How to Make Shoe Cutting Dies
Mass production of footwear requires cutting every type of shoe material. Shoe leather, fabric, foam, and reinforcing materials must all be cut into the shoe pattern shapes. While there are many new technologies for cutting shoe materials such as a laser, water jet, and CNC drag knife; the steel rule cutting die is still the most common for footwear production.
Shoe parts cutting dies

Used to cut out shoe parts, these steel cutting dies and shoe sole cutters look just like cookie cutters. Each mould and dies is made of sharpened rule steel then coated with rust proof paint and marked with the shoe size and model number. Making a shoe requires hundreds of dies. One die for each part, for every size of a shoe. For high volume shoe production, the shoe factory may need many sets of cutting dies.
Making footwear cutting dies
The cutting die maker starts with the cut paper pattern templates of the shoe pattern. The worker will then bend the rule steel into shape using the paper pattern as a guide.
The worker uses a special bench that will help bend the metal. The bench has a foot-operated anvil that moves the tool head to make the bends. A skilled worker can make each cutting die outline in just a few minutes.
The final operations to make the shoe cutting dies include coating it with rust proof paint and a final check to make sure the cutting edge is very sharp. While there are many operations required to make shoe cuttings dies the production is fast, the materials and labor are relatively inexpensive. For small orders, a cutting die fee may be charged by the shoe factory, but usually, the cost of the cutting dies are accounted for the LOP (labor, overhead and profit) charges.
What is Tungsten Carbide Nozzle?
Cemented carbide nozzle is made of precision machinery and cemented carbide material (superhard alloy). The bending resistance is 2300n / mm and the hardness is hra90 degree. When machining cemented carbide nozzle, we achieve precision grinding and surface treatment to achieve the hole roughness of ra0.1 and the roughness of both ends of R is Ra0.025. There is a scientific radius of curvature design at the two entrances. This design ensures the smooth passage of the thread. Due to the whole material processing, there is no elevation angle on the drilling hole, and the bending and blocking phenomenon has been improved compared with ruby nozzle. Cemented carbide nozzle is made by hot pressing and sintering hot straight hole and hill hole. Because of its hardness, low density, excellent wear resistance and corrosion resistance, cemented carbide nozzle has been widely used in sand blasting and shot peening equipment, which ensures that the product can be used in the best air and abrasive for a long time.
advantages
Advantages of cemented carbide nozzle: corrosion resistance, long service life, excellent performance, high cost performance, not easy to wear.
Carbide nozzle and other nozzles: common nozzle materials include cast iron, ceramics, tungsten carbide, silicon carbide, boron carbide. Ceramic nozzles are only used in non aggressive light equipment and abrasive in explosion cabinets. Tungsten, silicon, and boron carbide are the most popular blasting applications due to their long service life. The following is a list of carbide nozzles and their comparison with other nozzles.
The shape of nozzle hole of cemented carbide determines its air flow pattern. The nozzle generally has a straight hole or a limiting hole, a hill hole.
1. Straight hole (cemented carbide nozzle 1): the straight hole nozzle forms a sealed air flow mode for on-site or internal air flow. This facilitates the realization of small tasks, such as cleaning parts, weld forming, cleaning handrails, steps, plaques, or stone carvings and other materials.
2. Traditional long hill design (carbide nozzle 2)
3. The orifice nozzle forms a sufficient airflow pattern, and the grinding speed can be increased up to 100% for a given pressure. The best choice of Venturi surface is to improve the productivity of the nozzle. Compared with the straight hole nozzle, the productivity of the long mound nozzle can be increased by 40% when the abrasive consumption is about 40%.
4. Double venturi (carbide nozzle 4): Double venturi and wide throat nozzle are the enhanced version of long venturi nozzle. The double dome style can be thought of as having two nozzles between a set of slits and holes to allow the incoming atmosphere to enter the downstream section. The outlet end is also wider than the traditional nozzle. These two modifications are made to increase the size of the airflow pattern and minimize abrasive loss at a speed.
5. Wide throat nozzle (carbide nozzle 5): wide throat nozzle is equipped with a large outlet and a large divergent outlet. When matched with the same size hose, they can increase productivity by 15% over a smaller throat nozzle. When wide throat nozzles also have large divergent holes, they can use a lower abrasive mode under higher pressure, and the yield can be as high as 60%.
