The Print Show: Laser Vision

Trotec will host the Diversity Zone about the opportunities and applications that are possible with laser cutting during the Print Show. And they are many and diverse.

Laser cutting can open a host of new opportunities for printers. It is about far more than cutting filigree patterns on invitations and greetings cards, though that remains an area where laser beats die cutting and cutting tables. The potential for printers willing to diversify is there, hence the reason for the pod in the diversity zone that is crewed by Trotec. The company’s equipment features elsewhere at its own stand on the show floor. This is not about the specs and features, data and cost of these machines. It is about the products that laser cutting can achieve.

Many will be aware of the highly popular digital cutting tables, and which will sprinkled around the Print Show. These are good for invitations, for presentation and sample boxes, greetings cards and so on. The more intricate the design, the slower these will run. And there is a limit on the materials that can be handled.

Laser cutting is capable of more: more speed; more effects and more materials. The laser can mark metals, for personalisation of reusable drinks bottle for example. Other personalised gifts, or branded corporate gifts are straightforward.

Equally the laser can automate cutting of business cards, particularly cards printed to ‘challenging’ materials. While lasers can also cope with data plates which every industry needs to apply to equipment it produces of uses. In other words the laser cutting device is a means of achieving a one stop shop.

Laser cutting and engraving has been used in print for almost 40 years, not always successfully. BPCC worked with Crosfield Electronics on the use lasers to engraver gravure cylinders. The technology would be faster than conventional diamond engraving and the renewable plastic surface for Lasergravure would be hard and durable enough for printing. It almost worked. 

Lasers are used in imaging, all platesetters use lasers to mark the plate in some way and digital presses are using lasers to charge imaging drums. In short the use of lasers is proven in print and underpins the transition to digital print technologies.

Within finishing, lasers have still to make an impact. A generation ago laser cutting was introduced, in the main for social stationery, book jackets and greetings cards. The technology was relatively crude, using a curtain of laser energy and a physical mask to enable the power of the laser to reach the substrate. And there were inevitable scorch marks where the dwell time or laser power meant more of the material was burned than planned.

Today the laser is smaller than ever and can be controlled so that scorch marks disappear. Today the laser moves across the sheet and is only on when necessary.

Most cutting takes place on a flatbed area, but bottles, loaded into a special rotating jig, can move beneath the laser head for marking. The aluminium drinks bottle, engraved with the recipient’s name, is perfect for this. Beyond paper and board, lasers can cut clear acrylic with the challenges of retaining a smooth edge that knife based cutting produces. Lasers are equally well suited to cutting fabrics where a knife system might catch as a knife is dragged across the material. “We can cut everything,” Trotec claims. “With the exception of metals and glass.”

“We aim to give visitors more tips and tricks. And because this is a digital process, we know we will get the same result where it’s five or ten thousand being produced.”