Think back to the last time you made Christmas cookies with your grandmother. You know, those sugar cookies shaped like candy canes, Christmas trees and snowflakes that are topped in icing and colored sugar. They are a big part of my family’s holiday traditions, and I looked forward to making them every year. Creating those complex shapes was no big deal, even for a little girl. They came out perfect every time, thanks to cookie cutters, those metal cut-out shapes that ensured a high degree of accuracy. Without them, the candy canes would be indistinguishable from the trees. Now, take the idea of a cookie cutter, make it automated and take it from your grandmother’s kitchen and into a manufacturing environment...what do you have? Die cutting—the industrial process that takes 2 dimensional sheets of material and forms them into complex shapes using a metal saw, diamond tipped saw or, more recently, laser beams.
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