Die Cutting w/ Roland VersaCamm

I’ve often been asked how I dial in cut force, particularly when die cutting… and the answer is testing… with each and every material… each and every time. If you’ve replaced your blade the cut settings may be different. Test again. Trust but verify.

When die cutting, the standard/built-in test cut doesn’t work well because it’s just too small to give you a good representative cut. So here I made a 1.25″ CutContour circle and imported that into VersaWorks.

Start with a low setting (no need to cause damage from the start) and slowly work your way up. After it cut through at 145, I stepped back through at 5gf increments to see if it would cut through at a lower force… 140gf worked but it took more force to punch them out of the material than I liked. So 145gf was the magic number for this job.

The idea is to really dial in the proper force because cutting with too much force will cut deeper into the cutting strip causing it to require replacement even sooner… and you also want to keep them from falling out too easily which could cause the cutter to jamb or stop cutting if one falls out over either the front or rear material sensors.

This was my first time trying to die-cut holographic so I really had no idea where I would end up on force, so I started really low on purpose. I was running a 2-pass cut (aka double cutting) which allows a lower force to be able to be used.

I will also note I am using cheap 45° blades from Amazon. I’ve used Roland, CleanCut, and these from Amazon. With the work I do, I haven’t noticed any difference other than the price.

https://amzn.to/3umx6id

This is an affiliate link, which means at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.