New digital cutting table with conveyor takes in-house exhibition and event textile production to new levels of efficiency, quality and productivity
Simply Beautiful Print has invested in a Kongsberg C64 Edge digital cutting table from CMYUK. It replaces an existing CNC machine with a 3 x 2m fixed bed, which meant cutting anything larger than this had to be done by hand.
“As we’ve got busier and moved into exhibitions and events, everything we produce is bigger than 3m x 2m, so we needed to find an alternative,” says Simply Beautiful Print owner and MD, Michael Tyrrell.
Simply Beautiful Print has purchased materials from CMYUK over the past five years. During this time, it has enjoyed a good relationship with Tim Boore, Senior Digital Sales Consultant. Michael evaluated various cutting and finishing solutions from different manufacturers before committing to the Kongsberg C64 Edge, which he first saw during one of CMYUK’s regular Open House events.
“We chose the C64 because after weighing everything up, Kongsberg and CMYUK were just so easy to deal with. The technology and the tools behind the Kongsberg are really advanced, you can clearly see the thought that’s gone into its development.
It’s also exceptionally good value and has a fantastic reputation. As a piece of equipment, it looks very impressive in our production facility,” says Michael Tyrell
Kongsberg C series
The Kongsberg C Edge is the newest cutting table in the Kongsberg C series. It has a working area of 3210 mm x 3200 mm and offers a top speed of 75m/min. Future proof, it is specifically designed to grow with your company, and can be easily upgraded for faster speed and acceleration. It features a 3kW liquid cooled router with extraction for consistent milling accuracy.
Simply Beautiful Print bought several tools for both textile and packaging work that includes a RotaCut knife for fabrics, Rigid Material Knife, Kiss cut knife, High frequency Vibracut knife, and a Heavy Duty Crease unit. The table has an option for a conveyor that provides a continuous flat feed of material during cutting, which is not curtailed by size of the bed. It moves smoothly across the tabletop, eliminating any wrinkles or folds and a straight advancement means that cuts are always in perfect registration with the print.
The cutting table can be fitted with a conveyor at time of machine build or retrofitted at a later date.
The conveyor was a must for the business, due to its need to cut material longer than the table bed. This option was added to the quote as a standard item. “It’s a really big plus for us to have a conveyor that will enable us to cut long lines. We’ve now got all the tools to cut fabrics as well as cardboard and the like, which means we can do point of sale work and expand our application range to offer more products that are going to be far easier to produce,” says Michael.
“The Rotacut fabric tool is something we’ve never used before, previously we were cutting fabrics with a fixed blade, which wasn’t easy as it dragged the corners of the material, making them fray a little,” he adds.
Simply Beautiful Print also purchased Quickbox packaging design software, to enable it to create bespoke packaging. This software come with a library of parametric (rescalable) standard designs including FEFCO & ECMA libraries as well as a wide selection of POS (including FSDU) and countertop designs.
The Kongsberg C64 Edge was installed just before Christmas, and four members of staff have been trained to use it. “The training was really good and extensive, running over three days. In fact, the trainer was the same person who actually built the machine,” says Michael.
Exhibition graphics now account for 90% of the company’s business and 3.2m wide fabric at varying lengths accounts for the majority of the output.
“The Kongsberg C64 Edge enables us to cut fabric easily and accurately.
We are now running longer rolls with multiple jobs on them, you just load the roll onto the back of the Kongsberg, and it cuts each job down. It’s allowed us to become very efficient and not cut anything by hand,” says Michael.
Due to a five-fold speed increase, the company has become significantly more efficient and productive, allowing it to handle greater volumes.
“We’re only a team of 6 including me and we were under a great deal of pressure before, as we were having to cut alot of fabric down on the floor. The C64 Edge has improved the well-being of staff as they’re not having to crawl around on the floor anymore on their hands and knees. Now only 1 employee does the cutting, freeing the others to set up jobs. We’re no longer burning ourselves out working long hours. We’re doing the same job but, in less time, which is allowing us to take on more work. We really needed that efficiency,” says Michael.
The Kongsberg has given the company the opportunity to bring more processes in-house, supporting its journey to become fully self-sufficient.
Says Michael, “We know we can finish fabrics ourselves faster and to the highest quality. Our turnover has doubled in the last 12 months, and the Kongsberg has given us the capacity, and driven our productivity and efficiency significantly.”
