Reciprocating Saw Blades
Long, narrow, slightly tapered hardened steel blades. Brand identity + TPI (teeth-per-inch) designators printed directly on the blade body. Robotic pick-and-place transfer through XD-70 single-pass print and LED-UV cure.
Application · Industrial · Cutting Tools
Decoration for blades that never run a single SKU.
XD-platform single-pass cells engineered around the blade — geometry, substrate, and shift discipline at once.
Cutting tool decoration is one of the cleanest cases for single-pass inkjet in the industrial-tool segment. Long, narrow parts. Hardened, coated steel substrates. Ultra-high-mix multi-SKU production with changeover costs that defeat pad-print workflows. EPS engineers XD-platform cells around the part — robotic load, nest registration, single-pass print, LED-UV cure, robotic unload — for blade decoration at production speed.
7,000+ pph
Saw blades per hour on XD-70
2 → 1
Decoration touches collapsed (OMT)
Zero
Operator hands between load and pack
Software
SKU change as a job-file load
What we mean by cutting tools
Long, narrow parts. Hardened substrates. Multi-SKU mix. The discipline of single-pass.
Cutting tool decoration is the textbook case for single-pass inkjet in the industrial tool segment. Three factors line up at once: Dynamic part sizing; multiple coatings make it difficult to achieve ideal print quality and adhesion with a single ink solution; and the SKU mix is high enough that traditional pad printing economics don’t make sense. EPS engineers XD-platform cells specifically for this profile — fixed printhead arrays, robotic load and unload, nest-disciplined registration, and LED-UV cure that handles the stepped geometries blade families carry.
The economic argument lives in changeover and operator removal. A pad-print cell at the print station could keep up on a single SKU — but multi-SKU blade lines run dozens of variants per week, and every changeover loses shift time. EPS’s single-pass cells turn changeover into a software event, replace the operator at the print station with a robotic bookend, and integrate vision inspection so QA isn’t sample-based. The result: blade decoration at production speed with no downtime.
Cutting tool sub-applications
Six blade families EPS systems decorate today.
Each blade family has different geometry, throughput profile, and decoration requirements. EPS engineers the cell around the family.
Oscillating Multi-Tool Blades
3-4 inch OMT blades with raised mounting body, recessed wings, and tapered tooth edge — stepped geometry across a single small part. Four-up nested tooling + two-robot bookends.
Circular Saw Blades
Large-diameter circular blades for woodworking, metalworking, and masonry. Center-hub branding, tooth-edge markings, and SKU identification — printed flat, single index, multi-SKU agile.
Jigsaw & Specialty Blades
Short, narrow blades with high SKU count and frequent variant changes. Single-pass economics dominate when changeover-per-shift exceeds 4 hours on a pad workflow.
Drill Bits & Driver Bits
Cylindrical decoration on hardened tool steel. Size markings, brand identity, and lot codes printed at line rate onto extremely narrow diameters using our cylindrical single pass systems.
Cutting Inserts
Small cemented carbide inserts for milling, turning, and threading tooling. Lot marking, grade identification, and traceability codes — variable data per insert.
Featured customer
An industrial cutting-tool manufacturer running OMT blades and reciprocating-saw blades on integrated EPS cells.
EPS has engineered XD-platform single-pass lines for multiple cutting-tool families at industrial OEMs. The recip blade line replaces a multi-station pad-print workflow with a single XD-70 cell — robot loading, vision orientation, inline inspection, automated sort and unload. The OMT blade line collapses a two-touch decoration workflow (pre-printed label plus pad-printed variable data) into a single-pass print with two six-axis robots bookending the cell. From part presentation to packaged output, no human touches the blade.
7,000+ pph
Blades per hour (recip blade line)
4-up
Blades per carrier index (OMT)
Zero
Human touches load-to-pack
Case studies
Cutting tool cells EPS has shipped.
Real customer cells — full process walkthroughs of both reference architectures.
Case Study · Industrial
Single-Pass Inkjet + Robotic Pick-and-Place for Reciprocating Blades
A North American reciprocating-blade OEM eliminates the operator at the print step. XD-70 single-pass + 6-axis robot + LED-UV cure in one continuous cell.
Case Study · Industrial
OMT Blades — Printing the Unprintable
Label + pad-print workflow collapsed to one single-pass cell. Two six-axis robots bookend the line. Zero human touches between load and pack.
Case Study · Industrial · Cutting Tools
20,000 SKUs, No Tooling: Printing Direct onto Plastic Tool Cases
MasterCut Tool prints unique part numbers, descriptions and regulatory marking on every one of 20,000+ molded cases — multi-pass and single-pass inkjet running from the same artwork files, with labels off the line entirely.
Recommended EPS platforms for cutting tools
XD-70 plus robotic integration covers most of the cutting-tool market.
Pick the cell architecture that matches your blade geometry and volume. EPS engineers the load, print, cure, unload, and stack disciplines around it.
XD-70 Single-Pass
Belt or shuttle · 7,000+ pph · fixed printhead array
Production-speed single-pass UV inkjet for flat or linear cutting tool parts. The default cell for reciprocating-saw blades, jigsaw blades, drill bits, and most blade families with linear geometry.
Explore single-pass →XD-Platform with Robotic Integration
Two-robot bookends · nest discipline · 4-up carrier
Where the blade geometry is stepped or small enough to need multi-up handling, EPS engineers XD-platform cells with robotic load + unload bookends. The OMT line is the reference architecture: vacuum-cup EOAT, machined nest pockets, robotic stack into shipping totes.
Explore single-pass →Custom Engineered Cells
Application-specific architecture · pad/digital hybrid available
For blade families that don't fit either reference architecture — circular saw blades, cutting inserts, specialty geometries — EPS engineers custom cells. Pad printing, single-pass inkjet, or hybrid combinations integrated with the customer's specific blade transport and packaging.
Explore Custom Cells →
Why EPS for cutting tools
Five engineering decisions that separate cutting-tool cells from generic blade printers.
What EPS puts in a cutting-tool cell that pure print-engine vendors don't.
Nest discipline for single-pass registration
Machined nest pockets locate every blade against three reference edges before the carrier enters the print zone. Precision parts handling for irregular shaped objects.
Robotic load + unload bookends
Two six-axis arms with multi-cup vacuum end-of-arm tooling pick blades from inbound conveyors and stack them into shipping totes at outbound. Operators removed from the print station — labor recovered for higher-value work.
LED-UV cure across stepped geometries
Inline LED-UV cure pins each color the moment it lands — no wet hand-off when the blade transitions across raised mounting bodies, recessed wings, and tapered tooth edges to the next station.
Variable data per blade at line rate
Model number, SKU, batch code, country-of-origin marking — every blade can carry different variable data without a plate change or label re-spec. No second-pass station, no per-color setup.
Same nest discipline at both ends
The nest geometry that makes the print register also delivers the blade pack-ready into the shipping tote. One design discipline serves both ends of the line — no separate sort step downstream.
Engineer your cutting tool decoration line.
Tell us about your blade geometry, substrate, SKU count, and current decoration process. We will show you which XD-platform architecture fits and what the production economics look like.