A die cut box is cut to an outline drawn for your product and nothing else, so nothing rattles inside and you stop paying to ship air. The free generator below draws that same flat for you in your own dimensions.
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Type your three dimensions into the generator above and select your board. The flat dieline redraws itself as you type, and you can export it as an AI, PDF, or SVG file in seconds, with no watermark on the file.
You pay to ship air inside the carton when a stock box does not fit your product exactly. The alternative is worse because you end up packing a fragile item into a shape that was designed for a different product.
We run our own packaging boxes business in Neptune, New Jersey, rather than passing your job to a broker. No order carries a setup fee or tooling charge.
Every card opens that dieline in the studio above with the structure already selected. All nineteen are cut in production here so the flat you download is the flat we run. Red is the cut and dashed blue is the crease just as the legend above shows.
A die cut box is cut with a steel rule die built for one outline. Strips of sharpened steel sit in a plywood die board and every carton comes off the press at the same shape to within a fraction of a millimeter. A stock box is cut from a die that already exists so the shape is whatever the supplier happened to tool.
The die is worth it as soon as fit starts costing you money. A carton with 15 mm of empty space on each side needs void fill. That void fill costs more per order than the difference in board. Odd shapes are the other trigger because a curved panel or a window or a tear strip only exists if a die cuts it.
Caliper follows the weight and the panel size rather than preference. A 50 g cosmetic carton holds its shape on 14pt board while a 500 g supplement jar needs 18pt or 24pt before the panels stop bowing. Anything over about 1.5 kg belongs on corrugated instead of folding carton board.
| Item | What we run |
|---|---|
| Folding carton board | 12pt, 14pt, 16pt, 18pt and 24pt SBS, plus 18pt kraft |
| Corrugated board | E flute at 1.5 mm and B flute at 3 mm |
| Printing | Offset CMYK and Pantone spot colors, digital on runs under 1,000 |
| Finishing | Gloss or matte lamination, soft touch, spot UV, foil stamping, embossing |
| Artwork | Vector PDF or AI on our dieline, 3 mm bleed, Pantone colors identified |
| Minimum order | 100 boxes per size and per design, lower on rigid, corrugated and larger sizes |
| Production | 8 to 10 business days after dieline approval |
| Samples | Plain structural 3 to 5 business days, printed pre production 7 to 10 |
| Price breaks | At 500 units and again at 1,000 units on the same artwork |
| Shipping | Free across the US. Export orders quoted separately |
Send vector artwork as PDF or AI on our dieline with 3 mm of bleed running outward from the cut line rather than from the nearest fold. Name your Pantone colors instead of leaving them as unnamed swatches because a converted build picks its own and the result shifts on press.
Keep the dieline on a layer of its own and set that layer not to print. A dieline left as ordinary artwork comes back as a carton with cut and crease marks printed across the panels. Our design team fixes all of this for free at both levels. Level one is a small correction to your own file and level two is a full design built from scratch. Neither appears on the invoice because the team is in house rather than outsourced.
The die costs you nothing at all, because we do not charge a setup fee or a tooling fee on any order. The die and the printing plates sit inside the unit price on the first order and on every reorder. That is not a cost you avoid on the second order because you never paid it on the first.
What does change your unit price is color count and quantity. Every additional offset color adds a plate and a pass, so four colors cost more than one until the gap narrows on digital runs under 1,000 units. Price steps down at 500 units and again at 1,000 on the same artwork.
The clock starts at dieline approval and that is what makes the free generator above worth ten minutes of your time. Approving a flat you have already drawn and already looked at removes the longest delay in the whole process.
The answers below cover the minimum order and the tooling and the board and the lead time. Send us your three dimensions if your own question is not here and we will answer it directly.
Send your three dimensions with your quantity and your board, and we will come back with a unit price and a production date. Download the dieline from the generator above first because a quote against a flat you have already approved moves straight into production. Call +1 703 350 4739 or email sales@thecustomizedboxes.com, or request a quote online at any hour.
