Pro Atelier Plus

Customer Test: Foam-Backed Automotive Leather

Edge-skiving test on automotive interior trim material using the KTWO K2C2-S Automatic Skiving Machine.

Requirement: a clean, even edge with a near-vertical profile rather than the sloping edge commonly produced by conventional circular-knife skiving.

Result: clean, consistent and vertical.

Last year, we visited in Belgium 🇧🇪 to help install the KTWO K7546 Compact Splitting Machine and give an introduction to using it.
As dog lovers, one of the highlights was definitely meeting Sao and Shaska, two gorgeous Bernese Mountain Dog × Husky mixes. 🐶
We’ve known David since the very early days of our business, so it was quite special to realise how quickly the time has gone.
Trips like this never feel like purely business. They’re also a chance to visit clients who have become friends, see how they work, and understand a little more about their life in person. There’s something really nice about two small businesses growing and supporting each other along the way.
Whenever we travel for work, we also try to leave some time to explore the city properly, museums, local shops, cafés, restaurants and do some street photography, all the things we naturally enjoy anyway.

Let’s talk about cutting dies:
There are several types of cutting dies used in leather production, and the cost can vary enormously depending on the size, complexity and construction.
The most common is the traditional steel-rule / clicker die, widely used by small to medium leather goods manufacturers.
These can be wood-backed, acrylic-backed, or made as freestanding steel dies with welded supports. Pair them with a clicker or hydraulic press.
Asian-made dies can be surprisingly affordable, while professionally made custom dies in the UK or Europe can cost considerably more, especially when a larger product requires a complete set of dies.
At the other end, you have CNC-machined solid steel dies.
Rather than bending steel rule around the shape of a pattern, these are precision-machined from solid tool steel. They can offer excellent rigidity, accuracy and longevity, but the material and machining involved also make them considerably more expensive.
For a handbag with many individual components, the cost, and storage space, for a complete collection of dies can quickly add up.
But does that mean an oscillating knife cutting machine replaces cutting dies and clicker presses?
Not necessarily, and probably not.
If you manufacture the same handbag in large quantities every day, a good cutting die and hydraulic press can still be incredibly fast and efficient.
Where digital cutting becomes particularly interesting is for designers, makers and workshops dealing with many different products, customers and patterns.
Instead of manufacturing and storing a new set of dies every time a design changes, you can simply work from the digital pattern.
That opens up possibilities such as:
• Digital leather cutting services
• Prototypes and samples
• Small production runs
• Pattern digitisation
• Automatic nesting
• Custom handbag panels
• One-off pieces without investing
in tooling
So for us, it’s not really digital cutting vs cutting dies.
It’s about having the right tool for the right type of production.

A little history behind the KTWO K7546 Compact Splitting Machine.
Before this model was officially launched in China, there was already a surprising amount of interest in it, mainly because of its compact size, its ability to bring bring professional leather splitting into much smaller studios, and the trust customers already had in the KTWO brand. Us being one of them.

At that stage, KTWO was still refining some of the final details, including the shape of the corners and the colour options. So for the first 20 pre-orders, they did something quite fun: they allowed those customers to customise parts of the machine themselves. It meant the earliest users were, in a small way, part of the development process.

The K7546 originally came in two colours: matcha green and off-white. The matcha green has since been officially discontinued, so anyone who owns one now technically has a limited edition. We actually sold several of the green machines in Europe, and personally, we still think that colour gives the machine a slightly more vintage character.

Five years on, more than 300 K7546 machines have been sold in mainland China alone, used by individual makers, small workshops and professional studios and factories.

This Reel shows photos from some of the very first 20 users in China, a nice reminder of how the machine started, and how far it has come since then.

And just for fun: if you could choose the colour of your own K7546, what colour would you want yours to be? 😉

An example of what you can create with the KTWO K8051-GA Oscillating Knife Cutting Machine.
As well as cutting patterns for larger leather goods, the machine can also be used for more creative work, such as leather marquetry and decorative accessories.
You can lay out different materials and colours on the cutting bed, then programme the system to cut specific shapes from specific areas in a single setup.
This makes it possible to work with multiple materials efficiently while keeping the cutting process accurate and consistent.