Shop-cut from day one. Machine-cut since 2023.

Watch most security film installations and you will see film measured, unrolled and trimmed to the glass by hand, in the corridor, while the room waits. Epic has never worked that way. From the first job, every opening was measured at the survey, the film was cut to pattern in our shop on a manual cutting machine, each piece was labeled for its door or window, and the crew carried finished pieces onto the site. That is the process in the film 3M shot at our Texas school installation in 2023 — a step ahead of the industry already, and a good record of a good install.

The machine is the visible part

That same year Epic retired the manual machine and built Epic Precision, our proprietary cutting process department — and every job in the three-plus years since has run through it — in McKinney and, in its newest and most capable form, in our Colorado office. Epic invested more than half a million dollars developing the machine and the software behind it. People see the machine first, and the machine matters, because of what a hand does to film. Cut it with a blade, or pull it through one of the hybrid roll handlers most of the industry uses and trim it, and the edge gets nicked. Most installers bury the nick under the sealant and call it fine — from inside the room it is hidden; from outside it is still there if you know where to look. That nick is the tear point. When the glass breaks, the film rips open from it like a sheet of paper. The machine removes the human error. But the machine is still the smallest part of it.

The part that matters is the workflow behind it: PaneCast, the proprietary estimating software Epic wrote, measures every opening and runs every job through it.

From survey to kit

Every opening on your campus or in your building is measured at the survey and becomes a pattern. Our software nests those patterns across the roll the way a tailor lays out a suit, so a roll of 3M film yields the most glass it can and the scrap goes down. Less waste is a real number on your invoice, not a slogan.

Each piece is then cut by machine, labeled with its door or window, and kitted in installation order. The crew walks in with finished pieces: no rolls, no cutting station in the corridor, no downtime while someone measures and trims. On a school that means the work moves room to room without a classroom turning into a workshop.

What a competitor can and cannot buy

A cutting machine from a catalog cuts a shape. It does not know which door the shape belongs to, how to lay out a roll so a district buys less film, or what the edge of a security film has to be. Epic Precision knows, because we spent years and a great deal of money teaching it — and none of that is for sale.

“This is what makes us Epic. We never stop looking for a better process, because a better process is a better outcome — a cleaner installation for the building today, and a film that does its job on the day it is needed.” — Chris Eder, Chief Visionary Officer

You can watch the 2023 footage and the Epic Precision table one above the other on the School Safety page. The distance between them is three years of a company that was already cutting in the shop deciding that was not good enough.

See how we install security film