Dahle 12e Vantage Paper Trimmer, 12" Cut Length, 15 Sheet, Automatic Clamp, Adjustable Guide, Metal Base with 1/2" Gridlines, Guillotine Paper Cutter

I love this guillotine. It is sturdy and cuts beautifully The cutting action is smooth. The safety mechanism is good. When the cutting arm is lifted the safety rule lifts with it. When the cutting arm is brought down the safety rule clamps down cleanly to protect your fingers. When you receive the guillotine you need to pull the arm gently to the right to release it for use. When cutting has finished gently put it back into its resting position. It was a considered purchase for me but I am so pleased I bought it.

Very disappointed, Does do the job easier than the roller cutters I have used before cuts through 10 sheets of paper easily. The low star rating is because the cutter blade handle is damaged so it cannot be locked into a safe down position, the adjustable paper guide does not lock into a straight position so the paper has to be lined up every time for the same cut on the next batch of paper needing the same cut. Would have returned but as shipped from USA the transport costs meant I may as well just work around the problems.

This 18" cutter is beefy and accurate. It will make good accurate cuts in challenging materials. It cuts mat board cleanly. It will cut 15 sheets of copy paper. It will cut thin laminating film and thin dry mount film. The latter two are challenging because some cutters will cause these to fold over between the guillotine blade and anvil blade rather than cut. (this is the problem that drove me to buy this new cutter) A guillotine cutter should never be used on foam core. I tried foam core and it will work if you put it face down. The back edge of the foam core will be a bit rough but the (face down) top edge will be clean. The design is interesting and different from other cutters. The guillotine blade is very thick (5/16") steel and bowed (see picture 2 showing the blade all the way down). The blade has a 1/4" lateral bow; at any point in the stroke the blade is only contacting the anvil at one point. This is an exaggerated version of the bow in a scissors. Other cutters have do not have boldly bowed blades. This bowed blade design really seems to work very well. As I mentioned the blade itself is massive. Other cutters have heavy blade handles and thin steel blades. On this cutter the actual blade is 5/16" thick and the anvil is 1/4" thick steel. The blade is not actually all that sharp. If you grabbed the blade it would not cut your hand or finger, but it cuts paper, mat board, and films very cleanly. I suspect the bowed design is part of the ability to make a blade work extremely well without needing to be super sharp. The blade and paper clamp will remain up in any position. This is very handy for paper positioning. You can slowly lower the handle to get the clamp to engage, remove your fingers with the blade staying up, and then complete the stroke to do the cutting. You will not need to use a shoulder to hold the handle up while positioning or clamping the paper. I was able to trim very tiny slivers off of a photograph as one needs to do to correct slight boarder errors. A 1/32" sliver was easy and I could even manage almost down to almost 1/64". The base is steel which is nice. It about the right balance of weight to keep the unit stable and light enough to carry. An added plus is the magnets stick if you are doing some fancy paper positioning or want to hold a drafting triangle to the board. (Want to try cutting Octagons perhaps?) I am not excited about the scale or grid. The scale is 1/4" and the grid is 1/2". I prefer a much finer grid and ruler. Obviously you can use any ruler to supplement the scale on the cutter.. I found it easy to print off a grid and scale to my liking with a large format printer and double stick tape them to the base. If that is too much trouble for you, then you might just get a big sheet of graph paper that has a grid to your liking and stick that on the base.

Me agrado el producto, es lo que esperaba para algunos trabajos de recorte de fotografías. Se ve que es de buena calidad y que debe de servirme por largo tiempo

Very happy with this trimmer. I use it in a school setting with older students, and they find it easy and safe to use. Papers stay more secure when cutting that with our sliding trimmer. Recommended!

Muy bien la traje para un familiar, dice que está muy satisfecha con la compra

Holds page firmly and cuts very well. The blade has a lock when not in use and it's also not sharp so it's safe to touch but cuts extremely well, even very thin slivers of paper.