inconvenient movements thereof are avoided it will be noted from the drawings that compression of the scrap metal close to the cutting station by plunger 12 and block 29 occurs according to concurrent directions fig5 shows the subsequent return stroke of the guillotine block with slight advance with respect to the block 29 thus any likely entrainment of chips into the slot is avoided and the friction on the guides can be reduced at the next step which completes the cycle and brings the cutter back to its starting conditions the block 29 is returned as in fig1 while at the same time the plunger 12 is moved away from the outlet thus returning the side panel 16 to the starting position as shown in fig6 the difference from what is shown in fig2 is the arrangement of the material 3 which has had no time to move since the compression has been relieved the material will move forward then by gravity to the position of fig2 thereby the already compressed leading end to be cut off is also moved forward beyond the cutting station the technological and functional improvements and techniques described hereinabove afford continuous operation capabilities e g by means of a belt conveyor bucket or magnet independently of the cutting step and since the cutter or guillotine is allowed to move up and down without the hindrance of loading pre compaction and squeezing times a real continuous cycle machine is provided in practice all this has led to the surprising result that the production has been more than doubled over conventional guillotines of comparable power while reducing.