Bleed on a Powerclip?

Maybe this would work.

Duplicate the object that is going to be the power clip container. Grow one of those by the .5 mm you need. Make sure the two objects are centered. Power clip the other artwork inside the larger container. Set the outline on the larger object to none. Set the smaller object to hairline or CutContour or what ever works for your print/cut machine.

One object, (the larger) should just print and the second smaller one would be what gets cut.

You could probably make a .5 mm contour to the outside and break that apart instead of duplicating the first object.

If you edit the powerclip, do the powerclip contents extend outside the powerclip boundary on all four edges?

If it does, then you should be able to extract the contents from the powerclip, grow the powerclip frame by making an outside boundary and then use the boundary as your new powerclip frame.

Of course, you need to keep the old powerclip frame to use for the cutting -- and will probably need to delete the X that appears on an empty powerclip frame. Right click on it and select frame type = none.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I will give them a go tonight and report back if I have any issues or questions.

Okay, I am attempting to do what has been suggested, but my general lack of understanding is causing me some headaches. I tried to use the outline pen to grow the box by 1 mm, but when I try to powerclip it in that expanded outline it puts it in the original container. It seems like all I am doing is adding a 1 mm border instead of adding actual container space. If that's the case then either I am missing something or I need to approach it the David describes. If I take that approach I am confused about the last sentence "You could probably make a .5 mm contour to the outside and break that apart instead of duplicating the first object." How would I go about doing this?

I am probably missing an obvious step, so if one of you would mind pointing me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it.

Set the outline to hairline.

Blowup of outcome:

To add a counter go to Effects>Counter.  Set it to one step and to be an outside contour.  Then Break the Contour group apart under the Object menu.  Trying to use the outline pen might work.  Among other issues, you would have to convert the outline to an object.  Using the Contour tool I think is the easiest.  I just moved the two objects apart so they can easily be seen.  Thus I re-centered them.