How to choose the best digital cutting table for your business

Digital cutting tables are the obvious complement to a wide format printer.

Many digitally printed jobs will need some form of cutting after the printing to separate the graphic from the surrounding media. In theory, you could do this manually, but a digital cutting table is the obvious way to maintain productivity and to guarantee the quality of the cutting. Luckily, there are plenty of cutting tables to choose from so it’s just a matter of determining your requirements and setting a budget.

The first factor in choosing a cutting table is to make sure that it’s been designed for the applications you want to pursue. These tables are used in numerous different industries, which ensures that vendors are willing to invest in their R&D but means that some may be optimised for other uses and materials. That might be a benefit for anyone looking to diversify into other areas, such as textiles or packaging.

It goes without saying that the cutting table will have to at least match the size of your flatbed printer in order to work with the same-sized boards. And as with flatbeds, it’s also worth considering investing in a larger table so that you can load or unload materials from one half of the bed, while cutting on the other half.

There’s a clear trend amongst the more established vendors, such as Kongsberg, Zund and Elitron, towards larger, more automated systems.

Kongsberg, for example, has introduced the Ultimate series, which comprises four models with the largest having a work area of 3210 x 4800mm. Zund has developed the Q-Line, which is built on a concrete substructure for stability. It features two beams for increased productivity, which are made of carbon fibre-reinforced plastic for low weight and strength.

At the other end of the scale, there many new entrants to the market offering relatively cheap, compact cutting tables that offer smaller printers a good way to road-test working with these devices. This includes JWEI and iEcho, both of whom are now also starting to branch out with bigger, more automated solutions.

You should also pay attention to the overall speed and productivity. Ideally a cutting table should be able to handle the output from two to three printers, depending on how fast…