Which Custom Cutting or Converting Method is Best for My Converted Tape Part?
When working with pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) tapes, open and closed cell foams, rubber sheet goods, and insulation in manufacturing environments, precision is reliant on the converting method (from cutting to lamination) used to make your customize part. Whether you’re using PSA tapes for electronics and medical devices, or foam tapes for automotive and insulation tapes for HVAC systems, they must be converted into exact shapes and sizes to meet design specs, enhance performance, and integrate seamlessly into production.
Selecting the right converting method for your converted tape part can significantly impact cost, lead time, material yield, performance, and downstream process efficiency. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, only the best method for your specific application, material, and production volume.
Why Custom Cutting Matters in PSA Tape Converting
Converting PSA tape into high-performing functional parts requires more than just cutting material to shape. The process must deliver consistency across thousands of identical parts while preserving the adhesive’s integrity and the substrate’s dimensional characteristics. Choosing the right cutting method helps ensure:
Precision: tight tolerances are often required for gasket seals, EMI shielding, and optically clear applications.
Part consistency: uniform output is crucial in industries with strict QA protocols such as aerospace, medical, and automotive.
Waste reduction: matching the right cutting method to material properties reduces scrap and maximizes yield.
Speed and scalability: whether you're prototyping or scaling to full production, the right process improves throughput.
Material compatibility: delicate adhesives and multi-layer laminates require non-invasive cutting to preserve performance.
What to Consider When Choosing a Cutting Method
What are your part’s unique requirements? These will help you choose the best converting methods. Some criteria to consider include:
Part geometry and tolerances: intricate shapes, internal cutouts, or tight dimensional specs may favor laser or die cutting, whereas simpler rectangular parts may be better suited for slitting or sheeting.
Adhesive, carrier, and liner materials: some laminating adhesives have a polyester, tissue, or filmic carrier, while others have no carrier affecting which cutting method is the most successful. The density, rigidity, and thickness of foam, rubber, insulation, film, or foil carriers also influence how cleanly the part can be cut. Liners come in a variety of paper weights and film types and thicknesses, which affect their ability for clean cuts.
Production volume: high-volume production calls for scalable, cost-effective methods like rotary die cutting or level winding. Short runs or prototypes benefit from laser or knife cutting with no tooling costs.
Application environment: end-use conditions—temperature, moisture, vibration—affect not just material selection but also how it’s handled and cut.
Liner type and handling needs: kiss cutting requires precise liner handling, especially if parts are being picked from a roll. Paper liners and film liners behave differently in each cutting method.
Budget and lead time: tooling costs and setup time vary significantly by method. Prototyping often favors flexibility and speed, while production favors repeatability and throughput.
Custom Converting Capabilities for PSA Tapes
At Engineered Materials, we offer a complete suite of custom cutting solutions to meet your exact requirements, whether you’re producing a handful of prototypes or thousands of high-precision parts.
Die Cutting
Die cutting is best used for high-volume, high-precision production. It delivers tight tolerances, clean edges, and excellent repeatability. Depending on your design, we can use kiss cutting (cutting through the adhesive but not the liner), through-cutting (cutting all the way through), or a combination of both. We also offer liner tabs to make part removal easier during manual or automated assembly.
Die cutting is ideal for medical diagnostics, automotive seals, electronics insulation, and many other use cases where dimensional control is critical.
Laser Cutting
Laser cutting excels at flexibility and speed because it’s a no-tooling process. This makes it perfect for quick-turn prototypes or parts with complex internal geometries. You can use it to test multiple design iterations in quick succession. It’s also a non-contact method, which means it can be used on fragile materials or for applications that can’t tolerate mechanical pressure or shear. Lastly, laser cutting allows for highly intricate cut designs.
Laser cutting allows engineers to test multiple iterations without the lead time and cost of building custom dies, making it especially useful during the design phase.
Waterjet Cutting
Waterjet cutting uses a high-pressure stream of water (with or without abrasives) to cleanly cut through thick, rigid, or layered materials. It is well-suited to cutting dense foams, high-durometer rubbers, and multi-layer tape assemblies that may deform or burn under laser or die cutting. This process creates clean, burr-free edges even for thicker parts. It can be used to cut parts in three dimensions.
Because there is no heat involved, the process avoids thermal distortion. Waterjet cutting is also ideal for producing larger parts or 3D profiles used in industrial, construction, and appliance components. If you are working with heavy-duty or multi-layer parts, large lots of larger parts, or dense or layered materials, use waterjet cutting.
Many PSA tape parts that are converted with waterjet cutting are suitable for construction, appliance, or industrial components.
Knife Cutting
Knife cutting, sometimes called digital or flatbed cutting, offers the benefits of flexibility without tooling. It works well for prototypes, short runs, or large-format parts. Unlike die cutting, knife cutting does not require physical dies or tooling, which makes it cost-effective for small batches or products still in development. It’s also useful when testing multiple design iterations quickly.
Engineers often choose knife cutting for short run items, gasketing prototypes, difficult to die-cut materials, or parts where size or complexity rules out traditional die methods.
Slitting and Rewinding
Slitting allows us to take jumbo rolls of PSA material and cut them to custom widths for roll-based production. It’s ideal when long, continuous strips are needed or when narrow-width rolls are integrated into automated assembly. It also offers excellent support for low and high volume runs or continuous parts, or narrow-width applications.
We also offer level winding, which creates wound rolls in spool format. These rolls can be thousands of feet long with very narrow widths, making them ideal for machine applied extrusions or continuous sealing lines.
Sheeting
Sheeting is used when square or rectangular parts are needed in large volumes. It’s a highly efficient method for maximizing material yield with minimal waste. Perforated sheeting options allow for easy separation during manual assembly or in pick-and-place processes. It’s very cost-effective when used in high-volume production, and there is a higher yielding method for square and rectangle parts.
Laminating
Many of the materials we cut begin as multi-layer constructions. Laminating allows us to combine PSA layers with films, foils, foams, or specialty liners to create custom tapes or functional part stacks. This is particularly useful when manufacturing gaskets, thermal barriers, or EMI shields with very specific mechanical or electrical properties.
Lamination creates multi-layer composite materials and can be performed before or after cutting. It prepares tapes for further slitting, die cutting, or assembly and is often an essential step in creating multifunctional adhesive parts. Keep in mind that it is required when combining adhesive layers with films or substrates
How to Determine the Best Fit
To make sure your converted part performs as expected and stays within budget, collaborate with our team to talk about your parts, their application, and the environment in which they will be used. We work with you to find the best solution, and you can help by sharing CAD drawings or dimensioned part files as early as possible. This streamlines quoting and reduces iteration time.
We will help you:
Test different cutting methods during prototyping to evaluate edge quality, adhesive behavior, and assembly fit.
Consider not just the material, but also its thickness, liner stiffness, and any multi-layer interactions.
Think about downstream handling: will parts be applied manually, by robot, or peeled from a roll? Your cutting method should complement that process.
Factor in long-term goals. If you plan to scale to high volumes, it may be wise to design with die cutting or level winding in mind.