i-cut, inc. to Debut at ISA 2009

GENT, Belgium—i-cut, inc., a new OEM business unit developed from EskoArtwork's acquisition of Mikkelsen Graphics Engineering (MGE), will show the benefits of digital finishing technology to 'design, RIP, print, finish, and deliver' at booth 3966 during ISA International Sign Expo 2009, April 15-18 in Las Vegas. The company will display its new i-cut 7.0 as well as its i-script and ai-cut technologies.

"i-cut inc.'s 'vision' continues the work we began at MGE," comments Steen Mikkelsen, EskoArtwork vice president. "With the introduction of i-cut 7.0, we keep on developing cutting edge vision software for finishing machines serving sign and display companies. We look forward to showing leaders in our industry how our technology can benefit sign shop customers."

Mikkelsen Graphics Engineering (MGE) has the longest track record of working with its customers to provide the best possible workflow solutions for specialty graphics printing and finishing. The industry's leading vision-based finishing/cutting workflow tools, i-cut(r) and i-script(r), were developed by MGE. Due to this extensive technology track record, over 36 of the industry's leading RIP, printer and cutter and router manufacturers team with MGE's software solutions. After EskoArtwork's acquisition of MGE in late 2008, the OEM efforts of the company continued as i-cut inc., a wholly owned business unit of EskoArtwork.

i-cut's new i-cut(r) 7.0 vision software takes print material specifications from the work stream, including cutting keys that supply operators with optimized tool settings and blade/bit recommendations to new way to process materials with preset cutting parameters. This makes finishing setup even easier and simplifies the tasks necessary for start-up of each unique job. i-cut 7.0 sports a new, streamlined multi-document user interface and is fully Microsoft VISTA compatible. There are a number of enhanced production tools. By eliminating a pen lift with multi-pass routing, it provides improved speed. A new registration algorithm-including the ability to read all registration marks before cutting-delivers improved quality with placement registration. A new tool offset algorithm handles close curves as one unit, while improvements have also led to smoother cuts. Users can now export i-cut data to PDF format to print jobs or return them to an editing application, such as Adobe Illustrator. A new, advanced help system is available from all dialogs, and is provided with multimedia teaching videos, schematics, and animations. Visitors can see i-cut 7.0 in action on the Kongsberg i-XL 24 on the EskoArtwork booth.