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LEATN MORE: https://www.diylea.com/collections/cutting-die EMAIL: support@diylea.com

Ok... say you want a new cutting die? Do you guys have one made or do you make it yourself or ? I have a large hydraulic press that was used to die cut foam board for years. I have some dies for it but they are all circles of different diameters. It has about 6" of open space and is 48" wide or so. Its a two post design. I'd like to use it to cut fabric, leather, heavy vinyl etc? Dave

Cutting dies are amazing... but they can be a big initial investment. If you're not ready to jump into such a huge commitment, I think it is time for you to check out some acrylic templates. I have used this company prior to getting cutting dies made and still occasionally use them for mocking up more complex designs. They are very affordable in terms of what you get and the turn around time is fantastic. Company Details The company I use for acrylic templates is called Ponoko. From their website: What Can They Do? They offer a *ton* of different materials you can laser cut into. You can cut into various thicknesses and colors of acrylic, cardboard, wood, leather, metal and pretty much anything else you can think of. You need to have a pretty good understanding of Adobe Illustrator / Auto CAD / Inkscape (free) / CorelDraw for this to work out well. They have various "templates" where you can place your designs and they have specific directions on their website you need to follow to get everything to turn out correctly. You can do some awesome things like etching into the material to show it's dimensions or lines (in this case I used it show it was a 20mm width design as well as where the "fold" lines are). Pricing I got all these designs cut out into acrylic templates for $56.59 shipped. This was on the 31" x 15" piece of acrylic but they have smaller sizes too which cost less. The designs were cut out on 3mm thick clear acrylic. Turnaround Time This was the fifth order I've placed with them. The most recent order was placed October 23rd, went into production on October 26th, was shipped on October 30th and arrived on November 2nd. So roughly 10 days from order to delivery at my front door. Pretty wild. Outcome Here are a few of the templates I've had made which help in either deciding if I'm going to get cutting dies made out of the designs or for more one off designs. - Tall wallet - Two piece watch straps which I ended up turning into cutting dies. - NATO straps Final Thoughts As I said -- this is a good company to check out if you're still cutting out projects based off hand cut card board templates. This will definitely help your game! I know this sounds like a company shill post, but I'm 100% not affiliated with Ponoko and receive nothing from this post. I just think more people need to know about them since they're so affordable. Let me know if you have any questions!