American Cutting Edge Blog

When Was the Last Time You Spoke to Your Supplier?

When was the last time you spoke to your industrial knife supplier or sent out an email to ask a quick question about knife performance? If you can’t remember, it has been too long. If you can remember and the response you received was a recorded line or a generic “check out our website” email…you have the wrong supplier.

True industrial knife experts LOVE talking to customers. They want to know what is happening in every aspect of your cutting operation. Why? Because industrial knife manufacturers are always in search of ways to fill the industry with better solutions, and the only way to do that is to understand how industrial knives are being used.

Think about the last time you visited a local shop and got into a conversation with the owner. Chances are pretty good that the conversation lasted a lot longer than you thought it would and that you learned a lot. His or her passion for the business came through

When the life of your granulating blade is optimized, your entire granulating process is improved. Your production lines experience less downtime, your output is consistent and reliable, and your work environment is safer and more efficient.

Utilizing a precision granulator knife sharpener, establishing an appropriate feed rate, and accurately setting the gap between your granulator blades ensures the highest possible efficiency from your operation.

"Pride, precision, and perfect product." - Tom Buchanan

Precision Sharpening Your Granulator Blades

Granulating requires precision blades. To properly maintain your knives and achieve optimum life and performance, blades must be professionally sharpened by a vendor with precision grinding experience. Many vendors claim to offer

The cutting chamber of a granulator is where the most critical processes occur. It also contains the most essential replacement parts on your granulator, your knives. When the cutting edge of a granulator knife fails, the machine must use more energy cut. A failed knife edge also increases dust and fines, leads to poor regrind quality, and prevents the ability to produce uniform particle-size.

"By concentrating on precision, one arrives at technique, but by concentrating on technique, one does not arrive at precision." - Bruno Walter

A Balance of Toughness and Wear Resistance

The most common reason for premature granulator blade failure is improper blade selection. D2 steel hardened up to 59HRC Rockwell is commonly used to manufacture these knives and is appropriate for many applications. However, since every granulating operation is unique, it is imperative that processors evaluate their blade hardness

As a vital step in many production processes, granulating reduces materials, such as plastics, metals, and films so that it can be repurposed into other products. As the importance of reducing the amount of waste that enters landfills becomes more evident, granulating operations are increasing and facilities are looking for ways to improve efficiency and output.

Granulators with well-fit, sharp knives produce regrinds of a uniform size that are free from dust and fines while dull, ill-fitting blades do just the opposite, producing regrinds of various sizes that are peppered with dust and fines. Ill-fitting granulator blades also cause premature wearing of the knives and make it more difficult to accurately set the gap.

The gap between the rotor knife and the bed knife must be set based on the widest knife in the machine. When knives are not uniformly

As a pelletizer, you understand the costs associated with downtime. You also understand the costs associated with procuring new blades and rotors. But did you know that you can control these costs with proper blade inspections and maintenance?

"Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection." - Mark Twain

When the Unexpected Happens

While facilities that pelletize polypropylene materials, often run clean environments we understand that there are occasions when accidents do happen. Some of these customers run carbide inlaid pelletizer blades that are composed of a cold rolled steel, such as 17-4 or 440, and a solid carbide inlay that is brazed to the steel surface.

An ACE customer recently experienced the unexpected first-hand when a foreign object entered the pelletizer and reduced the

Maintaining a sharp blade is essential to optimized shear slitting processes. A sharp blade ensures the highest-quality cuts and lowest dust production. Precision-fit, sharp knives also enable optimum nip point setting to provide the longest blade life.

When shear slitting blades dull, the slitting operation stops while the entire bar is removed and the blades are replaced. Downtime for this type of maintenance can be several hours. Production losses are compounded when the blades dull in the middle of the roll resulting in scrapping the remainder of the material. Selecting an ideal blade material for the application and run-time requirements prevents costly downtime and material losses.

Expert knife manufacturers analyze the material to be cut, current blade selections, run-time requirements, and budgetary needs before recommending

Granulating blades endure some of the most grueling conditions in the size reduction industry. Granulating hard plastics, paper, and other materials dull knives and lead to frequent blade changes. During this maintenance action, the machine is down and production is halted.

However, precision sharpening of these blades dramatically increases both the life of the blade and improves the output of the granulator. Machines that utilize precision sharpened blades operate more efficiently, which increases the overall output of the machine while simultaneously creating more consistency in the output

Precision sharpeners utilize sharpening equipment and processes specifically developed for the maintenance of these type of blades. Blades are returned to the customer in like-new condition, in both straightness and tolerance. This ensures

Razor slitting is a versatile cutting method commonly used for creating slit widths of light gauge films, tapes, ribbons, plastics, and non-woven materials. Choosing the right blade material for your razor slitting application ensures that you achieve maximize runtime and blade life while creating ideal cuts.

While many razor slitting operations employ steel blades, there are distinct advantages to upgrading to a tungsten carbide or zirconia ceramic blade.

Dramatically Increase Wear Life

Both tungsten carbide and zirconia ceramic blades provide significantly improved wear life over carbon steel blades. In fact, operators switching from carbon steel to tungsten carbide or zirconia ceramic can expect wear life to increase by 50 to 500 times.

Slitting operations halt during blade changes, decreasing overall production. Razor slitting blades are extremely

Films, vinyl, fabrics, non-wovens, laminates, paper, and heavy film are often manufactured onto large, bulk material rolls. These rolls are too large to utilize in the end product, so the material is converted into smaller rolls for final production using a process called slitting.

During the slitting process, the material on a master or parent roll is unwound and cut into specific widths (slit widths) by traveling through a series of blades. Razor slitting, crush cut slitting, and shear slitting are the three most common types.

Razor Slitting

Razor slitting is easy and inexpensive to set up and is commonly used to convert films, plastics, tapes, ribbons, and vinyl. Using razor slitting, the material can be converted into very narrow slit widths and still produce very little

Maintaining high-quality, slitter knives improves both the production output and quality of your slitting processes. When selecting a slitter knife manufacturer, look for one with the experience to evaluate your entire slitting process operation, make recommendations to improve blade lifetime and cut quality, and supply you with slitting knives that meet the unique needs of your business.

Slitter Blade Sharpening

Sharpening your slitter blades allows you to extend the life of your current blades and decrease knife replacement costs. When sharpened by a professional, precision sharpening knife manufacturer, slitting blades are returned to like-new condition at a fraction of the cost of purchasing new knives. All that is required to sharpen slitting blades is to establish a relationship with a precision sharpener,