Making acrylic leather templates

Making acrylic leather templates is a relative fast, low-cost way to take your design into production. You might want to test your leather product to market first before spending a lot of money on industrial cutting knives.

After you have created your product, its time to start digitaliseren your design. I use adobe illustrator and I would really recommend it because there is a lot of open online information, so it relative easy to teach your self. Digitizing is important, if you want to take the next step in having industrial cutting knives made, you also need a digital drawing. It also makes it easy to adjust parts afterwards.

What is better cardboard or acrylic templates?

It depends on the volume of use. If you’re using it only a few times or for just a single project, then cardboard would be fine. Make sure to use hardboard (with high density).

If your planing on using it multiple times for producing. Then go for acrylic. I am splitting it in the middle and went for acrylic sheets. Its thinner and cheaper, but still resistent to water and is not easily damaged. Another advantages of acrylic templates is that they can be transparent, this way you can still see and avoid imperfections in the leather.

Lasercutting acrylic sheets.

Lasercutting is super precise. something that is often difficult to match by hand and it is a lot faster. That’s why we cut all acrylic templates using the laser. Of course doing it by hand is possible. But I would recommend to check if there is a lasercut service somewhere in your city. Because the time and mistakes you can avoid its worth it.

Trace acrylic leather templates.

For tracing we use a white gel pen. Our leather is finished with a coating and we can easily remove this white gel from our leather with a demp cloth. Always test this on your leather first. other way is to use the back of the leather or pencil or scratcher.

Best way to cut leather

The way I cut leather is for the straight parts I always use a standy-knive and ruler. For organic parts use scissors. I use KAI 7250 scissors and they cut through leather like butter.

For punching I use a spindel with coupling piece Hollow pipe 3mm.

And there you have it, Your own acrylic templates easy to make, easy to use a good alternatieve for leather cutting knives.