Business cards are an essential lubricant to smooth professional relations. For the printer tasked with producing them, however, they can be a faff to finish. In the past, you might gang up different cards on a sheet to be printed offset and then, although guillotining was a time consuming process, at least you'd end up with neat stacks of individual cards ready to go.
With the rise of digital print for such short-run work and, in particular, the prevalence of digital-only print shops that don't have guillotines, there's a need for another way to cut up sheets into cards. At the most basic level, that could be getting out a straight edge and a Stanley knife to cut the cards by hand. But for all but the most occasional card jobs, that's not the best use of an operator's time and does not guarantee a high-quality finish. As a result, card cutters that can slice up a sheet into cards in short order are proving popular.

Basic desktop machines are available starting at a couple of hundred pounds, but these are designed for the home or office. At the other extreme are digitally controlled slitter cutter creasers, such as Duplo's 615 and 645, which offer the flexibility to slit, cut and crease all manner of products in addition to business cards, including flyers, posters, postcards and greetings cards. In the mid-range are a number of dedicated card cutters, such as the Caslon Zip Range.

Total PFS, though, believes it has spotted a gap in the market for firms who want a robust unit capable of producing good results and handling heavy stocks, but who can't justify the expense of an all-singing all-dancing card cutter or slitter/cutter/creaser. Its target market are the high-street printers and copy shops producing low volumes of business cards, primarily using digital presses.

Mid-range offer
For the product to fill this gap, Total PFS turned to Czech firm Cyklos and its CS 325 Modular, a two-pass slitter that costs £1,595, although for the time being is offered at an introductory price of £1,195, a saving of £400. At this price, Total PFS argues that most firms can buy it without finance, an important consideration in the current economic climate.

"People still need kit for finishing, but are looking for affordable solutions that do the job," says Total PFS sales and marketing manager Jon Naylor. "Bigger stuff, that you'd need finance for, is unaffordable."

Since its launch in June, 10 CS 325 units have already been sold - a level of response that Naylor says the company underestimated. "People are focused on this for their on-demand services," he says. "It's a good product sitting between the basic products and the programmable ones from the likes of Duplo. There's not a lot available for card cutting at this end of the market. Caslon has owned this space for some time."

One common criticism of the lower-priced products is that they lack the strength and build quality needed for heavy-duty production, so the CS 325 has been designed to scale costs down without compromising on quality. To that end, it only has a single cutting ‘throat', which means you have to make two passes and change the cutter guides between them to turn a sheet first into strips and then the strips into finished cards.

"At this level of the market people are happy to do that," says Naylor. "If we'd made a machine with two cutting heads, it would have been much more expensive. There are plans for a double-cut machine, but we thought initially that the single cutter was the best compromise."

Thick stock offering
The self-sharpening blades handle stocks up to 400gsm, including sheets that have been laminated. Naylor claims this is a big plus for the price, with rivals limited to 280gsm.

"This machine is up against people asking ‘why buy one when we could use a guillotine?', so it's got to be strong enough for what they want it to cut," he says.

Build quality is cited as a key strength, with Naylor describing Cyklos as offering "German levels of quality".

As the CS 325 is a hand-fed machine, working out the precise speed is always going to be tricky, as it comes down to the operator feeding it. However, Naylor estimates that with the machine taking 10 seconds per sheet for each cut and with 10 cards on each A4 sheet, it should be possible to produce 2,500-3,000 finished cards per hour.

According to the firm, it is the easily changed dies that allows the single cutter to make both sets of cuts, a function that is key to its flexibility. You're not limited to a single-card format or even just to business cards, as it's possible to get extra dies made up. An extra set of dies will cost £695, so you've got to be sure that there will be plenty of work to justify splashing out.

"The secret of the machine is that it is modular and the dies are just slotted in," says Naylor. "At this level, that's unique, and you don't have to be worried about being limited to just one cut."

