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QCM Review: The QCM 8200M & QCM 8700M Stack Cutters

About six months ago I gave my friend, Clark, an old guillotine paper cutter that I wasn't using anymore. He's a freelance artist by trade, and recently he has gotten into desktop publishing as a hobby and to present his work to potential customers.

So today he called me for advice because he thinks he has "outgrown" the old cutter - or trimmer - depending on who you ask. He's spending more time with different types of printing lately, and doing more detailed and difficult work. He wants something that can handle larger volumes, higher quality paper, and possibly other materials such as leather.

The cutter that I gave him (one of those old, warped wood based guillotines) isn't cutting perfectly straight and isn't wide enough for some of his paper anyway.

I'm writing here the advice that I gave him over the phone today, because I think it applies to nearly anyone who may have "outgrown" a guillotine cutter.

I told him to look into stack cutters, and my top choices right now are both from QCM - the QCM 8200M and the QCM 8700M heavy duty paper cutters. Both have a safety lock on the blades, so they won't make any unwanted cuts on you or the paper. And, they're both made with galvanized steel bases.

I told Clark to get the QCM 8700M online, and not to pay more than $600 or so for it. But for most people I would recommend the 8200M because it can be found online for under $300. Clark frequently needs to trim paper wider than 12 inches, which is essentially the only difference between the two.

The 8200M will trim over 350 sheets of 20 lb. paper at once, but only up to 12 inches wide. The 8700M weighs a little bit more, has about the same 350 sheet capacity for stack cutting, and can handle paper up to 17 inches wide. So if you rarely need to cut anything over 12 inches, you can't beat the 8200M at almost half the price.

With either of these stack cutters, they're roughly the same price as a guillotine, but can handle about 10 times the amount of paper at a time - that's 350 sheets compared to 30 or so sheets at once with a guillotine of equal cost.

Find a QCM stack cutter.

An Early Christmas Shopping Story: How I Chose The Accubanker AB-230

Every Christmas my wife finds a big project to double her holiday stress. This year, she volunteered to host a charity fundraising dinner for our church during Christmas.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, after several hours counting bills from the donations she had already received, she asked me to look into a bill counting machine for her. At first I flatly refused, thinking that it would cost at least a few hundred dollars. But she convinced me that she could get good use out of one, both with church events that she’s involved in and the various fundraisers and things she does for our kids with school.

I did some hunting online to see whether a bill counter would be a reasonable purchase. While doing the research to find one at a good price, I found that there is more to bill counters than you’d think. Perhaps you'll be more interested than my wife in what I learned.
My first observation was that most bill counters are made to detect counterfiet money. While I see this as a worthwhile concern in some cases, my wife's bill counter probably wouldn’t need this function.
I also quickly eliminated most of the bill counter options based on price. A lot of them are intended for use in business where high-volume counting is to be done, and the cost can run up to several hundred dollars.
There are some bill counters that will count both bills and coins - a cool invention - but I didn’t think that my wife would be needing to count coins very often.
I finally decided to get the Accubanker AB260 for several reasons. The AB260 is battery powered, which is perfect because my wife will want to use the bill counter at home initially, but she plans to use it later at church functions and ball games, where she won’t have an outlet available. The AB260 is ideal for small counting tasks like my wife will be doing, and the cost (about $120) was less than I expected.

We’ve only used it a little bit, but I’ll post an update in a month or so and let you know how I like the Accubanker after we use it for the holiday season.