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Paper shredders - crosscut or strip cut?
by Vincent Woodall
http://www.abt-shredders.co.uk
Whatever your reasons for acquiring one, crosscut paper
shredders come in all shapes and sizes. If space is at a
premium there is a host of small deskside shredders to sit
neatly by or under your desk. Crosscut paper shredders that
open from the front can be sited against a wall to make the
most effective use of available office space. There are
desktop crosscut paper shredders that can destroy CDs, DVDs
and even floppy disks.
Crosscut paper shredders ranging from medium to heavy
volume to industrial crosscut paper shredders can be
purchased or leased. Most industrial paper shredders
feature a conveyor belt that accepts all types of paper
from flat to crumpled. Some large plant paper shredders
include a baler to dramatically reduce the volume of shreds
for disposal. The shredder you select should ideally last
for a five-year growth span. A smaller unit may have a
lower initial purchase price, but if you use it regularly
for all types of documents, the total cost of ownership
could end up being very high. If a lot of material
requires shredding, a low volume shredder will quickly wear
out and become expensive with service and repair costs.
Once you have determined your basic shredder needs, you can
look at other features. Automatic stop, an important
feature, shuts the shredder off should paper jam in the
feeder. In some cases the motor will reverse itself
pushing the papers back from the cutting heads so that they
can be easily re-fed. Another feature is an alarm or
indicator light that shows when the bag is full or the
container needs to be emptied.
Shredders come with different "throat" sizes which is the
term given for the opening where the paper is fed. Unless
you are familiar with paper sizes, you might pick the
wrong size machine so it is best to ask. A4 paper is 210mm
wide and 297mm long. A3 paper is twice the size at 297wide
and 420mm long. It is always advisable to buy a shredder
with a wider throat than the minimum possible. Unless you
have a very steady hand and eagle eye, trying to feed paper
that is 297mm wide into a 300mm throat with a powerful
motorised cutting head tryng to pull the paper into the
machine at the same time, in a perfectly straght line, is
virtually impossible. The paper will frequently be bent
and will cause jam after jam. It is prudent, therefore,
to buy a machine with a margin for error, with a throat
width of perhaps 380mm for A3 paper and computer print outs
and 260mm for A4 shredding. Certain shredders can be
supplied with racks for shreddng continuos stationery. If
this would be a useful feature be sure to ask your supplier
if the one you are considering or is being suggested to you
can be supplied with such racks.
All shredders come with a warranty of some sort. Usually
this is up to 2 years apart from high security shredders
which are normally one year. The higher the security level
of the shredder, the less tolerant they become of paper
clips and staples. Some manufacturers warranties are
replacement warranties which are fine until the warranty
period ends and you find you cannot source parts for love
nor money. Parts are simply not available for many of the
smaller models from even the best known manufacturers. If
you shop around on the internet, as you should, ask three
suppliers which machine they would recommend and why. Do
they have their own service engineers and if so have they
been trained by the manufacturer of the machines they offer
service for? Do they carry out service in your area? If
not, does the manufacturer provide service cover in your
area? Or are you expected to return the shredder to the
manufacturer or their agents for repair? These questions
need to asked before you commit yourself to a machine or
supplier and you could save yourself a lot of inconvenience
and money in the long term. Lately there have been an
increasing number of warnings about toddlers and even
people up to the age of 65 suffering horrifice finger
injuries incling amputations as the result of using a paper
shredder. Even if supervised by an adult, it is dangerous
to allow a child to use a paper shredder. Children have
tragically lost three fingers from a hand that has been
pulled into a paper shredder when they have failed to let
go of the paper being shredded. The opening which under
normal circumstances would no be wide enough to allow their
fingers to enter the shredding mechanism, has been forced
apart by the powerful dragging effect of the shredder motor
with tragic consequences. This has even been known to
happen when adults were showing children how to safely use
the shredder.
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