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A team of engineers at MIT led by C. Cem Tasan has discovered why steel razor blades go dull even when cutting hair that's 50 times softer than them. Using an electron microscopic, they found that under the right conditions a single hair can chip a blade edge.
[...] However, razor blades don't last and other steel blades, like knives and scalpels, also go dull even when used exclusively on softer materials. According to MIT, this is because there's more going on than a simple wearing down of metal, such as happens when a blade is rubbed against something harder, like a whetstone. Instead, what happens is that if a razor blade strikes a hair under the wrong conditions, it becomes stressed, cracks, and then chips due to a mechanism called stress intensification. This chipping leads to more cracks, leading to more chipping in a cascading cycle, ultimately resulting in a very dull razor and an unpleasant shave.
Journal Reference:
Gianluca Roscioli, Seyedeh Mohadeseh Taheri-Mousavi, Cemal Cem Tasan. How hair deforms steel [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aba9490)
Apparently it is not because the hairs have been affected by Brundlefly hybridization.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @04:46AM (5 children)
I had wondered a while ago why ceramic wasn't used:
"It's simply not possible to sharpen ceramic with the angle that is necessary for shaving. I sharpen my straight razor at an angle less than 15 degrees.
If you look at the blade, it is thin like a sheet of paper. Ceramic would shatter long before you can get it that thin.
There are alternatives to high quality carbon steel (it can be done with obsidian for example) but ceramic is not suitable for razors."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @05:52AM (2 children)
Why not better steel?
I wonder if disposable razor companies really use the best steel for the job? There are hundreds of different alloys, many with very high strength and/or good fatigue properties. Because the alloying elements are usually used in small quantities the additional cost is usually not much. Some of the advanced steels used in car bodies these days are several times stronger than the old standard alloys, yet do not increase the car price by any large amount.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @06:23AM (1 child)
Really? Insightful?
The cheapest disposable razors may not use the best quality steel?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @02:37PM
With an end user price of 1-10c per blade, does it even matter if it's the shortest possible steel? Use it once and toss it.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday August 08 2020, @07:40AM
What's the angle on this [youtube.com]?
compiling...
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 08 2020, @02:38PM
Why not glass, if you're going to use disposable blades anyway?
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