Die cutting Magnacote on Windmill

Well, I concluded that I couldn’t cut big sheets on a big windmill. I don’t know about smaller sizes upside down.

HTH, Brian

Someone brought me some to die cut but first i had to cut it on the cutter, i found out this stuff is the reason printers drink. Dick G.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPsybiRl_ZI

i don’t think you want to die this upside down.
if you can replace your platen plate with anything…. a piece of aluminum, stainless, phenolic… it will do the job…

Thanks for the tips. I have to hand feed certain stocks all the time, so that part is easy. I’ll try a different platen plate and maybe a piece of chipboard to lay on the feeding table so not to run them upside down. Thank you much.

cutiing from the back may leave a rough edge on your “image” side….

We run alot of Magnacote and have learned a few things.
First you must slip sheet it to jog it evenly in the cutter.
If you don’t it will align magnetically causing 1/16 of an inch out of register.
Second replace your die cutting jacket with a piece of Phenolic.

Die cut from the front as the paper will seperate from the magnet if you hit from the back.

Lastly and most important, tell your die maker you want a long bevel “Vertex” brand rule.

Good Luck
Doug

Great! Thanks for all your comments and hopefully afterwards I will want a drink and not need a drink.

How do you hand feed on a windmill? Think about it…..sorry to dredge up the past….ummm…..but isn’t letterpress the past?

Girl with a Kluge, i thought some of us still think letterpress is the future??? Dick G.

Girl with a Kluge,

I’m not a windmill user, but as I’ve seen it described and even performed in the past, roughly-

You raise the feed table to the top, disengage the mechanism that raises it, and place the stock on the feed table one sheet at a time, and the press picks it up as it goes. You can feed napkins and such this way if you need to, apparently, and also relatively thick stocks from what I understand.
The press basically works the normal way it would, but you are placing one sheet at a time on the feed table.
Of course, somebody on here may know better than me, but this was my assumption.
You could disengage all the mechanisms, strip the feed table, take the gripper bar off, and find out how to make the press “run” though, and probably have yourself a pretty sweet platen press if you wanted and all the other stuff was wrecked. But it’s not designed for that and I’ve only seen it in videos like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNHe1d4ZiIU&feature=related

Scroll to 52 seconds and you will see some men feeding a windmill by hand- this is the only time I’ve ever seen something like this. I am sure the reverse engineered the press.

helimited, i thought you were nuts, you can’t hand feed a windmill, i guess i am wrong, i sure wouldn’d want to though. i used to feed napkins on my windmill all the time, i disengaged the auto trip and opened all the suckers to get them to feed, 2-ply napkins never worked well, you need to get 4=ply, Dick G.

Helimited is correct. With all this hi-tec laser printer copy machine crap, it’s very hard to run through the press because of the static cling, so when diecutting, scoring, numbering or even imprinting, the only way is to fan them and put alot of sort-kwik on your fingers and disengage the auto trip ( as Dick suggusted) and HANDFEED each sheet. I could do it 3x’s faster than the utube video by myself. You have to turn off the phones, TV, lock the doors and get into a deep trance in order to perform this for more than 1000 run.

I once had to hand feed whole exercise books on a heidelberg platen we used rubber stereos to obliterate an erroneous re order code while re printing the correct one . barely making 1000 iph i can still feel the back ache now. we didnt remove any parts just wound the feed board to the top and pushed the seperator springs out of the way.

We love napkins. Put the pink bar on the suckers, set your tilt well back and steal air from the delivery.
Put on the narrow margin bars to get close to the edge.
We regularly run 2 and 4 ply napkins at 3500 an hour (off guides of course.)