Efforts to increase the power density and continuous power of electric machines have intensified the request for tailored non-grain oriented electrical steel grades. Possible measures to optimize electrical steel grades are the use of thinner gauges as well as grades with tailor-made microstructural properties. However, these grades are developed mainly focusing on the magnetic and mechanical properties, neglecting the detrimental and strongly material-dependent processing effect on the magnetic properties of electrical steel, especially the cutting influence. In this paper, the microstructure-dependence of the magnetic material deterioration due to guillotine cutting is studied on ten industrial non-grain oriented electrical steels with thicknesses between 0.1mm and 0.35mm, all of which the chemical composition, grain structure and texture is known. This allows a consideration of the interdependence of material thickness, microstructure, alloy content with the cutting effect. The magnetic deterioration is characterized on a single-sheet-tester with samples in rolling as well as transverse direction. The grain size distribution and homogeneity is evaluated and linked to magnetic-loss and magnetization-curve deterioration by means of statistical methods. As a result sheet-thickness-dependent microstructures are evaluated with respect to their cutting influence.