Guillotine vs Trimmer for novice user

[fooltech]

I’m a graphic design student looking to buy cutting equipment for use on various media, from postcard size up to A2. I was hoping to get advice on the best cutting equipment for my needs, considering my budget of $500, and desire to cut stuff up to A2 in size. I won’t be cutting multiple sheets of anything, just singles, so I wondered if a trimmer would be better than a conventional guillotine.

What are the brands to look out for and avoid?

 

[Jeff]

I think you'll be better off with a trimmer if your goal is single sheets. A nice guillotine starts at about $5,000. I've had three guillotine manual stack trimmers, and they're not particularly built for precision - you can do it, but it took a bit of trial and error in my experience. They worked fine back then for cutting short runs and such, but I wouldn't buy one if the purpose is single sheets. The $200 and $450 stack trimmers I had were ideal for runs of 20 to 500 I'd say. Further, even the nice guillotines can mark the top and bottom sheet or two (denting the top sheet with the clamp pressure and sometimes leaving a rough edge on the bottom sheet unless you rotate/replace the cutting stick frequently) which is fine in a stack of 500 but not ideal for your use of one sheet at a time.

 

[fooltech]

I think you'll be better off with a trimmer if your goal is single sheets.

Great, do you know of a good brand? I've been looking around and the Dahle name pops up alot, although I have no idea if they suck or not.