The standard dies supplied cut cards to the UK's standard sizes of 85x55-90x50mm and a double-cut 90x50mm version - allowing cards with bleeds to be produced - which Naylor says, is a common request.

One potential problem with digital output is image drift - the tendency of the print to move relative to the edge of the paper sheet. As a hand-fed machine, there's no optical image registration on the CS 325, rather the side lays can be adjusted manually to ensure a precise alignment.

With its 325mm-long cutting edge, the machine is limited to handling formats up to oversized A4. You can't use A3 sheets due to the need to turn them through 90 degrees along the long edge for the second cut. This does raise the issue in digital print of the cost-effectiveness of production if you pay the same for a click regardless of page size.

Lower costs
Naylor says customers so far have preferred the lower upfront costs of the cutter to an automated machine and will happily swallow the extra production costs as a pay-off. Of course, you could also, if you have a guillotine, print two-up A4 on an A3 sheet and guillotine the sheets to get A4. Although, if you're going to use the guillotine for one cut, you might argue that you may as well cut the rest.

The CS 325 isn't the only product from the Cyklos that Total PFS sells, it also carries some of its other low-cost finishing units, including a unique foot pedal operated A3 creaser that also has a perforating bar.
Overall, the CS 325's no-frills approach looks attractive. If you need a basic machine to simplify the process of producing business cards and can't justify the expense of a bigger, more automated machine, but need to ensure high quality cutting and substrate flexibility, it's well worth considering.

SPECIFICATIONS
Sheet size Up to A4
Max working width 325mm
Stock range 80-400gsm
Speed 2,500-3,000 cards per hour
Price £1,195
Contact Total PFS 01934 645050 www.totalpfs.co.uk

THE ALTERNATIVES
CASLON ZIP 5
The Zip 5 is the closest match to the CS 325 price-wise. Caslon argues that with one-pass programmable operation, it offers far higher productivity. The program is set with five fixed sizes and it can be supplied in 85mm- or 89mm- wide versions. It also includes electronic edge adjustment to compensate for image drift. Caslon also offers a cheaper two-pass machine, the £450 MiniZip and more productive machines the A4 Zip10 and the SRA3 Zip21.
Max stock size A4
Max stock weight 280gsm
Speed 3,600 cards per hour
Price £1,750
Contact Caslon 01727 852211 www.caslon.co.uk

DUPLO DC-615 PRO
The DC-615 Pro is Duplo’s mid-range slitter/cutter/creaser. For larger folded products, including greetings cards, book covers and flyers, the baby DC-445 is a more economic option. The 615 Pro is significantly more expensive than the CS 325, but it does have a unique, PC-driven feature: a barcode printed on the sheet identifies the job and automatically sets the knives correctly, allowing a mixed stack to be fed in and automatically cut to the right settings.
Max stock size 320x650mm
Max stock weight 300gsm
Speed 6,000 cards per hour
Price £17,500
Contact Duplo International 01372 468131 www.duplointernational.com

KIRIKKO SK21
A one-pass machine, the Japanese-made Kirikko is sold in the UK by GAE. The adjustable slitting and cutting positions mean it can be used for a wider range of products than just business cards and there’s an optical mark feed mode. It costs significantly more than the CS 325, but you get a faster and more automated machine for your money.
Max stock size 330x235mm
Max stock weight 0.4mm
Speed 9,000 cards per hour
Price £4,500
Contact GAE 020 8997 8053 www.gae.co.uk

MORGANA CARD XTRA
The SRA3 Card Xtra uses drop-in cutting cassettes for different job types with a range of eight pre-set cassettes and one user-configurable one. This option makes it simple to set up, but does add to the cost for producing lots of different format work, as you’d need one cassette for business cards, one for postcards and one for A4 and A3 trimmed sheets, for example.
Max stock size SRA3
Max stock weight 325gsm
Speed 8,400 cards per hour
Price £8,350, including one cutter and service for one year
Contact Morgana Systems 01908 608888 www.morgana.co.uk