What is Trimming or Cutting?
April 17, 2009 – 11:14 amObvious you might think? Not necessarily. There are things that need to be considered when you supply artwork for print, you have to consider the whole process. You see, print work is printed more than 1-up on a sheet, depending on the size of the flyer or leaflet. As a result, these then need trimming or cutting down to size. As you can imagine, a pair of scissors isn’t quite what is required!
You see, when things are guillotined, they are done so from above with a large vertical faced blade that strikes down on the print. This is the opposite of what happens with the little hand guillotines you can buy from shops in town. As print is cut in piles at a time, not sheet by sheet, there can sometimes be issues with movement within the pile. This is where Bleed is important but in terms of the guillotine, the clamp is what is used to hold the print in place. This can exert between 1 and 2 tons of pressure and keeps the stock in placed. On paper that has recently come off the press it can cause what we call “set-off”. This is covered in more detail in another article, here.
The cutting process is quite mathematical to ensure all the print comes out the same size if it’s meant to and has clear defined edges, not rough and furry edges. You can see a commercial guillotine in the picture below. The 2 objects sticking out of the guillotine are laser security shields. If your hands are in the way of the lasers the knife will fail to strike. This is also why guillotines have 2 buttons a distance apart so you need to use 2 hands to operate it. This cuts down on the risk of losing limbs, and believe me it does and has happened many times!
