Freestyle Designs produces safety shields

Freestyle Designs, an established branding and signage business located in Bath - United Kingdom - are working 24-hour shifts to produce safety shields and rubber straps. This way, they contribute to the beautiful initiatives, emerging in every corner of the world to fight the Coronavirus.

Shortly after the Corona breakout, the company was approached by a local community initiative. They asked Freestyle Designs if they were able to help by making face shields for the National Health Service (NHS) to help in the battle against COVID-19. The community initiative found out that Freestyle Designs owns a much larger laser cutter than theirs and they started testing.

Initially, a laser cutter was used to cut out the shields. Although it worked, the finishing of the shields was not all that efficient and clean. At this point, Freestyle Designs decided to give it a go on their Summa F1612 flatbed cutter. The results were much better. By using a combination of the Double Edge Cutout Knife and the Kiss-Cut tool, the company was able to produce the shields by the thousands – with ease, but without mess or fumes.

To enable even faster production of the safety shields the company contacted Summa to arrange an F-Performance upgrade on their F1612 flatbed cutter.

Jayson Godridge explains: “The usage of the F-Performance mode on the F1612 made a huge difference to our production speed. This way we were able to increase the number of finished shields by an additional 2500 per day. The small gains on feed speed and tool movement really add up to give us around 30% additional productivity on this particular project.”

 

Jayson Godridge, director of Freestyle Designs adds: “We have used the Summa machine for a few years and it has by far been the most reliable and productive piece of equipment we have. Not only has it created an amazing workflow for cutting out all our signage work, ranging from vinyl, banners, wallpaper, foamboard through to alu composite and even acrylic  -  It has opened many more doors and opportunities over the years for us, introducing us to new markets like packaging design and Point of Sale. Something we could never have done before.”

Meanwhile, the F1612 flatbed cutter is literally running 24/7 at the moment to enable to get the protective face shield asap to the frontline workers.

“The Summa F1612 has not missed a beat since the commissioning. It is a true workhorse – a remarkable and versatile piece of equipment. I could simply not imaging being without it.”