Picture shows shears slide cutting fabric.
What is slide cutting?
Slide cutting is one method used to cut fabric, instead of opening and closing the blades as someone normally does with scissors they use the blades of a scissors as two knife blades.
The operator opens the blades partially and then slides the blades cleanly through the product that is going to be cut. With fabric you may need to do a starter cut then you are able to slide through the material. When my parents owned a sewing center in Michigan they had a slot cut into their cutting tables and used this slot to guide the scissors as the slide cut the fabric for the customer. This works for best stiffer fabrics like cotton and vinyl.
Slide cutting is also used to remove flash when a product is removed from a mold. Flash is the excess plastic or rubber that is left behind at the parting lines or where the two molds come together. Scissors with curved blades are more popular for this application.
Scissors need to have both blades honed during the sharpening process to make it easier to slide cut. The operator also needs to change the point on the scissors the materials make contact with it or you get a heavy worn spot at this point on the scissors.
Contact us at Wolff if you have questions or need help with your slide cutting operations.
