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Help & advice needed for Cutting PVC please?
Hi guys, new topic. Cant find it on signboards anywhere.
Having great trouble cutting PVC accuratly upto crop marks.
We are doing huge amounts of Health and Safety stock signs. I print onto 8×4 sheets but also sometimes onto pre cuts. Our javelin type cutter is useless cos its not accurate and quick enough as we are doing large bulks. The boss has given us a dewalt Circular saw with the max amount of teeth but it seems to keep cracking the 1mm PVC. It has a track which is attached to the work table but theres gotta be a better way of cutting this stuff without any mess ups. Any ideas other than just using Pre cut sheets? I know this signage is usually screen printed but dont think the boss would invest in a screen printer. Im printing and cutting 1 8×4 sheet with 10 signs on it in a bout 43mins. But when doing an 8×4 sheet of say 100 signs it takes me about 2 hours! need to streamline the business a bit. So any tips or pointers in the right tooling/direction would be great.(i wish everything was done on Foamex)
Cheers
Tom:police: Mod-Edit
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9 Replies
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I imagine when you say pvc you mean fomex or equivalent 1mm thick I would think a stanley knife. I may have miss-understood your your question if I have sorry.
Lynn
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Sorry Lynn, I meant its 1mm PVC cutting with a knife and ruler makes a little more work plus knife tends to slide about a bit on the sheet…… Thanks for the quick reply though!
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sorry
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Cut singles by hand with a knife and straight edge or invest in a guillotine, and cut it in bulk. We used to screen print these by the 1000 as shelf signage for a local bakery and cut them down in bulk on a guillotine.
John
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Thomas,
Are you printing on a UV flatbed?
If you are just get your stock cut down to size by your supplier and then just butt each piece up to each other on the print bed.
Obviously setting up each print takes a little longer but the time saved on cutting will more than compensate
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As has already been said Thomas, you would be better either buying in cut to size by supplier or investing in a guillotine or something like the steeltrack rather than a javlin.
The material you are cutting is probably not foamex but HIPS which is generally used for H&S signage.
Tell the boss that a steeltrack would be a good investment as it will also enable you to produce lots of different types of shop signage as well as the H&S stuff you are doing.
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Yeah, we’ve got the saw and a track but as its attached to a wooden table which has become uneven it now allows the pvc to lift at the end, cracking it. I’ve been putting pre cut sheets through the printer. I rekon this may be the only way to get the quality other than screen printing them. Cheers for the comments. Foamex is awsome with the saw. Hot knife through butter!
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Thomas, saws are not a lot of good for thin substrates and also produce a lot of dust. The Steel Track is a stand alone cutting system and nothing like the Javlin you have already. Made by the same company though Keencut. Have a look at their website.
The other option might be to buy a proper cutting bench for you javlin rather than trying to use a wooden bench which was not designed to do the job.
Keencut also do something called the Big Bench, don’t know anything about it but it is for use with their range of cutter bars. -
ahhh cheers martin, will look into it 🙂
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