The Intimus GC208 Business Card Slitter is designed for creating small runs of high quality full bleed business cards without the need to outsource. Any organization with a color copier and a frequent need to order business cards will find that the GC208 pays for itself quite nicely.
It is ideal for printers, copy shops, in-plant print shops and human resource departments looking to produce their own high quality, full bleed business cards.
The GC208 comes with a CD on which you will find templates to help with the layout of your business cards in four popular applications: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, Quark and Illustrator.
Strengths / Features:
Although there are a number of different business card slitters available on the market, the GC-208 is one of the only gutter cut business card slitters that is commercially available. It is designed to produce high quality full bleed business cards out of letter sized sheets printed on your color laser printer or photocopier. By overprinting the template, it is possible to have your graphics run to the very edge of for full bleed business cards.
The GC208 business card slitter is capable of completing up to 300 finished business cards per minute. This is fast enough for commercial applications where speed and productivity are essential.
This machine has a feeder that is capable of handling a stack of sheets up to 5/8" thick. You can load the sheets into the feeder, place the weights on top of the stock and let the machine do its work.
The GC208 is a floor standing unit that comes mounted on castors. The business card slitting unit is mounted on a special waste bin for no-mess production. Plus, the whole unit is mounted on wheels to allow you to push the unit out of the way when it is not in use.
Weaknesses / Limitations:
The GC208 business card slitter requires a two step operation for cutting business cards. First, you feed the letter sized sheets into the lower station of the machine and it cuts them into two 3.5" strips and cuts the waste off the sides. Then you feed the cut strips sideways through the upper station to separate the four, full bleed imprinted cards. It's best to do all of your length-wise cuts, and then all of your side-ways cuts. Although the machine is fast (300 cards per minute) cutting business cards is still a hands on process.
Because full bleed imprinting requires an overprint on all four sides of the card, the GC208 is limited to producing only 8 cards per 8 ½" x 11" sheet.
The cutting heads are not adjustable, the GC208 cuts only standard size business cards and accepts only 8 ½" x 11" stock.
Recommendation:
The GC-208 is an excellent cost effective business card slitter for producing high quality full bleed business cards from letter sized sheets of paper.
With speeds of up to 300 cards per minute the GC208 is ideal for print shops, binderies, copy shops and for organizations who want to produce their own high quality business cards in minutes rather than waiting days or weeks from outsourcing.
The productivity offered by this unit can help to justify its cost in no time at all.
However, the GC208 is only designed for cutting business cards that are printed 8 up on the page. Users who want to cut cards that are printed 10 up or 12 up on a sheet will need to consider a different machine.
Overview:
The Martin Yale BCS210 desktop business card slitting machine is designed to cut business cards that are printed ten up on a letter sized sheet of paper.
The BCS-210 uses a two step process for cutting the business cards. It first cuts the letter sized sheet into two strips that are 3.5" x 11" in size. You then feed these two strips back through the machine and it cuts them into ten 2" x 3.5" business cards.
The BCS210 is designed for small printers, copy shops and for organizations that want to produce their own short run business cards without the time or cost of outsourcing.
Strengths / Features:
The BCS210 is capable of creating up to 375 cards per minute. This means that you can potentially cut a run of five hundred cards in less than two minutes and a run of one thousand in less than four minutes. That type of productivity is excellent for on demand applications.
The blades used by the BCS210 are semi-self sharpening. When used normally, the blades on the BCS-210 are designed to be used for years without the need for replacement. However, over time if you do damage or wear out the blades on this machine it is possible to replace them.
The BCS-210 is ideally designed for individuals who have a high quality digital color printer or color photocopier that will allow them to print short runs of business cards on demand. You can simply design the business cards on a desktop computer, print them onto standard letter sized sheets and use the BCS-210 to cut them into perfectly sized business cards.
It is possible with a little bit of work to use the BCS-210 business card slitter for cutting six up full bleed business cards. In order to do this you need to overprint each card which will cause you to waste four of the ten business cards that are created. This can be fairly tricky but can open up possibilities for organizations that primarily use standard business cards but ocassionally need a short run of full bleed cards.
The BCS-210 is a small machine that won't take up a lot of space in your office or production facility. This makes it ideal for organizations that are short on space and don't have room for another large piece of floor standing equipment.
Weaknesses / Limitations:
The BCS210 does have adjustable paper guides that will allow you to adjust the feeding of your sheets. However, it is really only designed to cut ten up business cards. This means that it cannot be customized to cut card sizes other than 2" x 3.5".
Unlike some of business-card slitting equipment that is available on the market, the BCS-210 does not have the ability to perforate or score documents. If you need these features you will want to look at the Intimus BCS-410 which is a ten up business card slitter with the ability to score and perforate for producing tent cards, occasion cards and other similar pieces.
In testing the BCS-210 I found that it did an excellent job with heavy stocks and with coated stocks. However, it was a little bit tricky to get it to work with laminated papers.
The productivity offered by the BCS-210 is not as good as you can find with the BCS-212 which is a twelve up business card slitter that is available for the same price. However, some users prefer the ten up layout.
Recommendation:
Using the BCS-210 you can create your own high quality short run business cards in just a few short steps.
This makes the BCS-210 is great for creating short run business cards using your digital color printer or your color photocopier.
It is ideal for small print shops, copy shops, and human resource departments that need to create business cards on demand without the hassles or costs of outsourcing.
It is a small desktop unit and is not ideal for high production environments that need to produce tens of thousands of business cards per day.