiting, and a minimum amount of wasted energy in between tasks. Employees shouldn’t have to walk anywhere to reach their weeding tools or to find masking material, for instance; it should be all within arm’s reach.

Tips to maximize efficiency

Of course, getting the most out of your equipment means more than just putting it in the right place: It’s also about using it intelligently. For example, when the design is at the unit being cut (or print and cut, as the case may be), the most efficient thing for you to do is to busy yourself elsewhere, with another task, such as weeding and masking designs you’ve cut previously, rather than watching the unit and waiting for it to finish. Other tips for increasing productivity include:

• Be specific – Make sure every job has an order sheet with all necessary information including due date; file name; image size and location; type of garment and so on.
• Chunk it up - Break up runs on roll stock into manageable chunks. For instance, if you have a uniform order for 200 pieces, you might send only 50 at a time to the cutter. This allows you to check quality on the run midway instead of at the end, and you can busy yourself with weeding and masking while the next batch is at the cutter.
• Keep it manageable – Depending upon your production volume, the length of your design groupings on the cut material will vary depending on the designs and jobs themselves; you should avoid sending designs through your system that total more than a metre of material at once. Keeping segments of material at this length will prevent them from getting so long that they become difficult to physically handle. You can always “tell” the cutter to cut pieces automatically so that you don’t have to do it by hand using scissors. The pieces will then either drop onto the floor or into a catch basket (desirable, depending upon your situation and housekeeping).
• Weed smart – Whether or not you should weed designs one-at-a-time or in groups depends upon the designs themselves. If you’re doing large ones, you’ll probably want to weed one-at-a-time instead of fighting with a large piece if material with multiple designs. If you’re doing say 24 tiny ones, you could weed them all at once. You should develop a feel for the right approach in this instance, knowing what’s manageable and what’s too cumbersome.
• Weed different – For some designs – especially smaller ones – you might find that its actually easier to weed after you’ve done the masking rather than beforehand, That’s because much of the weeding will happen as a result of the masking itself, leaving you with less actual weeding to do manually. Any time you’re doing a new order, try this reverse method first; if it doesn’t work, go back to the conventional sequence of weeding first, then masking.
• Gang up on them – Printers/Cutters typically use white media so there’s no need to change out material for specific colours. However, you will need to change it based on the type of fabric you’re decorating. For example, you’ll use one type of material for polyester and another type for Nylon. Foe maximum efficiency, group jobs that use the same type of material so you’re not constantly changing it out on the cutter. Likewise, gang up smaller jobs so you’re cutting numerous designs at once, not just one or two. Be careful, though, as you don’t want to inadvertently put the wrong design on the wrong substrate – a relatively easy mistake to make when you’re batching together designs from different orders.
• Think BIG – For large runs, you may want to use a cold laminate, a piece of equipment familiar to those in the sign industry. This unit puts an extra protective clear layer on top of the film. For decorating purposes, you would weed the designs then run them through the laminator with the mask on top. This route is faster for large runs than using a squeegee, and it can provide better, more even coverage, thanks to consistent pressure.

Whether you’re equipped with a printer/cutter, a simple cutter, or multiple standard heat presses, like most aspects of your business, creating the ideal system for workflow is often a matter of trial and error, so try these suggestions and see what works best for you. With just a little experimentation and some careful evaluation, you can create a workflow that gets the most efficiency and profitability out of your equipment of choice.