Slicing letter openers use a blade runs across the top of the envelope in parallel, these letter openers are suitable for opening most mail. When opening envelopes, these devices cut a long strip from the top of the envelope. They are known to leave sharp edges on the top of the envelope and pose a risk of papercuts, so this is something to consider.

It’s important when using these devices to ensure the envelopes are tapped down thoroughly to prevent the contents being damaged when running through the opener, this is because the strip cut from the top of the envelope tends to be a few mm and can inconveniently convert a4 contents in a5 pages, especially important if legal documents.

Milling letter openers are quite different, they use also use a blade but rather than running parallel to the envelope the tip of the blade touches the top edge of the envelopes removing small chips, as little as 0.25mm, just over the thickness of the envelope paper. This also leaves a feathered edge, preventing papercuts and minimising the risk of damage to the contents. Milling letter openers are loved by law firms, financial institutions and organisations receiving critical documents whereby any damage to the contents would cause significant issues for business.

3 side letter openers are great solutions for minimising the manual preparation of mail. Load small letters (DL and C5 letters) and the machine will automatically cut the top and both sides of the envelope simplifying the extraction process. These solutions have the option of running as a single side, two sides or with all 3 sides running.

3 side letter opener with extraction takes 3 side letter opening a step further but also extracting the contents of the envelope and presenting these into an output tray and the empty envelope in another.

Full open, extraction and scanning devices flip the traditional inbound mail digitisation processes on its head. The manual preparation and processing ahead of scanning which typical includes; the opening of the post, removing of the contents, preparing the documents for scanning (removing staples, photocopying anything which isn’t a clean a4 item to transfer them to A4 size, separating cherished documents for flatbed scanning and adding batch separators). These additional processes and manual touch points can all be removed with the latest technology available.