Best Cutting Trimmers

What Features to Compare

Type

The market offers to you a wide choice of paper trimmers and cutters. They are divided to several major groups depending on the usage conditions and the quantity of paper to be processed. That is why, first of all, you should select the type of the paper trimmer or cutter.

Mechanical trimmers are operated manually, i.e. a user has to push manually a special wheel or lever, and the latter activates a sharp cutting blade. Such instruments are commonly used in small photo-shops, hand-craft shops, offices and at home. The mechanical trimmers usually belong to the following types: 

• Rotary 
• Guillotine 

The guillotine mechanical trimmers are commonly used, if the quantities of paper sheets to be processed are small to medium. This means 15 to 50 pages in one stack that is a usual volume in an office or a photo-shop. The cutting itself is done by a lever-style blade. As a rule the blade is placed into a protective casing. It is also recommended to have some protective railing on the trimmer’s body. This way the paper edge will be even after cut and you will have your fingers intact. But there are also large professional guillotine cutters designed to deal with paper stacks of 30 to 300 sheets. Such cutters and trimmers may be usually seen in printing shops and large professional photo-centers.

The rotary trimmers are preferred, if a significantly small quantity of paper (up to 15 sheets in average) should be cut or trimmed with a high level of precision. A razor-sharp rotating blade sliding on a guiding rail makes the most accurate cut. Usually, such trimmers have an option of replacement of a straight blade with a perforating one or a carving blade for trimming the edges of photo- and post-cards.

The electrical paper trimmers are used mainly by industrial enterprises, including printing and package producing enterprises. The paper fixing and cutting is automated there. The electrical trimmers and cutters can be programmed for certain dimensions and cutting cycles, and may keep these parameters in the memory for future cutting processes according to pre-set parameters.  

Features

It should be noted that the choice of a particular device depends mostly on the features of a trimmer or cutter. The features include the working surface, cut length and maximum allowed dimensions of the sheets of paper to be cut by the cutting blade. For example, if you only wish to trim some photos or price-tags to the standard size, it is sufficient to have the cut length of 12 inches. But if you have to cut the paper of A4 format, you should better choose a trimmer with the cut length of 15 inches, and the A3-size sheets should be cut in the device with the cut length of 18 inches and more. The body and surface might be manufactured from plastic or metal. As a rule the metal bodies are used for commercial or professional cutters. These devices are operating daily with large quantities of paper. The trimmers with plastic bodies are cheaper and intended for a smaller workload. Pay attention to the blade protection. The ideally accurate cut depends on the sharpness of a blade. The longer is the cut length of a trimmer the greater amount of measurement scales and grids it covers. If a trimmer has rulers with different measurement scales (millimeters, centimeters and inches), you will be able to set precisely any desired dimension; and reference guides for standard sizes of the photo-cards or CD-covers and other grids make the user’s life easier. 

User Benefits

Finally, consider user benefits of a trimmer. Some devices have additional guiding rails and clamps to improve the accuracy of cut, set more precise dimensions and increase the comfort of work. If your working space is limited you should select among portable models with extendable measuring rulers. More than that, some trimmers have special storage compartments for spare parts and stationary also allowing saving the space of the working bench and having easy access to necessary supplies. If your choice of the trimmer is correct, you will improve the process of work in general and enjoy using your new instrument