Everybody loves lasers! Lasers immediately conjure up thoughts of Imperial Storm Troopers bearing down on rebel forces, a doctor performing life changing eye surgery or for the less imaginative, the scanning of your barcodes at the supermarket. Lasers are pretty much everywhere these days and the print industry has also found a way to harness their power.
So what is laser cutting? Laser cutting is a technology that uses a laser to cut or etch materials like glass, perspex, aluminium and paper, leaving a high quality finish on the edge. The shape that is to be cut must firstly be digitally generated on a computer and then the laser head follows this shape during the cutting process. You can see it in action below.
So why laser cut instead of diecut? With these Pure Interiors business cards there are three layers of paper glued together in a process known as triplexing. Two layers of 350gsm Colorplan Dark Grey and a layer of 450gsm Boxboard to give a super chunky 1150gsm result.
Because the cards are so thick, if we were to attempt to diecut, the pressure of die on the paper would cause buckling of the cards at the edges. With laser cutting however, we can simply cut through the three layers without putting any pressure on the paper itself. Just a matter of setting the intensity and speed of the laser to ensure the paper does not get burned and away we go.
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