Spot colour reference

What every spot colour in the artwork means, and which materials it actually cuts on.

How to read this page

A spot colour only becomes a cut line when two independent checks both pass. Reading the first one alone is how a sheet gets cut with the wrong tool.

Gate 1 — is the spot mapped? The Treated as and Operation columns. Anything not mapped as a cut is printed as ink, which is a visible and correctable mistake rather than a ruined sheet.
Gate 2 — is that operation enabled on this material? The Cuts on column, and the one people skip. A spot can be mapped to a cut and still cut nothing on the job in front of you.

Geometry that passes gate 1 but fails gate 2 is discarded and the operator is told. It is never quietly cut and never quietly dropped.

Two operations can have similar-sounding names and use completely different tools. Do not go by the name — go by the Operation, Tool and Cuts on columns together, because that is what the machine will actually do. The Why column carries the production reasoning behind each row, including any artwork that needs re-exporting.

Listed in the order the import engine evaluates them — the first rule that matches a spot colour wins.
Spot colour	Treated as	Operation	Tool	Cuts on these materials	Why
PerfCutContour exact match	Cut	Through cut (sticker and backing) ThruCut	—	Class 1 reflective Class 2 reflective Luminous (photoluminescent) Self-adhesive vinyl (SAV)	THROUGH CUT -- sticker and backing paper (Elliot, 2026-08-19). The house convention: 206 Summa files in the last three months and 10 of 12 sampled archive files. Despite "Perf" in the name this is the full cut-out, not a perforation.
Thru-cut exact match	Cut	Through cut (sticker and backing) ThruCut	—	Class 1 reflective Class 2 reflective Luminous (photoluminescent) Self-adhesive vinyl (SAV)	The same through cut under its plainer name. Rare, but mapped to the same operation so the two names cannot drift apart.
CutContour exact match	Cut	Kiss cut (sticker only, backing intact) KissCut	—	Class 1 reflective Class 2 reflective Luminous (photoluminescent) Self-adhesive vinyl (SAV)	KISS CUT -- sticker only, backing paper left intact (Elliot, 2026-08-19). 123 Summa files in the last three months. Summa-specific: the ~20 router files carrying this spot are authoring errors, and they now fail gate 2 on a routed stack and are reported rather than cut.
Kiss-cut exact match	Cut	Kiss cut (sticker only, backing intact) KissCut	—	Class 1 reflective Class 2 reflective Luminous (photoluminescent) Self-adhesive vinyl (SAV)	The same kiss cut under its plainer name. 71 Summa files in the last three months. The catalogue did not know this spot existed at all, so it would have been treated as an unrecognised ink and printed.
RouterCut exact match	Cut	Router cut outline RouterCut	3 mm	ACM 1.6mm ACM 3mm Aluminium 1.6mm	ACM production files.
DrillHole exact match	Cut	Drill hole DrillHole	3 mm	ACM 1.6mm ACM 3mm Aluminium 1.6mm	ACM production files.
KnifeCut exact match	Cut	Knife cut outline KnifeCut	—	Corflute 5mm Polypropylene 1.5mm	The through-cut outline on Corflute and polypropylene. Those materials also take KnifeHalfCut (half depth) and KnifeStencilCut (same blade, sequenced separately) -- three knife operations, same tool, different depth or different order. Cut last, once the internal work is done.
RouterStencil exact match	Cut	Router internal cut RouterStencil	3 mm	ACM 1.6mm ACM 3mm Aluminium 1.6mm	The router cutting an internal feature instead of the outside outline. Enabled on ACM and aluminium only. On Corflute or polypropylene this fails gate 2 and is discarded with a warning -- which almost always means older artwork whose halfcut needs re-exporting on the KnifeHalfCut spot.
KnifeStencilCut exact match	Cut	Knife stencil cut KnifeStencilCut	—	Corflute 5mm Polypropylene 1.5mm	Stencil cutting on Corflute and polypropylene. The same knife cut as KnifeCut, on its own spot so it can be sequenced as a separate action. Not to be confused with RouterStencil, which is a router operation on ACM and aluminium.
KnifeHalfCut exact match	Cut	Knife half cut (partial depth) KnifeHalfCut	—	Corflute 5mm Polypropylene 1.5mm	The house spot colour for a half-depth knife cut, on Corflute and polypropylene. New convention as of 2026-08-19 -- existing artwork carries these cuts on RouterStencil and must be re-exported.
PANTONE contains match	Ink	—	—	Nothing — this is printed, never cut	Covers PANTONE 165 C, 285 C, 485 C, Hexachrome Green C and any other Pantone that turns up. Always ink, never geometry.
^Traffic regex match	Ink	—	—	Nothing — this is printed, never cut	House-named road-sign inks -- Traffic RED, Traffic BLACK, Traffic GREEN. Observed in current production files. Recognised as ink so they do not raise an unmapped warning on every job that uses them, which is how operators learn to ignore the warning that matters.
^(Cyan\|Magenta\|Yellow\|Black)$ regex match	Ink	—	—	Nothing — this is printed, never cut	Process separations, seen named individually in Jemma_B_Shower.pdf.
^(All\|Registration\|Spot ?Varnish\|White\|Gloss)$ regex match	Ink	—	—	Nothing — this is printed, never cut	"All" and "Registration" are PDF special separations, not artwork. White and varnish are genuine print inks on UV work.