Plastic coated cylinders for the Paperfox cylinder die cutters

On the Paperfox H-1, H-2, and H-500A cylinder die cutters, plastic cutting plates must be placed under and over the punching tool, as shown in the video below.

When using plastic coated rollers, the usage of the upper plastic cutting plate is not required and since the cutting force is distributed over a smaller area, it is also possible to punch thicker materials in this way.

Plastic coated cylinders can make the work much more productive, but there are some disadvantages to this solution:

• The positioning pins can be bent by the plastic cylinder, so it is advisable to use other positioning solutions (eg pieces of cardboard sticked on the ejector rubber). You can read more about positioning options in the Solutions to align cylinder die cutters to the printed printed pattern blog post.
• The punched sheets are not prevented from curling up, so they may jam under the safety cover. This error can be eliminated by lifting up the cover. Remove the protective cover and 4 pcs.  M10 nut as a spacer, mount it with longer (M8x25) bolts or simply place it on top of the mounting bolts.

M10 nuts have been installed as spacers under the cover and the fixing bolts have been replaced for longer.

The cover is removed from under the fixing screws and placed on them.

Feeder unit for the Paperfox MPE-2 electric paper punch

The Paperfox MPE-2 electric die cutter is a very useful device for cutting, punching or die cutting small products.

Now we've equipped this electric paper punch with a feeder unit. In this video the device sticks two rolls of hook and loop Velcro tapes together and cuts them into the desired length.

Certainly you can not only cut with this device. In the next video we test the device with a steel rule die and with a quite a special task.

Because there is little space left in the machine we couldn't use the usual programmable logical controller, we used an Arduino micro controller. So there is no display for setting the parameters, you can do it with your smartphone. Perhaps the younger generation will prefer this solution?

Solutions to align cylinder die cutters to the printed printed pattern.

1. Sticking cardboard strips on a foam material to align the sheet to.

Stick some foam material onto the die cutting tool and stick cardboard strips with double sided self adhesive tape on the foam. You can position the sheets which you want to die cut to this cardboard strips. Perhaps this is the easiest solution but the accuracy is sometimes not enough. Unfortunately the foam allows not only up/down movement the positioning cardboard strips can move during the process sideways.

There is a video about this process: https://youtu.be/kb2NERpQv7A

2. Alignment with positioning pins

The problems with the accuracy of the positioning with cartons trips sticked on foam material can be eliminated with using positioning pins as in the following pictures.




Thie die cutting cylinder can push down the collapsable pins and a spring pushes them back.

There are 8 positioning pins at the corners of the sheets to be die cutted.

There is a video about this process: https://youtu.be/cioDSYwkv8g

3. Positioning with steel rules

A very similar solution is to position the sheet with a spring steel rules as in the following picture:

The steel rules can be fixed on the die board with screws. The sheets can be positioned to this steel rules.

There is a video about this process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJWUcrQM9v0

4. Alignment with a transparent plastic and hinge

Mount a piece of transparent plastic with a hinge on the die board. Place positioning marks on the plexy. In this tool we pressed the the plexy against the cutting edges so that the trail of the cutting lines should appear on the plexy. We have strengthened this traces with a marker pen. (blue lines in the picture) Place a sheet on the tool, fold the plexy above the tool and align the sheet to the marks on the plexy. Fold the plexy away, place a cutting plate on the sheet and now you can die cut with your cylinder die cutter.

5. Fold up table

Mount a fold up plate with hinges on the table of the die cutter and fix the tool onto this plate. Stick cardboard strips on the cutting plate to position the sheets. In this way you can place also creasing matrix on the table to improve the quality of creasing.
Unfortunately this solution needs more cutting pressure and you can't cut big, complicated shapes or hard materials in this way.

There is a video about this process: https://youtu.be/mR3yxG2zZus

6. Transparent tool

We can manufacture transparent die cutting tools so you can position it easily to the printed pattern. This solution is optimal if the sheet is big and the die cutting tool is small. 

There is a video about a similar process with a flat bed press:
https://youtu.be/RTmhK_Zc5SEhttps://youtu.be/RTmhK_Zc5SE

7. Positioning with laser

We have manufactured a devices with you can position the sheets which you want to die cut to a laser “+” mark.

A video about the positioning solutions: https://youtu.be/zR-gSDOhi-k