"About half our orders now come from commercial digital printers entering the short-run market," said director Brian Blundell.

The new generation machine has faster and quieter motion control,  which allows a typical carton to be cut in 30-50 seconds, as well as touch screen control of functions such as vacuum hold down and knife change.

Creator was originally designed by Blundell to die-cut packaging and label samples produced by the firm's Gs2 transfer printing system, but has been "leapt on" by digital print firms wishing to offer short-run die-cutting in-house.

It comes in two sizes, the A2+ 650x450mm and the A1 850x650mm, and offers both creasing and perforating/cutting via the same head. It uses the printed product's origination file line template to send data to the plotter.

The suction bed allows the use of a variety of substrates, "from 3mm corrugated to kiss-cut 25 micron labels," said Blundell.

The A2 kit costs 15,000 and the A1 version 18,000.

Story by Darryl Danielli