MyBinding Knowledge Base
How do I choose between a Rotary Trimmer or a Guillotine Cutter?
Once your business has made the decision to begin producing its own documents, books,and presentations in-house, you’ll need to start educating yourself on the various tools and supplies you will be needing purchase and to have on hand. One item that is crucial for project speed and flexibility is a paper cutter or trimmer. You indeed may have already found that there are a surprising number of options out there when you are considering buying a cutting or trimming machine for your office.
Cutting and trimming are major parts of the document-production process, and choosing the right cutter or trimmer for your business can mean the difference between meeting your deadlines with professional-looking presentations, reports, and proposals, or falling behind schedule. For this reason, it definitely pays to put a little time into researching your future cutting machine.
The right cutting machine enables you to accurately trim or cut large amounts of paper in a single pass, and can be used to make precise cuts in custom sizes and shapes for your projects. Cutting systems can be used for photographs, laminated 
The first thing you will need to know, is of course, the difference between and cutter and a trimmer. Depending on the type of work you typically need done, it is important to choose the right cutting solution.
- Trimmers (or rotary trimmers) generally have a round cutting blade that is enclosed for safety reasons inside a plastic head. The blade slides up and down a metal guide bar. Rotary trimmers are great for making perfectly straight cuts on low volumes of most any paper stock, or some of the other thinner paper products. You will find trimmers widely in use by photograpers, designers, advertising agencies, schools, and even in homes for such purposes as scrapbooking and putting together specialized photo albums.
- Paper Cutters (sometimes called guillotine cutters) are generally used for higher-volume projects, and are designed to cut much thicker stacks of paper than trimmers. To use a cutter, the stacks of paper are clamped into place and the handle is brought down in one smooth motion to create a straight, clean cut. With a cutter, you can cut thick stacks into just about any size. Cutters very efficient for high volume projects.
The cutting or trimming machine you choose to buy should depend on how and where you intend for your cutting system to be used. If it is just for personal use, (i.e. scrapbooking, photo projects and the like), or for a home office or small business, where the projects will generally be low-volume, a small rotary trimmer would be a great solution, and there are many products out there which will likely suit your needs just fine.
If, however, you are a larger business, your machine will be experiencing heavy use, and you will need to produce long presentation documents with heavy paper thickness such as foam board and cardboard, a guillotine style cutter will almost certainly be the necessary solution.
< Over the years, a number of customers have asked me whether they can use twin loop wire with their plastic comb binding machine. These customers often don’t want to have to buy a brand new machine but like the look and feel of twin loop wire binding. However, the answer to their question isn’t as simple as it seems. You see, they actually do make twin loop wire that is designed to work with the plastic comb binding hole pattern. With that said, if you want to use these wires you are going to need a way to close the wires. What is Spiral-O Wire? Let me explain a little bit more…There is a product that we carry called Spiral-O Wire. This wire has 19 loops and is designed to work with the hole pattern from a plastic comb binding machine. Spiral-O Wire is sometimes called Wire Combs or Ibico Wire and was originally designed for use with some of the older Ibico binding machines. A number of the older Ibico plastic comb binding machines also included a twin loop wire closer on the front of them to allow users to use both plastic combs and wire. This 19 loop wire was designed for this purpose. What Equipment is Needed? As the Ibico brand has been phased out by GBC and all of the older Ibico plastic binding machines have been replaced with new models, they no longer have the twin loop wire closer on the front of them. This presents a problem in trying to use these spiral-o wires since you can’t use the wires without a way to close them. One of the only options left is to purchase a Twin Loop wire closer. However, since twin loop wire closers are not incredibly cheap this option usually only appeals to users who have larger electric plastic comb binding machines. Otherwise, it is often advisable to simply buy a low end 3:1 pitch twin loop wire binding machine (the supplies are cheaper). This being said, if you have one of the older Ibico binding machines that has a wire closer included you are in luck. The Spiral-O binding supplies that we carry will work perfectly with your machine and you will be able to use both plastic combs and wire depending on your needs. These Spiral-O binding supplies are available in Black, Silver, White, Blue and Red and in sizes up to 1″ in diameter. If you aren’t sure what type of wire binding supplies that you need to work with your machine simply give us a call. Our trained sales representatives will be glad to help you find the correct supplies for use with your machine.(Read More)
