Improved steel for razor blades

The company voestalpine Precision Strip is constantly striving to improve their existing products and develop new products that fit the client’s applications impeccably. Hence they work closely with clients to get feedback and find opportunities of improvements. 

Improved characteristics

As a result   a  project was initiated to improve some critical characteristics of their strip steel for razor blades and to make production more consistent.Traditional techniques for examining razor blade steels failed to identify how the manufacturing process or steel chemistry should be modified to achieve desired improvements.

To address this voestalpine Precision Strip turned to Swerim due to their range of advanced experimental equipment in metallography, micro analysis and dilatometry, as well as high competence in the manufacturing processes of steel.

Razor steel up for customer evaluation

Swerim conducted extremely careful examinations. The outcome resulted in a hypothesis linking certain alloying elements and processing parameters to the final microstructure, which in turn is likely to affect the razor blade performance positively. A modified strip steel razor blade is now up for customer evaluation.

“It was refreshing to work with an institute that not only had the state-of-the-art equipment but also had the skilled and knowledgeable staff needed to make good value out of the test results to help us to develop real world manufacturing solutions, says Chris Millward, Director R&D at voestalpine Precision Strip in Munkfors, Sweden.