---
title: What Is an Automatic Paper Hole Cleaning Machine and How Does It Work
date: 2026-09-28T03:43:17Z
modified: 2026-09-29T07:57:12Z
permalink: "https://www.qdblanking.com/blog/what-is-automatic-paper-hole-cleaning-machine/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 420
categories:
  - Blog
featured_image: "https://www.qdblanking.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/d22c7225dbec76aba64941c4ab08053c.webp"
featured_image_alt: automatic paper hole cleaning machine for die-cut paperboard
timestamp: 2026-09-29T07:57:12Z
tags:
  - Blog
---

The problem rarely shows up at the die-cutter. It shows up a few stations later, when a small disc of board left inside a finished hole blocks an applicator, drops out of a tag on someone else’s line, or turns up in a delivery and forces an inspection the job never planned for. By then the sheet has been stripped, the order has been counted, and one piece of waste is in the wrong place.

An [automatic paper hole cleaning machine](https://www.qdblanking.com/product/htqk-720-inner-hole-cleaning-machine/) exists for that disc. It does not make the hole; the hole is already there. It empties the hole, on a whole pile, without taking the pile apart first.

## What an automatic paper hole cleaning machine does

An automatic paper hole cleaning machine removes the waste plugs left inside holes in die-cut paperboard products, on a stack rather than one at a time.

Four terms carry most of the explanation.

A plug is the disc or shaped piece of board that was cut free when the hole was made but did not fall out. It stays because a few uncut fibres still hold it to the sheet. In much of the converting trade, mainly in the United States and Europe, the same thing is called a slug, and the job is called slug removal or de-slugging.

An inner hole is any hole cut inside the product outline: a thread hole in a tag, a vent or handle in a carton, a display window in a box. It is not the outer trim at the sheet edge.

Register means the machine brings the pile to a known position, so the cleaning tool meets the hole pattern in the same place every cycle. A machine that cannot register the pile cannot clean a stack reliably.

Stack height is the thickness of the pile the machine will accept, measured in millimetres.

In one working cycle, the machine takes a registered pile, drives a cleaning tool through the holes, ejects the plugs into a waste path, and releases the stack with every hole clear and the products still collated. Nothing is separated and re-stacked, and taking a pile apart and rebuilding it is a second job.

## Three machines it gets confused with

The phrase is genuinely ambiguous, and that is not the reader’s fault. A check of the exact term on 22 September 2026 returned mostly office and bindery punching pages, a hobby build, and one hand-held air tool. None of those is a machine that clears plugs from a pile of die-cut board. Three real machines sit behind the confusion.

### An office punch makes a hole in a few sheets

An office or bindery punch makes a hole where there was none. It takes a small lift of paper and drives a die through it. It has no reason to handle a stack of die-cut product, and it cannot clear a plug from a hole that already exists. Same words, different job, different scale of machine.

### A drilling machine makes the hole

A drilling machine also makes the hole, and it usually makes it before the product is cut. The [HTDK-720 automatic drilling machine](https://www.qdblanking.com/product/htdk-720-automatic-drilling-machine/) is built for a hole range of 3 to 8 mm, a paper size up to 720 x 600 mm, and a drilling depth of 1 to 45 mm, using a hollow bit. Those figures come from our internal product file and are due a final check against the current specification sheet. QIANDING describes the workflow as drill first, cut later, so the hole is positioned against the print rather than a cut outline. Cleaning is the other end of the sequence: the drill creates the opening, and the cleaner empties one that already exists.

![drilling machine vs stripping machine for die-cut paperboard](https://www.qdblanking.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/image-14.png)

### A stripping machine removes sheet-scale waste

Stripping removes the skeleton and the larger window waste left on the sheet after die-cutting. It works at the scale of the sheet: a stripping die pushes the matrix and the bigger internal offcuts out, leaving the finished products sitting in what remains. Stripping is also not blanking. Blanking separates the finished products from the sheet; stripping only removes the waste around and between them.

