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The Industrial Cookie Cutters

Making cut-out cookies with my family is a favorite childhood memory as well as a traditional holiday activity that I hope will continue all my life. Making the homemade sugar cookie dough, fighting over favorite cookie cutters and playing with flour while music plays and baking cookie smells fill the kitchen is the epitome of comfort and joy for my family. I have heard that there is actually a cutting of industrial material process that closely resembles cookie cutter methods, but without the warm smells and flour involved. However this process, known as kiss cutting, is fascinating indeed.

The kiss cutting technique is a specific style of die cutting that does not fully pierce the material being cut but leaves one layer whole. This is done because one of the other two layers is usually an adhesive and the product as a whole will not be useful if its adhesive is free to stick to whatever comes in contact with it. The uncut section of a kiss cut product is usually paper or a related material from which the rest of the die cut product is pulled when it is being used. For example, some gaskets have an adhesive backing, which means that they manufactured as a three layer sheet and cut down to size with the gasket plastic or rubber layer and adhesive sliced through but the paper back protecting the adhesive intact. Therefore, when a buyer is ready to apply the gasket, they can do so easily. Stickers, labels and foam shapes and letters used in classrooms are other more well known examples of kiss cut products. Other industrial examples include medical foam products, thermal pads and complex decals, all of which are mass produced. Although the overall experience of kiss cutting is nothing like making cut-out cookies with cookie cutters, the technical process benefits many industrial, commercial and residential applications, making it a worthwhile endeavor.