What is a side cutter?
A side cutter is a pair of pinching pliers and is used in the electronic field to cut a cable by wedge cutting, by increasing the pressure between the meeting cutting edges until the connection is separated.
The cutting surfaces, or cutting edges, of a silk cutter are thicker than those of a pair of scissors and are suitable for more solid objects, such as preferably wires and cables made of various metals, because of the exact contact of the surfaces when they are pinched together. The cutting surfaces are usually made of extra hardened tool steel for long life and have a cutting area between 160 mm - 200 mm.
In order to achieve a clean cut, side cutters, compared to the center cutter, have two jaws converging towards each other to obstruct the view of the cutting surface less. In electrical installations, side cutters are often used to cut individual wires or entire cables.
What does a side cutter cut?
A side cutter, is used to crush to complete separation of wires, wire ropes, sheets or other metallic and hard objects.
However, the side cutter can do much more than just cut wires and metals. As long as the most commonly used extra-hardened tool steel is harder than the material to be cut, a wide variety of objects and materials, such as metal, wood, plastic and more, can be cut by the compressive action of the jaws. Thus, for example, dowels, screws, plastic caps, or the like can also be shortened.
The side cutter is therefore multifunctional, with the only restriction that the object to be cut must not be thicker in circumference than the distance between the cutting surfaces / jaws of the pliers.
What is the difference between a side cutter and a cable cutter?
The word scissors already reveals the difference. In a pair of scissors, the two blades run past each other, which can cause the blades to bend away from each other due to the built-up pressure when working with harder or thicker wires and cables. The side cutter establishes a pressure point between its meeting jaws and expands the metal between the surfaces to the left and right of the pressure point until it is cut.
