8842 · 500 holographic ovals
The artwork stops dead on the right edge. There is nothing to pull out into the bleed, so a cut that wanders will show white.
Today so far.
34designs came in
30prepped and sat in a queue
4waiting on youthe only column that needs a person
7.0 mmedia not used
What it did to the other thirty.
Three things, on every job, before anybody looked at it.
01
Bleed
The artwork gets extended past the trim so a cut that wanders never shows a white lip. Where the edge is a photograph or a texture it carries that outward itself. Where something deliberate runs off the edge, it asks you first.
Set once, per material, in millimetres.
02
Cutter border
The offset path your plotter follows, and the keyline the customer is expecting, drawn at the distance that machine needs and named the way that machine reads it.
Canon, Mimaki and Epson all want it slightly differently.
03
How it sits on the roll
Alternate rows offset so each piece sits into the gap beside it, laid across the width of the roll it is actually going on, with the spacing your cutter needs and nothing more.
Turning a shape on its own saves almost nothing. Interlocking is where the roll is won.
The files reach it the way they reach you now, from your shop, a watched folder or a mailbox. It puts the finished file back where your RIP already looks. Nothing upstream of it changes.
So look at these.
Four it would not guess on. Read one, press a button, and it goes.
8847 · 1200 kiss-cut rounds
The design touches its own cut line in two places. Cutting there takes a bite out of the artwork.
8851 · 300 doming stickers
The top edge fades out rather than stopping. It cannot tell where you want the cut, so it has not drawn one.
8853 and 8859 · same material
Two separate orders, both on white vinyl 1370. Hold 8853 for about forty minutes and the two share a roll instead of taking one each.
Example jobs, using a made up print shop.
Ready, and nobody has pressed print.
19 jobs, 41.4 m across three machines.
Canon
UV · 1650 mm · 6 jobs · 11.4 m8836900 square labels, 40 mm2.1 m
8839400 fluorescent triangles1.6 m
88442000 rounds, 30 mm3.4 m
8848150 reflective panels2.2 m
8850600 ovals, 70 by 50 mm1.6 m
8855250 magnetic squares0.5 m
Mimaki
Eco-solvent · 1610 mm · 9 jobs · 22.8 m88313000 kiss-cut rounds, 25 mm4.8 m
88371200 die-cut custom shape5.1 m
8840800 rectangles, 90 by 50 mm3.2 m
8843500 glow in the dark stars1.9 m
88462400 ovals, 45 by 30 mm3.6 m
8852300 heat resistant labels1.1 m
8854150 window stickers, reverse1.4 m
8856700 rounds, 55 mm1.2 m
8858200 bumper stickers0.5 m
Epson
Resin · 1626 mm · 4 jobs · 7.2 m88341500 paper labels, 35 mm2.4 m
8841600 matt squares, 60 mm2.0 m
8849900 gloss ovals1.8 m
8857400 eco paper rounds1.0 m
Worth knowing.
Nothing here is urgent. All of it costs money quietly.
8844 is the same artwork as 8102 from March
Same customer, same shape, same size. It used the file that was already prepped, so nothing was laid out twice.
White vinyl 1370 is down to 14 m
What is queued for it needs 19 m. Two jobs will stop short some time this afternoon.
The Mimaki queue is four hours deep
8846 and 8856 would both run on the Epson without changing anything except the cut line name.
What it does not touch.
You already have a working shop. This sits in front of it and hands over.
- Your RIP stays your RIP. It receives a file, the same as it does now.
- Colour profiles are left alone. It does not decide what your media should look like.
- It does not speak to your customers, quote, or answer the phone.
- It does not choose which machine a job runs on. It prepares for the one you tell it.
Four months in
Is it working?
Nearly three hundred hours of laying out that nobody did, and a hundred and twenty six metres of media not used, in August alone. The workings are here if you want them.
641designs prepped in August
298 hrsof laying out nobody didabout two people, every day
126 mof media not used
€770what it has charged youexample rate, yours goes here
Media wasted, by month.
Six complete months. Backgate went live in May.
Laid out by hand
Since Backgate
Feb 208 m · Mar 219 m · Apr 201 m · May 92 m · Jun 71 m · Jul 63 m
The drop is not a better printer or a better operator. It is the same jobs, turned and interlocked before they reach the machine.
When the designs land.
Share of the week, by time of day.
More than half arrive after everyone has gone home. They are prepped and sitting in a queue before anyone opens the door, which is why the morning starts with a decision rather than a pile.
Where it stopped, and why.
83 files handed back this month rather than guessed at.
It filled the bleed itself on 340 files this month, by extending the edge where extending was safe. These 38 are the ones where doing that would have changed somebody’s design, so it asked instead. A bleed rule at the point of upload would thin the list further, and that is a change to your website, not to your print room.
Approved design to sitting in a queue.
Minutes, by job type.
By hand
Now
By hand 22 · 41 · 55 min Now 3 · 6 · 9 min
The harder the shape, the bigger the gap. Holographic and doming took the longest by hand because the cut path and the white layer were drawn separately.
And the part it cannot fix.
One number on this page is not ours to improve. It is here anyway.
3 hrs 10 min
The average time a job sat prepped, waiting for one of you to look at it. That is the slowest step in the whole month, and it is the one step it will not take for you. Everyone else selling this would leave it off the page.
By machine.
August, to the 26th.
| Machine | Jobs | Metres | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canon | 214 | 386 | 31% |
| Mimaki | 331 | 604 | 48% |
| Epson | 96 | 267 | 21% |
The Mimaki takes almost half the work and is the only machine that has queued past four hours this month. 41 of its jobs would have run on the Epson with nothing changed but the name of the cut line.
Nothing you did not agree to.
Your ceiling, and what it did about it.
96busiest day, against a ceiling of 200
0times it reached the ceiling
0files sent to a machine without one of you
0invoices you did not see coming
If it ever does reach your ceiling it puts the work down, tells you, and waits. It does not carry on and bill you for the overrun.
Send us one job you ran last week.
A shape, a quantity, the material and the machine it went on. We will lay it out and show you what it would have used instead. If the number is not worth your time, you have lost an email and we will say so ourselves.