If you are a hobbyist that enjoys crafting while using a die cutter or a manufacturer trying to make sure that your employees' instructions are perfect, you are a likely looking to make sure that your die cutting process is as efficient as possible. This means getting your system started up for the first time with as little problems as possible. Here are some tips for using a plastic die cutter for the first time.

1. Inspect the New Die Cutter Thoroughly for Packaging

Die cutters, especially plastic die cutters, have a lot of smaller moving parts. The manufacturer will package up these parts so that they are held in place by small cardboard pieces or otherwise protected from damage with styrofoam. However, if you try to use the die cutter while these packaging pieces are still in place, you are going to end up damaging your brand new die cutting machine. Before even connecting the die cutting machine to the power source, be sure that you go through it. Look for moving parts. Attempt to manually manipulate each of those parts to make sure that they are moving smoothly and that there is no packaging item that is preventing them from their full range of motion. 

2. Set Your Die Cutter to Cut Double for Fiddly Parts

Next, move onto your design. Your die cutter is going to read in your design and cut according to it. For any intricate or fiddly parts, such as parts that require a lot of small angles changing rapidly, you will need to have your die cutter cut double. This means that it will cut each of the intricate areas twice in order to make sure that they are fully cut. The last thing that you want is to cut 100 of a design only to discover that the smallest, most intricate parts are mangled because the die cutter didn't cut it all the way through before ejecting the waste materials.

3. Use New, Sharp Dies

Finally, be sure that you are using the newest, sharpest dies for your first few passes with your die cutting machine. This will allow you to see how quickly the blades become dull and allow you to figure out a schedule at which you need to swap out blades to have them sharpened. This will allow you to make sure that you are getting the finest cut each time.

For more information, talk to a company that specializes in plastic die cutting services.