Supplying artwork

• Set the artboard to the finished trim size, then add 3mm bleed all round.
• Supply at actual size, 1:1. No crop marks, no registration marks, no slug.
• PDF preferred. Save from Illustrator with Create Acrobat Layers on so named layers and spot colours survive the export. PNG or JPEG accepted only for simple rectangles.
• Flat colour that runs to the edge? Extend it into the bleed so pieces can butt on a shared cut line.

Nothing extra needed. If the piece is a plain rectangle or a rectangle with radius corners, we derive the cut from the trim size and set the radius at imposition.

Shaped pieces, internal holes, cut-and-crease nets — anything that can't be described by a rectangle — must carry the profile in the file. Draw it like this:

• A closed path with a stroke and no fill. Weight doesn't matter — 0.25pt is fine, the cutter follows the path, not the width.
• Stroke it in a spot swatch named exactly as below. A process-red 0/100/100/0 looks identical on screen but carries no name, so nothing downstream can separate it.
• Set the swatch to overprint stroke so it can never ink if the file goes elsewhere.
• Put it on its own layer, named the same — belt and braces, and it keeps the file tidy.
• Keep the path in position over the artwork. Don't move, scale or outline it.

CutContour is the industry standard name — Caldera, Onyx and Zünd all recognise it. Spelling matters; case doesn't.

• Setup Pro reads the separation out of your PDF and uses it as the cut geometry at every position.
• The print PDF goes to the printer with the cut layer suppressed, so it can never ink.
• The cutter file carries the profiles and register marks only, on the same imposition — so it lands in register on the table.
• If we can't find a named separation we fall back to the trim rectangle and come back to you.

• Actual size, 3mm bleed, no marks
• Cut path = closed, stroked, spot named CutContour, overprint on
• Cut path on a layer of the same name
• Fonts outlined or embedded, images at least 150dpi at size