Several methods are available for soft materials like plastic films and paper. Razor blades, straight, or circular blades are being used. Some blades cut through the material while others crush the material against a hard roll. Those are similar to knives and cut the material into narrow strips, which may be called coils when being rewound. The cutting blades can be set to a desired width. Some slitting machines have many blades to increase the options of cutting width; others have just a single blade and can be set to a desired location. The slit material is rewound on paper, plastic or metal cores on the exit side of the machine.

Coil slitting is a technique heavily used by converters. The converter industry normally refers to companies who print, coat and laminate materials. A typical converter is a company manufacturing producing flexible packaging material for packaging food. This may involve purchasing large rolls of plastic film such as biaxially orientated polypropylene (BOPP) which is then printed to the customer's design and coated with cold seal adhesive for use on high speed packaging machines. This material is printed and coated in wide, large diameter rolls for maximum efficiency. The rolls are then slit, using a slitting machine, into smaller rolls of the size to be used on the packaging machine.