Digital Cuts, Quicker & Sharper

The explosive growth of wide-format imaging has provided expanded applications for printing—from supermarket floors, to office walls and even the sides of buildings and trucks. Print firms, well aware of wide inkjet for prepress color proofing, are finding it the only practical proof for the newer 73´´ and 81´´ sheetfed presses now shipping.

Traditional print has met its challenges in matching binding and finishing activities to the creep, swell or shingling that occurs in the print process. Wide format delivering output intended for free-standing objects with complex contour cuts adds another dimension of finishing complexity.

Specialty wide-format inkjet is used for printing directly on rigid substrates and for laminating flexible materials to thickened, hardened substrates. And therein lies the challenge: How to accurately trim or contour-cut finished prints (decals, point-of-purchase displays, banners), especially mounted ones, where the laminating process may stretch or shrink the original print? Enter the i-cut by Mikkelsen Graphic Engineering, www.mge-us.com.

For complex and/or large shapes and smaller volumes, this isn't possible by standard diecutting means, nor is it practical to cut by hand. MGE's i-cut systems wed mobile, precision-motorized computer-controlled X-Y cutting/routing heads, with a (literally) cutting-edge workflow, i-script, that enables a standardized workflow for the digital printing and finishing of graphics.

The i-cut's X-Y cutting devices (knife, kiss-cut, oscillating cut, router and laser) coupled with a vision system, accurately cut shapes on any material—at a fraction of the time and cost compared to conventional diecutting or hand cuts. At Graph Expo 2006 in Chicago, we saw intricate mounted images of various cartoon characters precisely and quickly cut out in succession (including the tricky thin legs of Sponge Bob Square Pants). No question the i-cut was an aisle-stopper. The trick here is the unique approach MGE incorporates for feeding back imagery from the mounted/laminated printed substrate to the i-cut's motorized cutting head.

Because material, drying, laminating and other mechanical conditions create many kinds of distortion in the printed contour edge, original-design contour graphics no longer match the output. Only a vision-based system can handle varying distortions inherent in wide-format print output.

From our research to date, i-cut is the only vision-based system (CCD camera eyes communicate back to control software on-the-fly) that can handle any type of media and print distortions for wide-format work. It's easy to use, fits into a digital workflow supported by 36 of the industry's leading players (RIPs, printers and cutters), and allows the customer to choose from the printers and cutter/routers that work best in his or her own facility.

MGE has patented i-cut vision distortion and i-script workflow. The company looks to provide tailored solutions for each customer that will exist within their chosen method of workflow so that their investment in training can be maintained. Recently, MGE released an automated off-loading capability to the i-cut as well as a smaller version with Esko, called the i-XE10, which they claim to be the world's fastest smaller-format die-less cutting system for packaging and other applications.

One final point is that of familiarity. MGE's software is prepared so that graphic arts prepress people feel at home setting up the i-cut workflow instructions using vector-based software such as Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. There are more than 1,400 i-cut systems installed worldwide, with some customers having as many as a dozen.