Biz Card Cutter

[Mynock]

My current company is branching out into small format color printing after 40 years of large format printing. So they have no experience and are looking to me and my nine months experience at a quick printer. They have a brand new color Canon and they are looking to branch out into business cards, but they don't have suitable accomodations. They have a huge blade cutter straight out of the Smithsonian, which lacks the precision to do business cards. It works fine cutting schematics and what not. They are looking to update it with digital controls similar to something we used at the quick printer. It's a breeze, you can enter programs and the machine takes care of it. Without spending an arm and a leg so soon, they are look at a business card cutter. This is the one they are looking at Model 410 (http://abcoffice.com/buscard.htm). It's great for doing regular cards with no bleeds or a solid bleed, but you run into problems when you get creative and do uncommon bleeds. You can still do some cuts if at least one of the edges have a common bleed.

Is this the best way to go?
Is this a good cutter?
It says it has an one cutting blade for custom cuts, how useful is that?
What would you recommend?
Is there other things we should be looking at?
Any suggestions?

Looking for advice or ideas here.

[Keyare]

Why limit yourself to a business card cutter? Why not a regular guillotine like a small challenge cutter?

[Mynock]

Aren't those are fairly more expensive? We're looking to something to get us by until we can buy a larger programmable guillotine cutter. A small one would be a waste at a largely large format printer.

[Keyare]

For $1700 to "get by" doesn't the 410 limit you to JUST business cards? AND you have to use a 10-up/12-up template? What if someone does postcards?

I'd get a used 20' manual guillotine for about a grand. Those things never break. That way you can do any cut you want, including custom bleeds, postcards, whatever... And you wouldn't have to rely on HOPING that the template would fit, and you could do ledger size on the Canon instead of letter all the time...

Iddunno.... That 410 just doen't look flexible enough. The perfing is cool. But how many does it cut at a time? it looks tiny and goofy.

Just my personal opinion of course.

[Mynock]

Well stated, and I totally agree. You made some valid points, and I'll be sure to present them. I want to see if anyone else weighs in on the issue.