Hole cleaning works at the scale of one hole, which may be only a few millimetres across. The two are complementary, not competing. On a tag or label job that runs at volume, [the stripping machine clears the sheet](https://www.qdblanking.com/product/htqf-1080-series-automatic-stripping-machine/) and the cleaning machine finishes the small apertures.



| Machine | What it does | What is left behind |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Office punch | Makes a hole in a small lift of sheets | A new hole |
| Drilling machine | Makes the hole before die-cutting | A hole that may still hold a plug |
| Stripping machine | Removes skeleton and larger window waste from the sheet | Products with small apertures still to clear |
| Hole cleaning machine | Empties holes that already exist, on a pile | Clear holes, products still collated |

## Where it sits in a die-cut job

A typical die-cut paperboard job moves through six stages: print, drill, die-cut, strip, clean holes, finish. Not every job uses all six, but the order explains what the cleaning machine depends on.

- Print sets the graphics and the reference for hole position.
- Drill makes thread holes, usually before die-cutting, so their position is set against the print. Jobs without drilled holes skip this stage.
- Die-cut cuts the product outline and any inner holes. This is where a plug is created, whether the hole was drilled earlier or cut now.
- Strip removes the sheet-scale waste so the cut products can be handled as a pile.
- Clean holes empties the small apertures that remain.
- Finish strings the tags, applies the labels, or fills and assembles the cartons.

Two dependencies matter. Cleaning needs the stripping stage to have done its job, because a pile still carrying its sheet waste is not a pile the cleaning tool can register. And the plug’s behaviour is set back at the die: a plug that breaks free during the die-cut stroke never reaches the cleaning station, while one held by uncut fibres will.

## What happens inside one cleaning cycle

The components below are documented on QIANDING’s machine pages. The order they act in is our reading of how those published parts combine into a cycle: an explanation, not a published specification.

- Load and register the pile. An operator loads a stack of die-cut product; on the HTQK-720 the accepted stack height is 30 to 100 mm. The pile is then brought against a reference position so the hole pattern lines up with the tooling.
- Position the pile. On the HTQF-1080Q, positioning is done by a hidden-type servo motor and ball screw under the control of a Panasonic PLC and a Weinview 10.4-inch touch screen. Programmed positioning makes a repeatable cycle possible on a stack.
- Drive the cleaning tool through the hole pattern. A tool matched to the hole pattern enters the holes and pushes each plug out of its seat. The tooling is specific to the die layout, and on the integrated machine the stripping needles are quick to change.
- Eject the plugs. The freed plugs are directed into a waste path and out of the work area, instead of being left loose on the stack.
- Release the collated stack. The stack leaves the machine with the holes clear and the products still collated, ready for stringing, application, or filling.

Cycle rate is how many of these cycles the machine completes in a minute, and the published figure differs by machine: 8 to 20 cycles per minute for the HTQK-720, and 2 cycles per minute for the HTQF-1080Q’s removal stroke. Those are not the same measurement, because the integrated machine is stripping in the same cycle. Read them as machine-specific figures, not as a head-to-head speed comparison.

## Two ways to build the function

Cleaning can be a machine of its own, or a capability built into a stripping machine. Both exist in our range. Neither is the better answer in general; the holes and the format you run decide it.

### A dedicated cleaning machine

The [HTQK-720 inner hole cleaning machine](https://www.qdblanking.com/product/htqk-720-inner-hole-cleaning-machine/) is a stand-alone pneumatic machine. Its published figures include product sizes from 50 x 50 mm to 720 x 500 mm, a work product height of 30 to 100 mm, a working speed of 8 to 20 cycles per minute, air consumption of 3 L/min, and 0.5 kW of power. It only cleans, so it takes a pile that another machine has already stripped.

Its product page publishes no minimum hole diameter. That figure is not published, and we are not going to guess it.

 ![HTQK-720 inner hole cleaning machine](https://qdblanking.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/720-inner.jpg) 

 QIANDING MACHINERY 

 HTQK-720 Inner Hole Cleaning Machine 

 Dedicated pneumatic machine for removing waste plugs from inner holes in die-cut paperboard products while keeping the stack collated.

