What’s the difference between "mcs" and "gsm"?

Paper and card are graded either by weight or thickness. Most papers and cards are specified by weight in Grammes per Square Metre (gsm). This tells you that if you had one sheet of 80 gsm paper, one metre square of it would actually weigh 80 grammes. It is, of course, unlikely that you would have such a thing, but paper sizes are in fact a fraction of a metre square (AO), and you can therefore work out the real weight of a piece of paper. This is useful if you are checking postal weights or other delivery costs. See table of paper weights below.

Microns or mcs or µ measure the thickness of the paper or card in microns i.e. 1000th of a millimetre. So if you had a pile of 100 sheets of 500 mcs card it would be 50 mm (5 cm) high. Stock measured in microns tends to be mostly card and display board e.g. for Euroslotted packaging card hangers. Some card weights are also described as ‘2 sheet card’ (200 mcs), ‘3 sheet card’ (230 mcs), ‘4 sheet card’ (280 mcs) and ‘6 sheet card’ (380 mcs).

There is no general conversion between gsm and mcs, as it depends on the density of the material. A dense material (e.g. art paper) may not be very thick for its weight and a small pile of it will be quite heavy compared with a less dense material (e.g. pulp board).

Many individual materials do have a comparison table. You may also want to consider the rigidity of the card, as that is not necessarily guaranteed by its thickness. If you need samples of any materials, please ask us.

What does it weigh?