Kiss-cut weeding channels for clean router cuts
·6 min read
Routing a laminated or vinyl-faced panel without preparing the face is how you get lifted edges and furred laminate. The fix is a kiss-cut channel the width of the bit: cut it first, weed the strip out, then route into bare material.
Why the face has to come off first
A router bit does not slice vinyl, it drags it. On Dibond with a printed and laminated face the bit picks up the film at the leading edge, and on acrylic the heat softens the laminate adhesive so it rolls into the cut. Both leave an edge that has to be trimmed by hand afterwards.
If the film is removed along the exact line the bit will travel, the bit only ever meets substrate. The edge comes off the bed finished, with no post-trimming and no lifted corners.
The channel is the bit, not a guess
The channel needs to be as wide as the cutter's kerf and no wider. Offset the cut profile by the bit radius on the waste side and you get a channel that matches the tool: a 4mm bit removes a 4mm strip, so the profile plus a 4mm offset copy is exactly the material the bit will consume.
Counters matter as much as outer profiles. The middle of an O, a drilled hole, a cut-out window — the bit runs on the inside of those, so the channel copy has to shrink rather than grow. Offsetting everything outward is the usual mistake and it leaves film in the cut on every internal shape.
Unite the channels where parts sit close
When nested parts are closer together than twice the bit width, their channels overlap. Two overlapping outlines mean the knife crosses its own path inside the weeding strip, which chops the strip into fragments you then have to pick out individually.
Uniting overlapping channels into a single outline gives you one strip to lift. Where channels are clear of each other, leave them as their own paths so curves stay exactly as drawn.
The run order on the flatbed
- Kiss-cut layer first, tool set to cut the film and laminate only, not the substrate.
- Pause the machine at the end of the kiss-cut layer.
- Weed the channel strips out by hand — one continuous strip per united outline.
- Resume and run the router layer along the original profile.
- Drill and crease layers last, so registration is not disturbed while material is still attached.
What the export has to contain
The original profile must stay where it is. The channel is an additional path, not a replacement — if the exporter moves the profile out to the offset position the router cuts the job oversize by the bit width.
Each process needs its own top-level layer in the cutter file so the machine can be paused between them. A file where kiss-cut and route arrive merged cannot be run this way at all.
How PSD Pro Suite does it
Turn on the kiss-cut layer, switch on Offset path and pick the bit you are cutting with — 2mm, 4mm or 6mm, or type your own figure. The profile stays put, the channel copy is added on the waste side with counters shrunk, and touching channels are united into one outline.
It works the same on artwork that arrived with its own cut layers, on generated geometry in Setup Pro, on true-shape nested letters in Shape Nest, and on nested hoarding panels.
Run it on a live job
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