A new tabloid slitter located in a hole in a press folder former cuts more webs, more cleanly, Swedish maker Tolerans says. Instead of what it calls traditional ‘crush-type’ slitter knives on the RTF, Tolerans ‘double motorised tab slitter’ can handle up to 12 webs of 55 gsm paper, cutting cleanly at web speeds of up to 10.5 metres/minute. A spring-loaded contact point between knives leads to a cleaner, more scissor-like cut, claimed to produce almost no dust. Tolerans chief executive Jan Melin says the technological advance is based on upper and lower knives which are both actively driven: “This dramatically increases the maximum number of webs that can be cut without compromising high cutting quality,” he says. “Since paper fibres are cut cleanly, rather than crushed, the process produces considerably less dust. That also means greatly improved startup behaviour (at the beginning of the cut).” Since both knives are driven faster than the web, the slitter always ‘pulls away’ from the web and avoids tangles, reducing the risk of a breakage. And Melin says that, by cutting through a hole in the former closer to the nose, the web is kept intact longer than with traditional slitting in the RTF. This allows printers to have better control of the web tension. Tolerans, which is well known as a manufacturer of online stitching eqipment, suggests the combination of the new slitter with a stitched compact format will produce aesthetically-pleasing, clean cuts of printed products with high page-counts. Combined with stitching, the result is a higher-quality newspaper with a more accessible ‘magazine feel’.