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Paper Cutting At Printworks

Kyle Irwin

How We Cut Paper

GIF of guillotine cutter cutting paper.

(Spotted: paper growing in the wild...just kidding)


Summer Time, Trimming’s Easy

Thanks to amazing advances in digital printing, it’s faster than ever to send large projects through a press. But the job isn’t over once the printer fuses toner to the final piece of paper. More often than not, the freshly printed sheets need to be cut down to size, especially if the artwork dimensions allow the design to be imposed multiple times to a single sheet, or if there is bleed in the design.

Thankfully, paper cutting large quantities is a breeze here at Printworks. To make sure every finished print is sized uniformly and cut evenly, we use a hydraulic guillotine paper cutter. With this machine, we can easily take a large stack of uncut sheets, and trim the entire stack down at the same time, making the finishing process extremely efficient.

Image of Duplo 490 guillotine cutter at Chicago Printworks.


Design For Easy Paper Cutting

Knowing that print jobs are imposed onto a larger sheet, then trimmed down in a stack, it’s clear why your print design needs to make sure no important text or images are near the trim line of your design. Despite modern digital printing presses being more accurate than ever before, slight skew may occur from sheet to sheet. By making sure you keep your design within the print safety margin, you can count on the paper cutter to not cut off anything vital to your design.

Image showing how logos can be cropped without proper safety margins.


The same is similar for bleed: make sure to extend your bleed design past the trim line, to avoid any unwanted white edges.

Image showing how white edges can be left on prints when proper bleed isn't added.

Whether ordering with Printworks, or another print shop, always remember that keeping your design within the print safety margin, as well as extending your bleed past the trim line, will help ensure quality paper trimming for your project.