 Product size: 50 × 50 to 720 × 500 mm 

 Stack height: 30–100 mm 

 Working speed: 8–20 cycles/min 

 Air consumption: 3 L/min 

 

 [ View Product ](https://www.qdblanking.com/product/htqk-720-inner-hole-cleaning-machine/) 



### Cleaning built into a stripping machine

The [HTQF-1080Q automatic stripping machine](https://www.qdblanking.com/product/htqf-1080q-automatic-stripping-machine/) strips the sheet and clears inner holes in the same pass. Its published figures include a maximum format of 1080 x 780 mm, a maximum stack height of 70 mm, a minimum cleaning diameter of 10 mm, a removal speed of 2 cycles per minute, a maximum pressure of 70 bar, and 9 kW of power. One machine, one pass, and a larger format than the dedicated unit.

![integrated hole cleaning on automatic stripping machines](https://www.qdblanking.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/image-15.png)

### Where those two published facts disagree

Both statements sit on our own site. Our hang-tag guide argues that a stripping station has no reason to be tooled for very small apertures, and that pushing it there is usually the wrong answer. Our HTQF-1080Q page publishes a minimum cleaning diameter of 10 mm, which is a stripping machine tooled for exactly that. We are not going to smooth the difference over.

Read the 10 mm as the floor the integrated machine is built and published to hold. Read the dedicated machine’s missing figure as what it is: not published. If your hole is smaller than 10 mm, the published figure does not support the integrated route, and the dedicated machine is the one to ask us about. If your hole is 10 mm or larger and your format is large, the integrated route keeps the job to one pass.

The criterion that decides it is aperture plus format, not preference.

## The range, and the limits worth checking

QIANDING publishes these machines for die-cut paperboard products. The HTQK-720 page names cigarette packs, cosmetic boxes, and hang tags. The wider stripping range adds labels, paper cups, and medicine boxes. The dedicated cleaning machine sits in the [auxiliary post-press equipment group](https://www.qdblanking.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/taxonomy/product_cat/other-post-press-machines.md), alongside the drilling machine that makes the holes.



| What to check | HTQK-720 (dedicated) | HTQF-1080Q (integrated) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Minimum cleaning diameter | Not published | 10 mm |
| Product or sheet format | 50 x 50 to 720 x 500 mm | up to 1080 x 780 mm |
| Stack height | 30 to 100 mm | 70 mm |
| Cycle rate | 8 to 20 cycles/min | 2 cycles/min |
| Air and power | 3 L/min air, 0.5 kW | 70 bar, 9 kW |

Two further figures sit outside that table: the HTQF-800Q carries a 30 mm minimum cleaning diameter, and the HTQF-1080QJ a 60 mm maximum stack height against the Q model’s 70 mm. Both come from our internal product file, which is due a final check against the current specification sheet, so treat them as indicative until we confirm them.

The three limits that matter most are the smallest hole the machine is built for, the stack height you run, and the product format.

## When you do not need one yet

Not every job with holes needs a cleaning step. If the plug breaks free during the die-cut stroke, or the stripping station already clears it, there is nothing left for the cleaning machine to do. If the aperture is comfortably larger than the smallest diameter a machine is built for, the plug usually has enough room to release on its own.

The harder case is volume. A 2018 note by Mark Swanson of JBC Technologies offers a way to size the handling cost of a job: cut half a second of handling from every part, apply that across 1,000,000 parts, and the arithmetic comes to 138 hours 52 minutes. Run the same method on your own annual part count and your own seconds per part. If the answer is a few hours a year, a dedicated cleaning machine will not earn its place in the line yet, and that is a legitimate conclusion to reach. The method stops at time; turning it into money needs your own labour rate.

## What to do next

If your holes already break free, or the handling time is below the level that matters to you, you do not need this machine yet.

If they do not, the next step is a check against your own geometry. Send us the hole diameter, the stack height you run, and the product size, and we can tell you which of the two builds those numbers support. The [contact page](https://www.qdblanking.com/contact-us/) is the place to start that conversation. If your job is specifically tags or labels, our [application guide to hole cleaning for hang tags and labels](https://www.qdblanking.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/post/automatic-paper-hole-cleaning-machine-hang-tags.md) goes deeper on that product family; this page covers the category and the mechanism behind it.

## Sources

Mark Swanson, “Slug Removal for Die Cutting: How In-Line De-Slugging Adds Value,” JBC Technologies, 28 March 2018. jbc-tech.com

Marketplace listing for a hand-held pneumatic hole-debris tool, observed 22 September 2026 for this phrase. ebay.com

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