If you're growing outside where the intensity of the sun, who's photons have traveled over 93 million miles and are still more than powerful enough to not only reach the bottoms of the plants as equal to the tops, but also has enough energy that 95% of the light passes through the fans to reach the inner parts. In this case, there's no need to trim, and all you'd really be doing is damaging the plants.
However, if you're growing inside with even the most powerful lights, you're only going to penetrate the top 10" to 12", and maybe pass through a couple fans. In this case, you want to trim your plants so that the majority of growth is concentrated to the upper portion, and much less inside growth as you get towards the main stalk.
I have always trimmed with my RDWC, and get great results. As an experiment I let a grow go without any trimming, just to see if there are any benefits, and the results sucked! Some will say that leaves store energy the plant uses later. But, if you're bringing the nutrients right to the roots (hydro), and providing 18 hours of uninterrupted light, I believe there's much less of a need to store energy, so fans can be removed with little to no effect. In fact, I have never seen a delay in growth from trimming. Just the opposite. Within hours, and definitely overnight, my plants explode with growth!
I just did a major trim (5 gallon bucket full of cut fans from these four), and the next day they were much larger.
Before
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2 days later:
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