For some lattice bridges, the back of the flange, the inside of the pipe type of shrink point, can effectively use angled nozzles. Many operators spend a lot of time and abrasive to wait for a bounce to complete the job. The use of angle nozzle as long as hair less time is always able to repair quickly, reducing the overall time.
Application
Cemented carbide has a series of excellent properties, such as high hardness, wear resistance, good strength and toughness, heat resistance and corrosion resistance. Especially, its high hardness and wear resistance remain unchanged even at 500 ℃ and high hardness at 1000 ℃. Cemented carbide is widely used as tool material, such as turning tool, milling cutter, planer, drill bit, boring tool, etc. it is used to cut cast iron, non-ferrous metal, plastic, chemical fiber, graphite, glass, stone and ordinary steel, as well as refractory materials such as heat-resistant steel, stainless steel, high manganese steel and tool steel.
Cemented carbide nozzles offer the advantages of economy and longer service life when it is unavoidable to rough load and unload and media used to cut abrasives (glass beads, steel balls, steel sand, minerals or cinders). Traditionally, cemented carbide is the preferred material for cemented carbide nozzle.
Cemented carbide nozzle is widely used in surface treatment, sandblasting, spray painting, electronic, chemical process and other industries.
Cemented carbide nozzles are also used in different applications, such as for wire straightening, wire guides and other aspects.
WHEN TO USE A CONCRETE SCARIFIER
A Concrete Scarifier is one of the most productive pieces of surface prep equipment for heavy removal jobs and to prep for overlay. Some people find it difficult to identify when using a scarifier is a better option over another piece of equipment such as a grinder or shot blaster. It is important to remember that there isn’t necessarily one piece of surface prep equipment that is better than others, each machine has its benefits and will work better in certain situations. Understanding when different machines are most effective will ensure maximum efficiency and optimum results.
In this blog, we highlight a few of the situations where a scarifier would be the most effective option. Obviously, the use of a scarifier is not limited to the following situations.
TRIP HAZARDS
Trip hazards can occur in many different environments, but one of the most common is sidewalks. Sidewalk slabs can often become uneven and raised at the expansion joints because of continuous exposure to varying, and even extreme weather, as well as frequent traffic. As a result, you end up with trip hazards that need to be reduced.
These trip hazards can be drastically uneven between each sidewalk slab. If you were to use a concrete grinder, it would take much longer than a scarifier. The speed and aggressiveness that scarifier cutters offer, makes reducing these trip hazards fairly quick and painless.
We’re not saying that you can’t use a grinder - depending on the size of the trip hazard you may be able to get away with using a grinder, but generally a scarifier is more effective and productive.
Lastly, since it’s a sidewalk, the aggressive profile left behind by a scarifier is ideal for helping to prevent someone from slipping when its wet.
REMOVAL OF CONCRETE GREATER THAN 1/8” (3MM)
When you need to remove concrete that is greater than 1/8” (3mm) thick because of a bad pour or other demolition, a scarifier will be able to do this much faster than a grinder. A scarifier will not only save you significant money in time spent, but also in tooling costs.
THICKER COATINGS
When it comes to coating removal, you could use a shot blaster, grinder or scarifier depending on the coating being removed, operator preference, surrounding conditions etc. However, if you are removing a thick coating and are not needing to polish the floor after, a scarifier will be the fastest most effective form of removal. Not to say that a grinder with PCD tooling can't remove some of these coatings as well, its just that generally for this coating removal a scarifier is faster and more effective because of its aggressiveness.
END GOAL
What is being done with the floor after the concrete is planed down, or the coating is removed, will have impact on what type of equipment you choose for the job. Because there are so many variables that come into play, its difficult to make a generalized statement that one is always better than another. In some situations, like if you’re looking to achieve a polished finish after a coating removal, a scarifier may be too aggressive, especially if the user is inexperienced. In other situations, grinding will take way too long and won’t give you the profile you need for certain overlays, so a scarifier is a better option. Sometimes using multiple types of equipment is the best option.
Ultimately, choosing your equipment depending on the end goal and the situation is the best way to ensure maximum efficiency and the best results. If you’re ever unsure about what process, or what equipment to use for your job, do some research, or talk to the equipment manufacturer, rental house or dealer you’re getting your equipment from.
At the end of the day, scarifiers are extremely effective for many different types of removal and surface prep jobs. As you gain experience, you will develop your own way of doing things and find which equipment is most effective for your business. However, keeping an open mind about all the options you available to you in the industry will prove to be a benefit.