How are stickers & labels cut and what are the limitations?

There are three main ways to cut custom stickers or labels: digital cutting, die cutting, or laser cutting.

Laser cutting

Laser cutting uses high-powered lasers to vaporize material in their path. It can cut any shape, is extremely fast (up to 100 meters per minute), and has a cutting accuracy of 0.1 mm.

More companies in the digital printing industry are adopting laser cutting because it’s fast and highly accurate.

Digital cutting

Digital motors control a small, ultra-sharp blade to cut stickers on a flatbed cutter, like this:

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Popular flatbed cutter suppliers include Zund, Summa, and many others.

These machines range from entry-level models to advanced systems costing over $125,000. They’re used to cut a wide variety of materials, including leather, plastic, cardboard, and fabric.

Die cutting

Traditional die cutting has been around for hundreds of years. A metal die, which is a thin strip of metal bent into the desired shape, is stamped into the sheet of printed material to cut out the sticker. Like this:

Once the die is made, it’s incredibly fast to cut thousands of stickers, making this method cost-effective for bulk label production even today.

A more modern version of traditional die cutting is semi-rotary die cutting, widely used in the label industry. In this setup, the die is attached to a rotating roll, and as the printed roll of film moves underneath, the die cuts the stickers.

It looks like this:

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This method is great for simple shapes like rectangles, squares, circles, and ovals.

Want to learn more about custom sticker and label printing? Then check out our blog, or get in touch with our experts if you have any questions.