Cutting Techniques

[CreoleCuisine]

Can anyone share a video of proper cutting technique?

Let's say you have 24 up business cards with a .25 gutter and a bleed and a Triumph 4850 guillotine cutter.
Would you put the long edge in first or the short edge?
Would you rotate clockwise or counterclockwise?
Do you use the left side or the right side?
do you cut 2 sides to make a perfect 90 degree angle?
do you cut at each increment or cut at all the "bottoms" or "tops" first?

My Ricoh 7500 is pretty darn accurate when it comes to registration but for some reason, my cards don't finish centered. When I lay the stack in the cutter and expect to cut at 17.5", the laser is off a good bit. Which makes the rest of the cuts off.

Is something off if so, what? Is it the printer? Paper? Cutter?

 

[jwheeler]

Check out this guide that I posted before. I made this for our trainees and keep it posted on our cutter. Just add an extra gutter cut to steps 6-10. But really, you should get a slitter/cutter/creaser! It would handle this so much faster and accurately. We have the AeroCut NanoMax setup just for business cards because we do so many every day. Then we have the AeroCut Prime Complete for all of our other jobs (postcards, rulers, trading cards, greeting cards, etc). However, I'd suggest the Duplo 618. It integrates with your Fiery impose templates, and doesn't require gutters.

 

[jwheeler]

Do you use the left side or the right side?

For business cards and other flat products, the left or right side of the cutter doesn't matter. It's just a preference. You may want to switch back and forth every so often just to wear the blade evenly. If you ever cut the top and bottom edges off saddle stitch or perfect bound books, then positioning the book in the correct direction and on the correct side of the cutter will cause less damage to the spine. For us, it's putting the spine against the right side, reducing the clamp pressure, and using an clamp pad, but experiment with your own cutter.

 

[bill kahny]

I like to cut off the non-operator side first for digital runs, treating the sheet as if it has gripper guide like a press does. You can't just cut by the numbers see this discussion https://printplanet.com/threads/duplo-dc-616.295260/ digital printing machines have shrinkage it doesn't matter how your cutting them out.

 

[Ynot_UK]

On small finished pieces such as business cards, all the more important to run a ‘Both Sides Adjustment’ (may be a KM terminology, although I imagine all digital presses have a similar function). Shift of just 1mm is very noticeable on small pieces. Also, the fuser bakes the substrate so it will be a little smaller on the output side than the input side, especially on duplex jobs, where it’s baked twice. We typically base our guillotine programs on a 419mm wide uncoated A3 sheet when halving and similar for coated SRA3