Precision in cutting your printed material is imperative to the quality standard of a completed printed job and can make or break the perfect finish . Here are a few mistakes to watch out for when it comes to trimming with your guillotine.
If you use a guillotine in your collation department, you may sometimes run into the one or two problems, just as you will with any print and print finishing machine. It’s important to know when to service and maintain all of your print finishing machinery and should be done on a regular basis but just as important is to know how to recognise certain common problems.
Here’s what to look out for if you use a guillotine in your collating division.
Not Replacing the Guillotine Blade Regularly
This is one of the most common problems but often over looked. Printers may notice that their guillotine is not making precise cuts anymore, and find that the blade is dull and needs to be replaced. To prevent this from happening, the blade should be replaced before it has a chance to get dull. A heavy-duty power paper guillotine can still cut through paper with a slightly blunt blade, but it will put extra wear and tear on the machine.
Here are a few early warning signs of a dull blade
1 – rough or jaggered cutting edge
2 – a banging sound when cutting through printed material
3 – the cut printed material sticks together;
4 – the cut edge is ridged or turned down;
5 – inaccuracies in cutting, like overcuts and undercuts.
It’s recommended you replace your blade every 40 hours of cutting, approximately every 4000 cuts this prevents damage to printed material and the machine.
Guillotines Blades Aren’t Sharpened Enough
There are some other factors that play into how well your paper guillotine functions. If your blades aren’t sharp enough and constantly sharpened, you can still run into similar problems, even after you’ve installed a new blade. As well as if you’re cutting through thicker printed materials, then your guillotines knife blade will become dull quicker than it normally would with thinner printed materials.
Improper Technique
There are proper cutting techniques that operators should be mindful of. The type of paper being cut has a huge impact on the clamp pressure the operator needs to set the machine to – Softer paper requires more clamp pressure and harder paper, the less clamp pressure is required.
You may also be cutting your printed material at the wrong angle. There is a wide range of different cutting angles that are necessary for different types of paper, below is a simple and general guideline for how to set the angle of the blade:
Softer Paper: 19 to 20 degrees with low clamp pressure.
Regular Paper: 23 to 24 degrees with medium clamp pressure.
Harder Paper: High angle or double bevel up to 30 degrees with a higher clamp pressure.
Regular Maintenance
Regular maintenance from professional Print Finishing supplier technicians can have a huge impact on your bottom line and the quality of your printed materials that you put out.
Below you will find how regular maintenance on all your print finishing machines helps you in the long run.
Reduce Downtime
No business can afford down time, and delays in getting orders out will be detrimental to any business. Regular maintenance can reduce downtime caused by unforeseen breakdowns, and avoid more expensive repairs later.
Optimizing Machine Capacity
Regularly maintained equipment runs at a higher capacity and more efficiently than equipment that has not been maintained. This allows you to get more units out the door, increasing the opportunity to drive revenue up.
Employee Safety
A qualified technician performs machine maintenance and safety adjustments, thus reducing risk of injury to machine operators or break downs.
Correct Usage of Equipment
Having a qualified technician show your operators how to use the machine correctly can reduce the amount of materials used and wasted, reduce set-up time and reduce the risk of breakdowns in the future due to incorrect usage.
At Press Products we strive to meet all our customers’ needs from suppling the machinery, consumables and offering service and repair technicians making sure you always run at optimal levels – contact us for all your print finishing needs.
You must be logged in to post a comment.