Martin Yale BCS210 Tabletop 10up Business Card Slitter

Staff Review

Martin Yale BCS210 10up Business Card Slitter Review

Overview:

• The Martin Yale BCS210 desktop business card slitting machine is designed to cut business cards that are printed ten up on a letter sized sheet of paper.
• The BCS-210 uses a two step process for cutting the business cards. It first cuts the letter sized sheet into two strips that are 3.5" x 11" in size. You then feed these two strips back through the machine and it cuts them into ten 2" x 3.5" business cards.
• The BCS210 is designed for small printers, copy shops and for organizations that want to produce their own short run business cards without the time or cost of outsourcing.

Features/ Strengths:

• The BCS210 is capable of creating up to 375 cards per minute. This means that you can potentially cut a run of five hundred cards in less than two minutes and a run of one thousand in less than four minutes. That type of productivity is excellent for on demand applications.
• The blades used by the BCS210 are semi-self sharpening. When used normally, the blades on the BCS-210 are designed to be used for years without the need for replacement. However, over time if you do damage or wear out the blades on this machine it is possible to replace them.
• The BCS-210 is ideally designed for individuals who have a high quality digital color printer or color photocopier that will allow them to print short runs of business cards on demand. You can simply design the business cards on a desktop computer, print them onto standard letter sized sheets and use the BCS-210 to cut them into perfectly sized business cards.
• It is possible with a little bit of work to use the BCS-210 business card slitter for cutting six up full bleed business cards. In order to do this you need to overprint each card which will cause you to waste four of the ten business cards that are created. This can be fairly tricky but can open up possibilities for organizations that primarily use standard business cards but ocassionally need a short run of full bleed cards.
• The BCS-210 is a small machine that won't take up a lot of space in your office or production facility. This makes it ideal for organizations that are short on space and don't have room for another large piece of floor standing equipment.

Limitations/Weaknesses:

• The BCS210 does have adjustable paper guides that will allow you to adjust the feeding of your sheets. However, it is really only designed to cut ten up business cards. This means that it cannot be customized to cut card sizes other than 2" x 3.5".
• Unlike some of business-card slitting equipment that is available on the market, the BCS-210 does not have the ability to perforate or score documents. If you need these features you will want to look at the Martin Yale BCS-410 which is a ten up business card slitter with the ability to score and perforate for producing tent cards, occasion cards and other similar pieces.
• In testing the BCS-210 I found that it did an excellent job with heavy stocks and with coated stocks. However, it was a little bit tricky to get it to work with laminated papers.
• The productivity offered by the BCS-210 is not as good as you can find with the BCS-212 which is a twelve up business card slitter that is available for the same price. However, some users prefer the ten up layout.

Recommendation:

• Using the BCS-210 you can create your own high quality short run business cards in just a few short steps.
• This makes the BCS-210 is great for creating short run business cards using your digital color printer or your color photocopier.
• It is ideal for small print shops, copy shops, and human resource departments that need to create business cards on demand without the hassles or costs of outsourcing.
• It is a small desktop unit and is not ideal for high production environments that need to produce tens of thousands of business cards per day.