The Equipment page lists the cutting machines, wide-format printers, sheetfed presses, guillotines, finishing machines and tools your team produces with. Estimates and imposition jobs read them to work out how long a job takes to print and cut, what that costs you and what you charge, and how the cut file is written. Open it from the Production section of the sidebar (or press g then m), or go straight to your equipment.
What your equipment is used for#
| Where | What it uses |
|---|---|
| Estimating | Each material group of an estimate prints on a printer and cuts on a cutter. The quote adds a Printing line and a Cutting line from their speeds and rates. |
| Imposition | A job's printer and cutter give the print and cut times in the Production tab and the Report. |
| Nesting on rolls | A cutter's working length and Bed boundaries decide whether roll layouts keep every part inside one bed. See Rolls, beds and lanes. |
| Cut files | An estimate's cut files use the cutter's spot colour names. Imposition cut files always use Zünd's method names. The cutter's cut-file format is the default when a download doesn't name one. |
| Cartons and boxes | Finishing machines time die-cutting, folding and gluing; rate cards price a new die or plate set, and a die on hand is reused. See Finishing machines and Tools and dies. |
A printer's print width and a cutter's working width are shown for reference. They don't limit nesting: the roll or sheet size comes from the material or the job.
Adding equipment#
Press Add machine on the Cutters tab, Add printer on the Printers tab, Add press on the Presses tab, Add guillotine on the Guillotines tab, Add finishing machine on the Finishing tab or Add tool on the Tools & dies tab. Guillotines have no presets and start from generic values; tools are added by hand. You can:
- Start from a preset. Search by model or manufacturer, check the published specs, and add it. The app copies the maker's figures and fills in practical starting values marked estimated. See The presets library.
- Set up a custom one. You get a blank machine, or a printer with one editable print mode, and fill in the rest yourself.
Either way you land on the item's settings page. Rates always start at zero, because prices are never guessed: until you set an hourly rate (and, for printers, an ink price), that equipment adds nothing to quotes, and the settings page says so in a banner.
The team default#
The first active cutter you add becomes the team's default cutter, and the first active printer becomes the default printer. Use Make default on a settings page to change it. There is always exactly one default of each kind while you have any active ones. Presses keep one default for offset and one for digital, and finishing machines one per kind (one die-cutter, one folder-gluer…).
Estimates and jobs can pick their own cutter and printer. When they don't, or when the one they picked has been archived, they use the team default. In estimates, printing is only added for materials marked as printed.
Archiving#
Archive hides a machine or printer from the pickers without deleting it, and Restore brings it back. Archiving the default hands the default to the next active item, by name. Estimates that used an archived item fall back to the team default and are re-priced.
Test, then calibrate#
Every settings page has a calculator in the side panel: Test cut for cutters, Test print for printers. They use the saved settings, so save first. Published speeds are ceilings, and real jobs are slower, so time a real job and adjust the Efficiency factor until the estimate matches. Cutters have a Calibrate from a timed job panel that suggests the factor for you. Details are on Printers and Cutting machines.
Changing a rate, a speed or the default re-prices the team's estimates that depend on it.
Sheetfed presses and sheet work#
Sheetfed offset and digital cut-sheet presses have their own tab, Presses (see Presses: sheetfed offset and digital), and guillotines have the Guillotines tab (see Cutting machines). Offset work is meant to print on a press, never on a wide-format printer; N-up and strips sheets are meant to be cut on a guillotine, and true-shape work on a cutting table.
Imposition jobs follow this: an offset job's Production card times and prices printing on its press (the one chosen in Settings…, else the team's default offset press), N-up and strips sheets are timed on the team's default guillotine, and true-shape work on the job's cutting machine. A digital sheet job prints on a digital press only when you choose one in Settings…; otherwise it prints on its printer, so rigid-board work stays on a flatbed.
Through the API#
Printers, presses, machines, guillotines, finishing machines, tools and tool rate cards have a REST API under the production tag of the API reference (see Equipment API): list, create (printers, presses, machines and finishing machines also from a preset), edit, archive, set the default, and run the same test calculators.