It's analogous to a drum but horizontal.
There is nothing wrong with cutting grains as long as it doesn't jolt the measure when it occurs. A mechanical shock like that settles the powder in the hopper, especially at the bottom of the powder column, so the next couple of charges tend to be high after such and event.
The JDS Quick Measure uses a sloped surface to "scrape" its vertical metering columns, and that avoids all cutting. In a rigid mount, it can meter many stick powders to ±0.1 grains, and in a less firm mount, that can grow to ±0.2 grains, but I've never seen worse than that. Its only drawback is it takes more fiddling to adjust than a more conventional measure.