The F1612 (the machine with the smallest of finishing tables) has a working area of 160 x 120cm
Cutting Without Limits
There are times when a printer does not know what order is likely to come through the door next, and our clients or their designers seem to come up with the most wonderful ideas, sometimes without much thought into how they can be produced. That is fine and we need to push the boundaries as this fuels development, but at some point, some poor soul may have to actually turn the two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional product.
Printing on a wide range of substrates is now considered straightforward. Lithographic, inkjet, or digital equipment can produce a wide gamut of colours with relative ease. The issue develops when it needs to be brought into life or practical use, be this cut, machined, or creased for folding.
The larger question here is how do you actually buy all the equipment needed for these tasks? This is easily answered by Summa with its F Series flatbed finishing system.
Headquartered in Belgium, Summa is recognised for its high-quality vinyl cutters, finishing flatbeds, and laser cutters all of which have been developed over a number of years and installed worldwide. The manufacturer’s equipment provides companies in the printing, sign-making, textile, industrial, and packaging industries with the most innovative cutting solutions.
The F Series of flatbed finishing systems is one with significant flexibility, choice of size, and ability to upgrade via a large bank of options.
Foundations in Size
Setting out to purchase one of the five variants available from Summa is made easy thanks to well laid out product literature with the information presented through a step-by-step process. This enables customers to easily compile a basic specification and then add options to scope out the machine to directly match your wide range of finishing options.
The first piece of advice from Summa is to consider the size of the cutting system you need as this can directly focus you on the correct base machine. Consider your work and from there you choose either the F1612 (the machine with the smallest of finishing tables) with a working area of 160 x 120cm or for longer work, you could consider the F1432 or F1832 with working areas of 136 x 320cm and 184 x 320cm respectively. Finally, should your work need to go right out to 3.2m with F3220 or the largest machine the F3232 you get working areas of 327 x 210cm or 327 x 320cm to easily cope with large-format production.
Tooling Up Next
Once you have arrived at your decision on the size of table you need, the next step on the specification is the choice of tooling you may need. Summa can provide an almost endless number of tools and you could feel swamped by the choice but the company makes the selection process very easy.
First, you need to understand that Summa can supply a cutting head with provision for three modules to be held at any one time meaning the machine can switch between several functions with pro functions without any form of pause. The LED pointer also means when switching, the F Series machines easily and accurately pick up from where they need to.
So, what options do we have to fill these three slots? Again, Summa breaks down the choice easily and conveniently. There is a choice of four different groups of cutting and finishing tooling: Tangential, Router, High Frequency Rotary, and Drag modules all of which can be added in one of the three slots on the cutting head.
The choice of tooling for each of the three slots in the cutting head is easily broken into the four types of cutting head, branching out into countless knives and processing tooling”
In more detail, the Tangential module provides a vertical force of 10kg and a wide range of different knives and cutting tools for a wide range of materials. Some examples of what can be used in the Tangential module include a kiss-cutting tool for easy weeding of images or shapes, a double cut tool for rigid material, and a heavy-duty cut-out tool for materials up to 15mm in thickness.
There is a choice of four different groups of cutting and finishing tooling: Tangential, Router, High Frequency, Rotary, and Drag
Creasing tools can be added in this module and if an angle other than 90 degrees is needed there are several V-Cut tools cleverly colour coded for a variety of angles. If perforating is needed in the product, a tool can be clipped into the Tangential module to have a number of different formats of perforation.
Finally, if the substrates are thick or troublesome then there are three different styles of oscillating tools either powered electrically or pneumatically.
This is only a brief overview of the type of tool you can install in the Tangential module, the number of knife styles and other options is almost endless; meaning you are bound to find the tool you need.
Choosing the Drag module for your specified machine opens up a number of functions such as kiss-cutting and the ability to install a pen or other marker to allow the F Series to draw intricate designs on the substrate. The pressure applied by the drag module is up to 600g and this makes it very useful for paper under 200gsm, adhesive vinyl, sandblast materials, and window films.
The Rotary module has a high torque motor built into it that can drive a number of different rotary knives making it extremely useful for cutting woven polyester, laminated fabrics, canvas, felt, and a number of packaging foams amongst a list of other materials.
The main reason for this being one of your choices is most fabrics are difficult to hold down onto any vacuum table so the rotary knife will cut the material without it needing to be held so tightly down to the table.
The F Series comes with two types of Router module, the Standard and High Frequency (HF) versions both giving a range of routing options. The Standard router has either a 1000 or 1400W power option depending on what you choose to cut. The HF version is for high production environments in most rigid materials.
Regardless of the choice of router taken, all come with dust removal which is very important given the heightened risk to the operation from dust.
Table Features
Regardless of the machine size you have decided on, all the F Series machines come with standard features to allow the substrate to be held or moved accordingly.
There is a conveyor system that can cut and crease longer lengths of substrate with accuracy and repeatability. The vacuum table holds the materials firmly to allow you to have accuracy of 0.05mm or 0.05% whichever is greater. The table is zonal so if the substrate is of a smaller size, you can maximise the draw of the vacuum accordingly.
There are what Summa calls Media Advance Clamps which allow the substrate to be fixed whilst it is advanced for longer or multiple styles of jobs. Finally, the Roll Support System can be used in combination with the Conveyor System and Media Advance Clamps for processing substrates on a roll.
Depending on the format of the machine you choose, a number of these features may or may not be available, but overall all machines above the F1612 can come with the full gamut of equipment. That said the F1612 can come with options such as extension tables and baskets to make it a very flexible machine.
The F1612 can come with options such as extension tables and baskets to make it a very flexible machine
There is a lot more to the F Series flatbed finishing machines from Summa and it is impossible to do it justice in just one review, but needless to say, I would suggest regardless of the imagination of your designer, any one of the F Series would be capable of producing what was required.
Statistics
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F1612 160 x 120 cm Up to 165 cm
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F1432 136 x 320 cm Up to 142 cm
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F1832 184 x 320 cm Up to 190 cm
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F3220 327 x 210 cm Up to 322 cm
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F3232 327 x 320 cm Up to 322 cm
Brian Sims Principal Consultant, Metis Print Consultancy, www.metis-uk.eu
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