Paper shredders have emerged nowadays as a highly preferred alternative for dealing with old and outdated documents bearing sensitive personal or business information. As more and more people have started understanding the importance of protecting their personal information, documents shredders have made their way into many households. However, choosing the right paper shredders for home of office is not an easy process. Many different types of shredding machines are available in the market, offering different features and functionalities. Therefore, a number of factors must be taken into account while purchasing a paper shredder.
A paper shredder may be defined as an electronic device capable of shredding paper documents into small fragments. Documents are destroyed by these machines using a set of electric motor driven cutting wheels. Depending on the type of shredder you choose, the size of the shredded pieces of paper will vary significantly. Paper shredders are categorized as strip-cut, cross-cut, and micro-cut based on this property.
Strip-cut, cross-cut or micro-cut
As mentioned above, all paper shredders don’t produce the same cut. Your selection should be based on the type of document you are looking to destroy. If you are dealing with highly confidential documents, there are shredders that can turn your document into tiny paper shreds. On the other hand, for the purpose of common shredding, it may be sufficient to shred them into long strips.
Strip-cut: These are the basic types of paper shredders used for destroying documents that are relatively non-sensitive. These machines produce long, narrow, and vertical strips of paper and offer low security level. Each sheet of A4 size paper gets shredded into approximately 39 strips by these shredders.
Cross-cut: These shredders are designed for shredding confidential paper documents. They cut paper diagonally from the corners, creating around 400 particles per A4 sized shredded document. These shredders are suitable for highly sensitive documents because the short particles created by them are almost unreadable.
Micro-cut: These shredders provide the highest level of security, and are used for the destruction of extremely sensitive documents. Approximately 3,700 particles of tiny square shaped paper shreds are created from an A4 sized paper.
In addition to the level of security, here are a few factors you should take into account while purchasing a document shredder.
- Sheet capacity: This refers to the maximum number of sheets a shredder can handle per pass. Higher sheet capacity would mean faster shredding, but is only recommended when it is used regularly by multiple users.
- Run time: This is a very important point to consider that tells us about the duration for which a shredder can operate before the motor needs to cool down. Commonly used home shredders have a run time of a few minutes. However, for office use, there are machines that can run uninterrupted for 30 minutes.
- Manual or auto feed: While some shredders have auto-feed functionality, some others need to be fed by hand. Auto feed shredders can save time by speeding up the shredding process.
- Safety features: Safety is extremely important for paper shredders because they contain a set of sharp cutting blades. Therefore, it is always recommended to opt for machines with features such as safety lock and safety sensor.
If you still have doubts about the selection of your paper shredder, please get in touch with our experts at Mastershred.